In any case, I was walking along
a road with Elder Leslie Peter, the bursar at Onesua Presbyterian
college when I spotted a large tree with the most outrageously
gorgeous scarlet blossoms. I said, “Oh, Leslie, look at
that beautiful tree! What’s the name of it?” Leslie
looked up and said, “I don’t know its name, but we
know that when it blooms it is time to plant the yams.”
That’s a much better way to “name” something,
a way that has significance and real meaning rather than some
fancy-dancy name that has no relevance except to the original
namer or one that fits neatly into our conventional way of identifying
things. I was fascinated with this new, to me, way of plant identification.
Does it really make any difference what class, family, genera,
species, or sub-species a plant is? Do Latin names make it more
beautiful or smell more sweetly?
A few years ago while teaching in this country, I asked a class
of seventh-graders if they thought that “God” and
“Allah” were the same “being,” for lack
of a better word. Except for one little girl, all the kids admitted
that that was at least possible. She refused to acknowledge that
possibility. I even pointed out to her that in Iraq, for example,
where there are Presbyterians, when they worship they use the
word “Allah,” as that is simply the Arabic name for
God. She stuck to her guns. Just a month or so ago my wife told
me that in Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke, the word for
God is “Allaha.” Of course I couldn’t resist
looking up that girl and apprising her of that little tidbit.
She looked vaguely horrified at that thought. I must say I felt
sorry for her that she believed that things had to be the way
she had been taught and no other way.
Vanuatu is the most linguistically diverse country in the world,
with 105 different local languages (plus multiple dialects of
those 105) for about 200,000 people. I am sure that there are,
therefore, 105 different names for God.
I just looked it up and there are somewhere between 3,000 and
8,000 languages in the world with the best estimate being in the
6,500 range. Then there are dialects as well. Does that mean another
6,500+ names for “God”? I doubt that even Carl Linnaeus
would try to categorize God. Looks as if God’s wishes at
the Tower of Babel worked out just fine.
Isn’t that wonderful?
As Spring arrives here in our part of the world (while simultaneously
autumn begins in the South Pacific), let us celebrate the diversity
of our planet. Let us reflect and rejoice that God, while known
by thousands of different names, is still the one God, Lord of
all people no matter what language they use, what color their
skin is, where and how they worship, or whether or not they know
that the “father of modern taxonomy” is Carl Linnaeus.
Ah diversity, by any other name you would smell as sweet.
David Walter
The 2006 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p.
243 |
