breakable

 

What if the Christian faith is like a glass, and we were told the glass itself is unbreakable.  

The fundamentalist worldview is like a table that the glass is sitting on. 

 The circumstances of my life were such that my glass got knocked off the table and broke. 

I see others whose life circumstances mean that their glass never left the table, and thus never breaks. “See, it’s unbreakable,” they say, and maybe discuss that my glass wasn’t actually made of glass after all. 

And then others’ circumstances somehow gently move the glass from the table to the floor without breaking; they set it down, or it falls onto a pillow, or it is very thick and the fall from the table doesn’t affect it. “See, even when it’s off the table it doesn’t break,” they say. Their glasses - whether on the table or on the floor - aren’t broken, so their “unbreakable” proposition stands. 

If I try to tell them “But your glass is breakable,” they point to their glasses and say, “See? Not broken!” 

The person with the glass on the table might tell me, “Yours wouldn’t have broken if it had stayed on the table!” The person with the glass on the floor might say, “Yours wouldn’t have broken if you’d been more cautious.” Other glasses suggest that maybe the real problem was the table; my glass wouldn't have broken if it had stayed in the cupboard or been set on the couch.  

“But, that’s not the point,” I’d answer. “The point is that the glass can break!”