Nessie - and God

The world of Nessie-seekers was shaken last week by Steve Feltham’s conclusion that Nessie is no prehistoric monster, but a Wels Catfish.

Steve Feltham

Mr Feltham has been researching the Nessie phenomenon since 1991, reading accounts of sightings, discussing them with other Nessie enthusiasts, and spending hours scanning the waters of Loch Ness from his base in a converted mobile library on Dores Beach.

He now says ‘I have to be honest. I just don’t think Nessie is a prehistoric monster.’ The evidence, he says, points to the presence in the Loch of one or more ‘Wels Catfishes’, a species which can grow to 4 metres in length. The catfishes were apparently released into watercourses by enthusiastic Victorian sportsmen who would then hunt for them: some may have survived, and bred.

There was a strident reaction to Steve’s announcement from those concerned that it might undermine tourism and the world-wide mythology of Nessie.

I wonder how Christians would react if someone said ‘I’ve been looking for God for a quarter of a century, but I’ve reached the conclusion that all these stories about divine encounters have purely psychological and scientific explanations.’

We might fear that our own faith, and the faith of others might be shaken by this blunt statement. But I hope we would react with a supportive empathy, asking our hypothetical agnostic what has led her to this conclusion at this point in her life.

Steve Feltham seems never to have glimpsed Nessie for himself, basing his conclusions on the evidence of those who have seen …. something.

Now, we hear of every sighting of Nessie, genuine and spurious. But God is glimpsed far more often than we hear of.  Other things – a tree-trunk, some plastic debris – are mistaken for the monster. In contrast, God is often mistaken for other things: we see the beautiful, while not discerning the Beauty behind it; we experience love, but are strangers to the Love which inspires all loving.

Nessie doesn’t deign to come to Dores, but God comes to those who open-heartedly look Godwards, encouraging us to grapple with the science, but to let our imaginations show us something of the reality beyond science.

All of which means that if someone seeks God with the earnest commitment Steve brings to Nessie-hunting they will not be disappointed.

So why is our hypothetical agnostic turning away after years of searching? I suspect something must have happened to cause her decision. A deeply significant prayer unanswered? A personal experience of ill-health or tragedy? A betrayal by someone deeply trusted, a person of faith?

Perhaps she has still to discover that we learn most about God and about ourselves in the heart of mystery. Earlier this month the American author Barbara Brown Taylor gave a talk at St Paul’s Cathedral to promote her book Learning to walk in the dark.  She asked us to imagine two personal timelines; the one listing key events in our lives – a first love, a serious illness, a relationship breakdown, a bereavement; the other charting those times when we have grown most as people.

Barbara Brown Taylor, speaking at St Pauls

It’s the experience of the majority of us, she said, that in dark times we grow most. Yet if we have been brought up to see faith in Jesus Christ as all about clarity and answers and knowing, we will be perplexed to enter the cloud of uncertainty and unknowing. We must learn to walk in the dark.

Could it be that when we’re just about to turn away from the beach convinced that science explains everything and nothing, we’re at the very point of breaking through to God, and God to us?

What if Nessie were found? There would be excitement. Businesses would compete for the right to manage her, sealing her in an enclosed Loch-side bay. There would be tourists by the million, and the satisfaction of discovery.

But something would be lost, because we are drawn by the mysterious and inexplicable. This hunger for mystery is ultimately a hunger for the God who is mystery; who cannot be captured by what Barbara Brown Taylor calls the ‘lassos’ of theology, cannot be tamed; the God who forever swims free.

The Nessie story illustrates the power of belief: there are those who believe that something, something extraordinary, no mere catfish is there in the deep waters, and it is a faith which cannot be shaken.

As Christians, how do we know in the cloud of mystery that what we are drawing hope from is not simply our strong, desperate belief, but the Mystery beyond mysteries?

As we stand on the beach, looking across the water towards the hills on the horizon we hear a voice beside us saying ‘Why are you looking into the distance? I am right here, beside you.’

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 22nd July 2015)