A Book From A Friend
During a weekend visit, an old friend recommended Shaw's "The Black Girl in Search of God." He lent me his hoary old paperback copy -- with the smell of must which he has owned and kept at his side for over fifty years. (His copy of the book includes a nameplate with a pre-zip code address.) I was reluctant to borrow what appears to be a book with heavy sentimental value, but my friend's wife seemed happy to have an old bad-smelling book out of the house. There is always so much to read and learn, and Shaw's book covers some of my own preoccupations over the years.
In a concise, sharp, and polemical way, Shaw deals with difficult questions of religion and the search for God. Shaw wrote this little parable in 1932 while visiting in South Africa. In addition to the story, the book includes Shaw's epilogue which reflects upon and interprets his own work.
The book tells of the spiritual quest of an unnamed young naked African woman after her conversion by a female European missionary who has also taught her to read. The young woman is unable to accept what she has been taught and embarks on a journey in search of God. Thus, the book is in the form of a spiritual quest, in common with many other books. In the course of the journey, the young woman meets people or figures with different concepts of God. These include various representatives of the different views of God in the Old Testament, from the God of the Pentateuch to the God of Job to the God of Micah, to the God of the New Testament. The young woman also meets an Arab with an Islamic understanding of God. In addition, the heroine meets scientists and artists with their own understandings. She also meets an elderly man who advises her to remain within herself and her finitude in the manner of Voltaire's Candide and an Irishman whom she marries. A comic figure, the Irishman offers what may be something of a complex, modern religious teaching.
"Sure God can search for me if He wants me. My own belief is that He's not all that He sets up to be. He's not properly made and finished yet. There's something in us that's dhrivin at Him, and something out of us that's dhrivin at Him: that's certain; and the only other thing that's certain is that the something makes plenty of mistakes in thrying to get there. We'v got to find out its way for it as best we can, you and I; for there's a hell of a lot of other people thinking of nothin but their own bellies."
As I understand it, the Irishman believes in a developing, ideal God. His statement suggests that God is not a thing but rather a developing ideal. Human beings search for God through knowledge and through kind behavior but make mistakes in the process. God is a process that inspires and is realized in human behavior and thought at their best rather than a creator or a giver of commands. Science and causation are not substitutes for God because they lack ideals and purpose. Hence, there is a need for religious and metaphysical understanding without repeating the views of the past or accepting wrong concepts. There may be a suggestion in Shaw that socialism is a consummation of the search for God, so understood. But such a belief would be separate from the Irishman's primary insight.
Shaw's parable combines heavy skepticism with a story of a religious quest. In addition to the allusion to Voltaire, the story reminded me of other longer and more difficult books, including Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise. Most of the time, people probably come to books such as this little work by Shaw when they are young, as my friend did, and their minds have not fully hardened. I imagined giving this book to some friends of my own age to read and thinking about the response it would likely receive. (In Ireland, Shaw' was condemned as a blasphemer when the book first came out.) People find the books they need in odd ways at different stages of their lives. And I am glad to have found this book through a friend.
Robin Friedman
