Tyler's Turn Blog

On this day in 1633, the Church began the first big battle in its centuries-long war to prove Christianity irrelevant. This is the anniversary of Galileo's trial for supporting the theory that the earth travels around the sun. The trial, of course, was conducted at the insistence of Church leaders who thought if the theory about the earth's relationship to the sun was true, then the Bible was false, and Christianity was pointless.

In the nearly four centuries since Galileo's guilty verdict and subsequent house arrest, the Church has continually pitted itself and God against reality. Church leaders continue to tell us that if things are as they seem to be, then the Bible is false and God does not exist. In fact, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins are the contemporary offspring of those early Inquisitors — the most-vocal supporters of the inquisitorial theory that science makes God false.

Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the Church leaders (and their standard bearers, the vocal atheists), there are still some of us who believe in God and who consider Christianity relevant.

Maybe they'll do a better job of convincing us in the next four hundred years.

With a Prayer

In Zambia, where babies die
too often to be counted, Mary buys
a kit for sixty cents --
rubber gloves, umbilical clamp, razor blade, plastic mat --
with a prayer that the next baby will live
well past three weeks.

Tina, the aid worker, tells her how
septicemia sneaks in with the unseen
germs that live
on dirty knives and scissors.
"Tell the midwife to use this razor blade
on your baby only -- not on any others.
And do not open the sterile package until
the little one is born," she says,
with a prayer that one more baby will live
well past three weeks.

Martha, who is eight months pregnant, has risen
from her dinner of mac & cheese and fresh
green salad grown in Arizona and shipped to Dallas
to turn off the noisy television.
She stands in the doorway, as the newscaster finishes
the tale of Mary and Tina and the sterile razor blade.
She rubs her belly, where the little girl
whose ultrasound picture lies on the piano
has kicked her,
stimulated by the chocolate bunny
Martha ate this afternoon.
"Sorry about the bunny," she tells the little girl,
with a prayer that two babies will live
well past three weeks.