When asked who the first two Apostles were Tom Sawyer replied, “Adam and Eve?” We may laugh at Tom's desperate answer, but it reminds me of many a similar “answer” to Bible questions. My great-grandmother was fond of showing off my Bible knowledge as a child to others. She would ask, “What was Noah's Ark made of?” And I would dutifully reply, “Gopher wood.”

Now my grandparents, my great-grandmother and I had no idea that the Hebrew word translated Gopher wood was an uncertain translation. In the NIV it is given as Cypress. But we knew our King James Bible was God's Word and would defend Gopher wood to the death. I don't think anyone in Little Oklahoma knew there were any other versions or translations of the Bible, certainly no one knew Shakespeare used the Geneva Bible, but The Old Time Religion was good for Paul and Silas and it was good enough for all of us.

But while ignorance and superstitions were abundant, we did have one advantage over many educated people: We believed what God said. We didn't understand a lot of it but we believed it. If God said He destroyed the world by a flood, we didn't doubt it. If He said the sun stood still for Joshua that was that. Jesus was virgin born and cast out demons and no one better say otherwise.

As I often reach back in my memory to that simple time of my childhood among simple and honest folks, the women in flour sack dresses and us boys in our bib overalls and barefoot, I long for the plainness and openness of our dirt-poor community in old, Southeast Bakersfield; a time before drugs and a collapse of morality destroyed so much of what America used to be.

However, by the end of WWII there was a quick change of culture in our nation. The boys came back from overseas where so many had gained a “cosmopolitan” outlook, and that together with the nation having become the preeminent world power, an industrial giant, the Atomic Bomb, women working at men's jobs, the abandoning of the simple, agricultural way of life, so many, many changes. Gone forever, the way of life we knew as children.

I have lived long enough to look back far enough. I grieve for the loss of so much for our children. It seems a tragedy that young people know more about the local Mall than an animal trail along some shimmering, singing, mountain stream or a clear, night sky, bejeweled by countless stars, that their ears are accustomed to the noise of what is called “music” as opposed to the hoot of an owl.

Fay Canyon is a particularly beautiful area. As I walked along one of the streams my eye caught a glimpse of obsidian; it was an arrowhead. This area has a lot of game and I'm sure an Indian had shot at something, possibly a rabbit or squirrel or even a deer, and this was the remains of his attempt at dinner. As a boy living on the mining claim I found quite a few Indian artifacts including several arrowheads. One was a real work of art crafted from rose quartz rather than the usual obsidian.

A couple of hours later when I was returning to my car I came across a place where it was obvious some folks had been cutting trees for firewood. I spied some shell casings, .45 auto. Being a handloader from many years back, I have a habit of picking up brass. Someone must have emptied a clip from the number of casings I found. As I was gathering the brass, I found a 1985 penny. I'm gray and my eyes are growing dimmer but I still see obsidian, shell casings, and money on the ground.

I sat on a granite boulder beneath a big, old Digger pine beside the stream, and with a cup of coffee and a cigarette doing duty examined my artifacts. It must be my Cherokee blood that responds so to such an environment. I could well imagine the Indian and what he had to contend with in living off the land. My thoughts ran to what it must have been like here before the intrusion of the White-Eyes. Then I looked at the .45 casings and the penny. The Indian could never have imagined the culture that would produce such marvels. What a difference between that arrowhead and the .45, and his wampum and the penny with the technology that produced such things.

And I thought about my eventually coming to question the teachings of the great scholars of the Bible. But I also thought about what that Indian understood in his own culture and environment. His knowledge was certainly extremely limited compared with what European nations possessed. But he functioned well enough in the world he knew. And, as in the allegory of the cave, thought he knew a great deal.

But the Indian's knowledge and expertise were to prove no match for the superior learning and technology of more advanced cultures. I used to be quite an archer and enjoyed the roving ranges, and being quite adept I would enter various archery contests and won quite a few. However, a bow and arrow is no match for a .45 auto. But imagine if you will, the tremendous difference between the time and the world that existed for both the Indian that shot his arrow and the person that stood in the same place firing that .45. Who do you suppose God holds more accountable for knowing what is best on the basis of power and knowledge.

While I long for the simpler way I once knew as a child, while I know that much of what I was blessed with as a child was denied my own children, I, like the Indian, will learn and adapt or perish. The Indian may well have had a profound belief in The Great Spirit, but it did not save him or his way of life when opposed by a greater power with greater knowledge. That he was ignorant of things like systematic theology, having his own equivalent in his own system of superstitions and beliefs, was to prove no match for the great learning and ways of his conquerors.

Thinking on these things I was impressed once more by the seeming accident of birth that made me the beneficiary of being a citizen of the United States, and that I was born in a time of such vast advances in the sciences. And so it is that so many things twist and turn through our lives that bring us to moments of decision that can so thoroughly change things for good or evil. So it is that I began to question so many of the things that I had simply accepted as Articles of Faith that had no sound basis in fact or reason.

I can envy the Indian for his freedom from technology, for his escaping having to pay a mortgage and fight traffic. But as with Henry Thoreau I cannot envy his ignorance and superstitions. I loved my grandparents dearly, but I cannot envy their own ignorance and superstitions. I do believe, however, that, as with the Indian, had they known better they would have done better. They did the best they could on the basis of what they had, and they were honest in those things; and this is the primary lesson each generation is responsible for passing on.

If honesty were the hallmark of politics how different things might be. As it is, the arrow was overcome by the .45, and that overcome by nuclear weapons. While I thoroughly enjoyed archery, when hunting for the family pot I would take a gun. Just what are all the nations hunting for with nuclear weapons? Whatever it is, it is something that despite all the scientific achievements of humankind makes us still a little afraid of the dark.