Article in Stretton Focus, July 2013
‘Throwing out the baby with the bathwater’ is a well-known and very useful saying. It’s really a proverb, and like all proverbs it contains a nugget of wisdom in a minimum of words.
In its literal sense the meaning is clear enough – take the baby out before you throw away the bathwater! But it can be applied in many different situations. The ‘baby’ could be different in different contexts, but it would always refer to whatever was regarded as essential and irreplaceable.
Even within a religious context, people could understand the ‘baby’ in different ways. For some it would be an infallible Bible, or the teaching of the Church, but for me it would be the concept of God.
Over thousands of years, the concept of God has been discussed, argued about and even fought over and killed for. The bathwater has become very murky indeed, and certainly needs throwing away: but there’s a ‘baby’ in it, so one needs to be careful! People today still want to ‘see’ God (ie to know about, understand and experience God) but the water has become too muddied, with the rival claims of competing religions. We must learn how to pour away the murky bathwater but as carefully as we can, because there is something precious in it.
The concept of God is still needed, because it is the One Ideal which can inspire and draw out all that is best in human nature. But we don’t need the many religions in their present form: they are just the bathwater to be poured away, and replaced with something new and refreshing.
Donald Horsfield
