This photo is from Indianapolis, Indiana, from in front of the Art
Museum a few years ago. A sculpture by DK Rubins. I think he called it
"Stumbling Man." It may well characterize the fate of the local
football club the Colts this season, but something more surprising has come out
in the news today, from Italy.
The report I read first came from the New York Times. Gaia
Pianigiani reported from Giglio, Italy, and Alan Cowell from London. David
Jolly contributed reporting from Paris and Rick Gladstone from New York.
"The news [is] that the captain claimed he had slipped on deck and
tumbled overboard to wind up in a life boat during the panicky passenger escape
— and had not abandoned ship like a coward as accused."
"Captain
Schettino was quoted by the La Repubblica newspaper as telling
investigators that he had not planned to leave the ship as it tilted toward the
water.
“The passengers
were pouring onto the decks, taking the lifeboats by assault,” he said,
according to the newspaper. “I didn’t even have a life jacket because I had
given it to one of the passengers. I was trying to get people to get into the
boats in an orderly fashion. Suddenly, since the ship was at a 60 to 70 degree
angle, I tripped and I ended up in one of the boats. That’s how I found myself
there.”
The new explanation
by the captain, Francesco Schettino, for why he vacated the vessel after he
smashed into the rocks last Friday night, came as the Italian press has
pilloried him as a negligent coward."
The
ship, Costa Concordia, remains overturned and in all likelihood will
finish deep at the bottom of the sea near the Tuscany coast.
Photo taken
by Gregorio Borgia/Associated Press
This all sounds so
biblical.
Not a shipwreck,
although that certainly happened in the Bible.
Not a story of
football teams failing.
No, it's a story of
Aaron, the brother of Moses, and a Golden Calf.
"What?"
you say. There's been no mention of a cow in the whole article so far. No, you
are right, but consider
this story from the Book.
In Exodus chapter
32, we read of Moses being up on Mount Sinai. He has spent about 6 weeks up
there and is supposed to return with what we later know as The Ten
Commandments. During his time away, Aaron is responsible to keep the crowds in
control. The people are impatient, and begin a revolution. They demand Aaron
give them a new deity. And he comes up with a plan to calm them by giving them
what they want, an idol to construct and to worship. When Moses returns and
sees the golden calf they had made, he is really upset.
Beginning in
verse 21, we read, "Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you,
that you have brought such great sin upon them?” Aaron said, “Do
not let the anger of my lord burn; you know the people yourself, that they
are prone to evil. For they said to me, ‘Make a god for us
who will go before us; for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land
of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ I said to them, ‘Whoever
has any gold, let them tear it off.’ So they gave it to me,
and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf.”
What! Out came this calf? Come on Aaron, work harder on an excuse than
that. But doesn’t this sound like the captain of the Italian ship? Perhaps
the stumbling really happened. Perhaps he really did just land in the lifeboat
and was carried away. I don’t know at all. Time and others will tell.
But the biblical account is clear.
Don’t invent a lie and expect us to believe it.
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