The Pits - A Short Allegory

God was out walking one day when he happened upon a deep pit. He peered over the edge. There He found the humanity He had made.

Seeing them there saddened Him greatly. He had not made them for this but He was not entirely surprised. From early on they had shown a propensity for digging. The conditions in the pit were unpleasant. Everyone was in a great crush together, scrambling over every other body in the pit in order to be near the top of the pile. It was a teeming mass of cruely, ignorance, pride, and misery.

Now, some among this pressing, human morass tried to lessen the horror of the place by calling the pit a cave. This was a convenient lie, but it was the closest any one of them came to naming their collective condition. God suspected these writers knew it was a grimy pit but that they didn't have the heart to put too fine a point on it.

God was moved with great compassion for His creation trapped below. So He took off His shoes and his suit coat, rolled up His sleeves, and jumped into the pit. He quickly sank to the bottom, where the crush was nearly unbearable. The downward pressure of so many bodies made life there a concerted calculation between maintaining space to breathe, and letting the crush squeeze the life out of you as you sank to the lifeless floor below.

He began speaking to those who would listen, about what life was like on the surface above the pit where there was no crush above you and no anonymous ending below. Many listened, but none of them fully understood. A physical demonstration was needed. So, at great personal expense and pain to Himself, He carved a route out of that horrible pit. The route began in the lowest, most unimaginable sections but quickly climbed upwards to the surface and away from the constant struggle for worth, space and voice.

Not everyone left the pit immediately, but the path was made. Many called the path fake or too good to be true, but quite a few found and followed the path upwards. To those who stood squinting in the bright sunlight, God said, "You are all now free and equal. I have rescued you from a life of constant striving for validation. I have proven your worth beyond doubt by providing a way up out of the pit. You are my creation and that is enough."

Now, this was all quite different than the reality they had always known. It made some of them nervous, and even unhappy. Their necks were used to straining upwards, and their feet were used to feeling soft, yielding bodies beneath them. They found this new situation alarming and disconcerting. A furtive, nagging question ran among them. “How could they possibly know who was better than whom while they were all standing here in this flat, verdant prairie?”

A significant number of these disconcerted individuals found each other and agreed that what the place needed was a tower, a seriously complicated one, with lots of different levels. They wanted a tower that was tall, beautiful, straight, and true, an unmistakable symbol of their repudiation of the horrors of the pit.

But, a difficult conundrum soon faced them. They couldn’t agree on just one design for the tower. The possibilities were just too varied and the statements they made were too important. Fractious arguments soon arose and the group was thrown into turmoil. Soon, several different tower plans emerged, each with its own style, name, and adherents. There were so many plans and so many dreams of piety and greatness.

Now, the architects of these towers were no fools, they wanted to make sure that their towers were built on solid foundations that were true and level, unwavering and steadfast. But, in order to establish these firm foundations they needed something first. They needed to get busy digging a big pit.

Weeks later, pits were pockmarking the prairie everywhere you looked. They weren’t as deep as the original pit, and they were mostly filled with happy people talking about how wonderful the new tower was going to be. The pits kept getting deeper because, as people kept repeating, the foundation was the most important part of the tower and that it had to be perfect and deep.

Now one day, God came by for a visit with His newly liberated people but saw only a small handful of them standing on the flat ground. He was dismayed at first until He heard some faint singing and walked over to investigate. There He found His children. Some were singing, some were preaching, and some were digging.

"What are you doing?" God asked in exasperation.

"We're building a tower," several of them said at once.

"Why do you want a tower?"

"Because it is not a pit" came the reply.

"..." said God.

He spent a few minutes wandering from pit to pit. In each, there was lots of talk about all of the big beautiful towers that would soon be rising up from the ground. Several of the workers asked if He could come back later when they were finished. Right now they were all too busy with digging and planning and industry.

God sat on one of the huge piles of dirt that surrounded each of the pits and looked out over the wide beautiful prairie He had made. The bright sun shone down on the green waving grasses and sparkled on the cool, flowing streams that stretched as far as the eye could see, uninterrupted by trees or mountains or any other building materials. He sat there and waited. Surely sooner or later they must realize the futility of it all this and stop their digging and come out of their pits. Then they could start enjoying all that He had made for them and enjoy each other simply as He had created them.

Some say He is still sitting there on that pile of dirt to this day.