Does it really matter whether Noah’s flood was local or global? Does the size of the boat really matter, or is it important that we know what kind of animals were taken on board?
We always want to know the specifics, the trivia. But we shouldn’t get trapped in technicalities, in details. The Quran deals in broad-brush truths; that is why it is so concise. What we need to understand about the story of Noah is what is meant by a flood — a flood that covers everything we know and kills off everything and everyone around us. There are many ways of interpreting the flood: the growth of atheistic materialism, degeneracy and corruption; the illogicality of postmodernism and ‘woke’; the inversion of values in which evil is portrayed as good, massacre is portrayed as legitimate defense, and men can win gold medals in Olympic competitions that are meant for women.
We need to understand the meaning of the flood of unbelief that is surging around us, and we need to recognize the ‘ship that saves’ — the ship of belief and conviction that will take us to safety and stop us from disappearing under the waves of loss of meaning, hypocrisy, vice, corruption and unbelief. We need to understand the meaning of Noah’s beloved son ‘escaping to the mountain’ instead of joining his father on the Ark. The mountain is a symbol of the stubborn self, and Noah’s son thought that he could escape the cataclysm by depending on his own limited reason, on his own finite powers. He was wrong and he paid the ultimate price for his arrogance and stubbornness.
We have to abandon the detail and stick to the central meaning of the prophetic narratives. What does Noah and the flood mean to us, in our lives? What significance does it have for us? When am I Noah and when am I Noah’s son? For sometimes I realize I need to be saved and at other times I gravitate towards my own self and the abilities I think I possess. Sometimes I give myself to the Quran and at other times I think I know better. What does the mountain mean for me? What does the rising water signify?
We need to stop busying ourselves with unimportant detail, much of which is impossible to know anyone. Not just in the context of Noah and the Flood, but in every domain of life. We are obsessed with externals, with details, with trivia, and we spend endless hours debating things which have little bearing on our fate and salvation.
There is an English saying: “The Devil is in the detail”. It means that details can be tricky and that we should pay careful to them, but only when it is necessary. Personally I think, with respect to centuries of English phraseology, that it can also mean precisely the opposite, and that it means if we pay too much attention to detail, Satan will have us by the throat and kick us into the flames.
