Luther's flawed hardware decisions

28 January 2015

I think we are in in agreement at this juncture that Martin Luther was absolutely correct and right philosophically when he nailed his Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences to a chapel door in Wittenberg.

The Catholic Church of his time was rife with greed and corruption and scandal and lies and theft and devious financial plots, as it still is, and probably always has been; such is the fate of entities run and staffed by human beings, from countries to corporations to city councils to colleges, although perhaps that will not always be their fate, if we ever manage to evolve away from snatching and hoarding, which is possible, if not probable.

But I maintain that Luther was utterly wrong and incorrect in his choice of tools.

Why would you smash a nail into the lovely wooden door of All Saints Church? Could he not have used tape, or gum, or sap from the nearby towering and beloved village oak? Did he feel the slightest regret at punching a monstrous hole in a door that some poor workman had laboured over for weeks?

Imagine how you would feel if a Catholic monk (we forget that Luther was an Augustinian priest) showed up at your front door, the one you had specially made by your brother the master carpenter, who found some unbelievably beautiful black walnut, and planed it and carved it for months, and even installed it properly for you, because that is the kind of gracious and excellent guy he is, and then some portly monk storms up, and hammers a nail into your door?

Would you feel all warm and grateful about this? You would not. You would shriek and rage, and stomp and storm, and roar and bluster, and set all three of the dogs on the guy, and chortle evilly as he sprinted away down the street, the dogs shredding his cassock, and then you would think seriously for a moment of stuffing some birch gum into that hole, and carefully painting over the hole with shoe polish or peanut butter, to match the russet colour of the door, but then you would realise that your wife will eventually notice that, and sigh that sigh she sighs when you misuse the peanut butter, so you man up about the whole thing, and call your brother, and then you call the local religious authority, and file a blistering

ARTS AND CULTURE

Luther's flawed hardware decisions

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