When the “Lightning” Strikes

"Lightning, a kite, and an almanac by Dick."  It almost sounds like a Jeopardy clue under the category-heading of "Founding Fathers."  And the contestant who can hit their button first and say "Who was Benjamin Franklin?" gets the points.

So frequently repeated are the story of Franklin flying a kite in the lightning storm and the title of Poor Richard's Almanack that we rarely get a chance to learn about the other contributions of Franklin. (Whose face and build are also widely recognized from the many portraits of him, some with the illumination of a lightning strike.).  Some people in the general public might know a bit about his having lived in France for awhile as part of his public service for his countrymen back in America.  Or maybe know about his fiddling with science even beyond that kite.  But we hear little about his religious habits or his spirituality.

That omission is why I was struck by one page in the book Gentlemen Scientists and Revolutionaries: The Founding Fathers in the Age of Enlightenment by Tom Shachtman. That author emphasizes that:

"The Founding Fathers' science was in no way opposite to their religion. 
The notion that science and religion were antithetical
is a nineteenth-century construct."

And in regard to Franklin, Shachtman writes:

"By the age of fifteen, Franklin wrote in his Autobiography, he had become
a doubter of organized religion...until he chanced upon printed lectures that
tried to debunk Deism: [Franklin wrote:] ' They wrought an effect on me quite contrary
to what was intended by them, for the arguments of the Deists...appeared to me
much stronger than the refutations; in short I soon became a thorough Deist.' 
In his twenties, he set out his religious beliefs
in a ten-page liturgy, complete with a hymn."

Benjamin Franklin's explanation of his newly found religious orientation continues:

"I think it seems required of me, and my Duty, as a Man,
to pay Divine Regards to SOMETHING....
When I stretch my Imagination thro' and beyond...the visible fix'd Stars themselves,
into that Space that is every Way infinite, and conceive it fill'd with Suns like ours...,
then this little Ball on which we move, seems, even in my narrow Imagination,
to be almost Nothing, and my self less than nothing."

There were two things I liked in these passages.  The first was Franklin's ability to remain sufficiently open to change his mind.  He had apparently began reading the arguments trying to refute the existence of God because they aligned with his doubts about organized religion; but he turned in a different direction when he found the refutations lacking.  That turn in direction put him on a course where, several years later, he could put to pen his own majestic expression of religious belief.

The second thing I liked was Franklin's expression of his need to feel reverence (the paying of "Divine Regards," as he interestingly put it). Our media today are so quickly drawn towards brash voices and dominating personalities that it is easy to forget that we are often better served by humility.  And in religious and spiritual lives, humility is cultivated through following a path of reverence.

~ ~ ~

How do you think we can find a good midpoint between the extremes of brashness and timidity?

(Quotations are taken from Shachtman's Gentlemen Scientists and Revolutionaries, © 2014, pp. xii-xiv.)
(Both pictures are details from the originals, both of which are in the public domain.)