Christian Living · A Parable Worth Taking Seriously

6 Blind Men And The Elephant: Who Sees The Whole?

A famous story about the limits of what we know, given a fair hearing, and the one question it never asks about itself.

By Pastor Jason D'Ambrosio · Sound of Heaven · 10 Min Read

The Short Answer

A Good Warning, A Weak Map

Straight Answer

The 6 blind men and the elephant parable teaches that people who grab one piece of the truth tend to mistake it for the whole. That warning is worth keeping.

What the story cannot do is prove that nobody can know God, because the person telling it can see the whole elephant. Christianity claims that God did not leave us groping in the dark. He showed Himself in Jesus.

So this post does two things. It gives the story a fair hearing, because there is real wisdom in it. Then it asks the question most tellings skip.

Alongside the claim that God is hidden and the Epicurean paradox, it is one of the most common reasons people give for thinking nobody can know God. It deserves a real answer.

Where It Comes From

An Old Story With Many Tellers

The parable is far older than the poem most Americans know. One of its earliest written forms sits in the Pali Canon, the scriptures of Theravada Buddhism, in a short text numbered Udana 6.4 and called the Tittha Sutta. You can read John D. Ireland's translation of Udana 6.4 for yourself.

The Pali Canon · Udana 6.4

A King, An Elephant, A Crowd Of Blind People

The Buddha tells the story to his monks after they report wandering teachers quarreling over their views. A king of Savatthi has an elephant shown to people born blind. Those who touched the head say it is like a water jar, the ear a winnowing basket, the tusk a plowshare, the tail a pestle. They end up fighting each other with their fists.

1872 · John Godfrey Saxe

Six Men Of Indostan

The American poet John Godfrey Saxe put it into rhyming verse, and his poem is where the number six comes from. It opens, “It was six men of Indostan / To learning much inclined.”

Today

The Classroom Version

Saxe's version turns up in children's books, college lectures and sermons, usually with a religious moral attached: every faith has touched a piece of God and none of them has the whole.

What Each Man Grabbed

The side · a wall

Broad, flat and solid. He is not wrong about what his hands found.

The tusk · a spear

Smooth, hard and pointed. Also accurate, as far as it goes.

The trunk · a snake

Long, curling and moving. A fair description of one part.

The knee · a tree

Thick, round and planted. True of the leg, false of the animal.

The ear · a fan

Wide, thin and flapping. Right about the ear, wrong about the elephant.

The tail · a rope

Thin and swinging. The smallest piece, argued for just as loudly.

Saxe closes with a moral aimed squarely at religion. His theologians, he says, “Rail on in utter ignorance / Of what each other mean, / And prate about an Elephant / Not one of them has seen!”

A Fair Hearing

What The Parable Gets Right

Before disagreeing with anything, it is worth saying plainly what is true in it. There is plenty.

A Part Is Not The Whole

Each man reports accurately what his hands found. His mistake is not the touching. It is the leap from “this part feels like a rope” to “the whole animal is a rope.” Plenty of religious arguments make that leap.

Certainty Can Outrun Evidence

Saxe describes each man as “Exceeding stiff and strong” in his own opinion. Volume is not proof. Christians have been as guilty of confusing the two as anybody.

People Argue Past Each Other

Saxe's line about railing on “Of what each other mean” is painfully accurate. A lot of religious conflict is people fighting a caricature instead of listening to the person in front of them.

If the parable stopped there, Christians could simply say amen. Humility about what we know is a Christian virtue too.

Takeaway

The parable is right about human beings. We grab a piece, call it the whole and then fight about it. The real question is whether that is the only thing that can be said about God.

Secure · One-Time, Weekly Or Monthly generosity is worship

Give Now.

Every post here is free to read. If this one helped you, you can help keep it that way. Pick an amount and finish on Stripe's secure checkout.

One-Time

Weekly

Monthly

Choose an amount

$25

$50

$100

$250

$500

Give $100

Secure checkout by Stripe Card, Apple Pay and Link Receipt emailed to you

Already Give Weekly Or Monthly?

Change your amount, update your card, or cancel anytime. Enter the email you give with and Stripe sends you a secure link.

Manage My Giving

"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7

The Question It Skips

Who Is Telling The Story?

Here is the problem, and it is a gentle one. Every version of the story has someone who is not blind. In Saxe's poem it is the narrator, who knows from the first stanza that the object is an elephant. In the Udana it is the king who arranged the whole thing, and the Buddha who tells it to make a point about teachers who could not see.

The story only works because somebody sees the whole animal. Take that person out and you have six men with six opinions and no way of knowing that any of them is wrong.

The Religious Moral

No one can see the whole truth about God. Every religion has touched a piece, and anyone who claims more is being arrogant.

What That Moral Requires

To know that every religion holds only a piece, you would need to see the whole elephant yourself. The claim quietly puts the teller in the one place it says nobody can stand.

Greg Koukl makes this point in his article The Trouble with the Elephant, and he states the Christian alternative plainly: “The claim of Christianity is that man doesn't learn about God by groping. Instead, discovery is through God's own self-disclosure.”

The Pieces Do Not All Fit

There is a second difficulty. The blind men describe different parts of one animal, so all six reports can be partly true at the same time. Religious claims about Jesus are not like that. Christians say He is God in the flesh, crucified and raised. Judaism does not receive Him as Messiah. Islam honors Him as a prophet and denies that He was crucified. Those are not a trunk and a tail. They are different answers to the same question, and they cannot all be right.

Saying so is not an insult. Taking a Muslim or Jewish neighbor seriously means taking what they actually believe seriously, which is more respectful than telling them their faith is secretly the same as ours.

In the oldest written version, Udana 6.4, who sees the whole elephant?

Nobody, which is the whole point of the story

The king who arranged it, and the Buddha who tells it

The wisest of the blind people

The Buddha tells it to say that quarreling teachers were blind. Even the oldest version is not a story about nobody being able to know. It is a story told by someone who claims to see.

The Christian Claim

What If The Elephant Could Speak?

The parable pictures God as large, silent and passive. All the movement is ours. The Christian claim runs the other direction. God is not an object waiting to be discovered. He is Someone who has spoken.

“No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.”

John 1:18

John agrees with the parable's starting point. No one has ever seen God. Then he says the part the parable leaves out: the Son has made Him known. Jesus said it more bluntly to Philip, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Even the name Jesus is a statement about who is doing the reaching. You are not left holding a trunk or a tail. You look at Jesus.

“In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.”

Hebrews 1:1 to 2

Hebrews admits the earlier revelation came in pieces, “at many times and in various ways.” That is close to the parable's picture. But the pieces were building toward something. “These last days” were the writer's own generation, the closing years of the old covenant age before AD 70, and in that moment God spoke in a Son who is “the exact representation of his being” (Hebrews 1:3). The Son and the Father are distinct Persons and one God, and the Son shows us the Father perfectly.

Where We Stand, Plainly

Sound of Heaven believes God has revealed Himself fully and finally in Jesus Christ. Not a piece of God, not one angle among many. Everything else we read about God, including the rest of the Bible, we read through Him. So we believe the popular religious moral of this parable is wrong. Kindly meant, but wrong.

That is a claim about God's generosity, not our intelligence. Christians did not climb high enough to see the whole elephant. We were blind men too. The difference is that the elephant spoke, and then came close enough to touch.

It also means we hold our own understanding with open hands. Knowing Jesus is not the same as knowing everything, and plenty of Christian fights over secondary questions have been exactly the six men shouting. Humility has to go both ways.

A Word Study

From Groping To Touching

There is a detail in the Greek New Testament that fits this parable almost too well.

GreekPselaphaoψηλαφαω4 Uses

Meaning

To touch, feel or handle. It is the word for feeling your way when you cannot see.

Acts 17:27

Paul tells Athens that God made the nations “so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him.” Reach out for is this word. Humanity groping.

Luke 24:39

The risen Jesus tells frightened disciples, “Touch me and see.” Same word.

1 John 1:1

John describes the Word of life as what “our hands have touched.” Same word again.

Hebrews 12:18

Sinai, the mountain “that can be touched,” set against the better thing believers have now come to.

Put those together and you have the whole story. In Acts 17 people are feeling around in the dark for God, just like the blind men. In Luke 24 and 1 John, God in the flesh, a real first-century Jewish man, stands in front of people and invites them to put their hands on Him. The groping becomes touching.

Look at how Paul speaks in Athens, too. He is standing in a city full of altars to gods he does not believe in. He does not mock them. He starts from what they already know, quotes their own poets (Acts 17:28), and tells them God “is not far from any one of us.” He is honest about Jesus and respectful toward people, both at once.

“Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.”

1 Peter 3:15

Takeaway

The parable describes people groping for God. The gospel describes God letting Himself be touched.

Where This Lands

Blind Men Who Were Healed

The parable leaves six men arguing forever. The Gospels tell a different kind of story about blind people. Jesus never lectures them for not seeing. He opens their eyes. Bartimaeus on the road out of Jericho. The man born blind in John 9, who could only tell the religious experts, “One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” (John 9:25).

That is the Christian answer to the elephant. Not that we are smarter than the other blind men. Someone came who could see, and He was kind enough to come close.

So be gentle with people who love this story. Many are reacting against religious people who were loud and certain, and they have a point. Listen to them. Jesus told us to love even our enemies, so a neighbor who worships differently is owed at least that much kindness. And when it is your turn to speak, do not point to your own vantage point. Point to Jesus.

For related reading, see who Jesus is, what truth is, Jesus as the light of the world, Alpha and Omega, what salvation is and, for a different kind of elephant question, Behemoth in Job 40.

The Whole Thing In One Line

The 6 blind men and the elephant is a true picture of us and a false picture of God, because God did not stay silent; He spoke in His Son and let Himself be touched.

Wrestling With Which Way Is True?

If this question keeps you up at night, or someone you love believes differently, send it in. Someone at Sound of Heaven will read it and pray with you.

Questions People Ask

Questions About The Blind Men And The Elephant

What is the moral of the 6 blind men and the elephant?

The usual moral is that people see only part of the truth and then mistake their part for the whole. In John Godfrey Saxe's 1872 poem it is aimed at religion, picturing theologians who argue about an elephant not one of them has seen. As a warning against arrogance, it is good advice. As proof that nobody can know God, it falls short, because the teller of the story sees the whole elephant, and Christianity claims God has shown Himself in Jesus.

Where does the blind men and the elephant story come from?

The story is ancient and comes from the Indian subcontinent. One early written form is in the Pali Canon of Theravada Buddhism, in Udana 6.4, where the Buddha tells of a king of Savatthi who has an elephant shown to people born blind. They compare it to a water jar, a winnowing basket, a plowshare and more, and then they fight. The version with six men, a wall, a spear and a rope comes from John Godfrey Saxe's poem, published in 1872.

Do all religions lead to the same God?

It is a kind hope, and it is worth being honest about why Christians cannot hold it. The world's religions give contradictory answers to the biggest questions, including who Jesus is. Christianity says He is God in the flesh, crucified and raised. Other faiths deny one or more of those claims, so they cannot all be right. Christians believe God has revealed Himself fully in Jesus and that He is the way to eternal life. That belief should make us humble and kind, never proud.

What does the Bible say about people seeking God?

In Acts 17, Paul tells the people of Athens that God made humanity so that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from any one of us. The Greek word behind reach out for means to feel or grope, like the blind men in the parable. The New Testament's answer is that God came looking for us, and the same word describes people touching the risen Jesus.

How should Christians treat people of other religions?

With gentleness and respect, which is how 1 Peter 3:15 tells believers to give the reason for their hope. Paul in Athens is a good model. He did not mock their altars. He started from what they already knew and quoted their own poets. Christians can be clear that Jesus is the full revelation of God and still be the kindest neighbors on the street. Jesus even told us to love our enemies, so there are no religious exceptions to love.