Christ: Powerhouse of creativity

What, then, is this reality of Christ, contrasting with all the fantasies whereby men seek to evade it – fantasies of the ego, of the appetites, of power or success, of the mind and the will ; valid when first lived and expounded by our Lord himself two thousand years ago, buoying up Western man through all the vicissitudes and uncertainties of Christendom’s centuries, and available today, when it is more needed, perhaps, than ever before, as it will be available tomorrow and forever? It arises simply out of the circumstances that by identifying ourselves with Christ, by absorbing ourselves in his teaching, by living out the drama of his life with him, including especially the Passion – that powerhouse of love and creativity; by living with, by and in him we can be reborn to become new men and women in a new world.

It sounds crazy, as it did to Nicodemus, an early intellectual and potential BBC panelist, who asked how in the world it was possible for someone already born to go back into the womb and be born again. Yet it happens; it has happened innumerable times; it goes on happening. The testimony to this effect is overwhelming. Suddenly caught up in the wonder of God’s love flooding the universe, made aware of the stupendous creativity which animates all life, of our own participation in it – every color brighter, every meaning clearer, every shape more shapely, every note more musical, every word written and spoken more explicit: above all, every human face, all human companionship, all human encounters recognizably a family affair. The animals too, flying, prowling, burrowing, all their diverse cries and grunts and bellowings, and the majestic hill¬ tops, the gaunt rocks giving their blessed shade, and the rivers faithfully making their ways to the sea – all irradiated with this same new glory in the eyes of the reborn.

What other fulfilment is there that could possibly compare with this? What going to the moon, or exploration of the universe, what victory or defeat, what revolution or counter¬ revolution, what putting down of the mighty from their seats and exalting of the humble and meek, who then, of course, become mighty in their tum and fit to be put down? A fulfilment that transcends all human fulfilling and yet is accessible to all humans; based on the absolutes of love rather than the relativities of justice, on the universality of brotherhood rather than the particularity of equality, on the perfect service which is freedom rather than on the perfect servitude which purports to be freedom. – from Christ and the Media (1977)

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