(The Nationalist, 27 January 2006)
Most teachers and preachers are dealers in second-hand goods. We pass on what we have learned from others. There’s nothing wrong with that; we can’t all be original, at least not very often. Now and then, we “discover” something, that is to say, “discover” it in terms of our previous experience, so that, although it may not be new to others, it is new to us, and has a power and freshness that gives what we say about it an authority lacking at other times, because it has struck a chord deep within us. It resonates with our experience. Those are rare occasions, peak experiences, and all the more precious for that.
Jesus was an original thinker. He was aware of what had been said by the prophets of the past, but he wasn’t bound by them. Much of what he said went against the grain of what is called “common sense”. An example would be to hit back if someone hits you. While William Shakespeare said, in Hamlet (1.3), ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be’, which is good “common sense”, Jesus said, ‘If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked’. (Luke 6.34-35) That goes against the grain of “common sense”, conventional wisdom, or political correctness, but it has the authority of (difficult) truth. Jesus was a man who asked the question, ‘Why?’, and didn’t stop at the first answer, but went on to ask the question again and again until he found root causes. He saw things in simplicity; he went to the heart of the matter in a way that few thinkers have done before him or since. That enabled him to speak ‘with authority’. He could do that because he was the author, at first-hand, of what he spoke.
For those in a hurry: ‘Christianity is basically a presence to a transcendent mystery’. (Karl Rahner)