‘He needed not the spectacles of books to read nature,’ commented Dryden. He was referring to Shakespeare. Shakespeare, of course, was no polymath. He didn’t know everything. He got his metaphors in a twist as often as not. So we have to keep talent, not to mention genius, in its place. Even a genius has his blind spots. George Bernard Shaw did well to remind us to be wary of bardolatry. He also had half-baked ideas about spelling reform. As well as being a supreme mathematician Isaac Newton had strange ideas about interpreting biblical apocalyptic. Marx was no good at managing a household.
We need a Shakespeare and a host of miniature Shakespeares to help us observe human nature and to find words with which to pin it down. There are plenty of imaginative writers to guide us as we attempt to plumb the depths. Curiosity about human nature goes back a long way. Freud, for example, has given us items of vocabulary to help us on our way to understanding. It is up to us to exercise judgment, discrimination and a generous outlook in living as people of faith. Who said being a Christian was easy?
We have to be careful about the adulation that surrounds words like ‘nature’, ‘diversity’ and ‘instinct’. To applaud harmony with nature and to find our place in the universe by putting us human beings alongside other life-forms can be seriously misleading. To exalt diversity to the status of an unqualified good is to take a blunderbuss to an understanding of the human predicament. Diversity is a spectrum. When one colour is missing, the whole scheme is inadequate. In the spectrum no colour is more valuable than the one next to it. The distinctive nature of man (i.e. human kind) sets him apart. The usual catalogue of ethnicity, sex, age, capability etc is very properly invoked when we consider church membership but human destiny is a horse of a different colour from the parade of cauliflowers and cormorants.
In the Gospels we find that there is an obligatory aspect of faith: repentance. Apollos, Agabus and Aquila probably had little in common apart from their Christian faith. But they, together with all the other characters in Acts, had to face the fact that faith is not faith without repentance. The Christian message looks not just for a change of opinion but for a response in terms of will.
LATVIANS WELCOME
Latvians are welcome at St James’s church, Rounds Green, Birmingham most Saturdays. The church was built in 1964. Unusually the church website has a map of the parish boundaries. The church co-operates with Christian and secular organisations to achieve its objectives. Leading the team is Jill MacDonald.
TIDDLYWINKS ETC
The under-fives know themselves as Tiddlywinks at St Johns, Walmley Birmingham and they show every sign of active contentment about that, if the church website is anything to go by. Football enthusiasts are also catered for. And not for the first time I am reminded that the Boys’ Brigade still has much to offer in its aim of fostering ‘true Christian manliness’. Am I right in thinking there’s not too much of that about these days? There are 1200 companies serving 40,000 young people these days. I must see if I can find my old Glengarry. Thank you, Sir William Smith.
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