| “Man is the only creature (at birth) that knows nothing and can learn nothing without being taught. He can neither speak nor walk nor eat, and he can do nothing at the prompting of nature only, but weep”. |
So wrote Roman author, philosopher and navy/army commander Gaius Plinius Secundus round about 50 AD. Known to us as Pliny the elder he was a personal friend of the emperor Vespasian and his words accurately sum up human incapability at birth. He rightly says that the only thing the human baby can do is cry and moan.
A baby is even less capable than our lambs; they at least can toddle about sniffing for mother’s milk. Ewes on the other hand, with no hands, no technology, and no pre-natal books and usually with no help, manage to give birth and nurture their lambs to adulthood.
These thoughts alone ought to make us humble as to our place in the order of creation, but are we? I must say the rural folks I know seem to have a keen sense of their own limitations, but I wish the same could be said of those voluble folk whose faces fill our TV screens, and whose views on this-and-that we are doomed to hear every time we sit on the settee in front of the fire.
Last November I mused as to where Common Sense had gone because it is apparently absent from the heads of our political class. And so I wondered if it had simply left London and gone to live in Brussels. Even as I thought it, I realised I was being silly because Brussels and Common Sense, like chalk and cheese, do not go together.
So what is it that makes people in leadership positions lose common sense the higher up the ladder they climb? But before I answer I will digress to explain why pulpits in mosques, synagogues and churches and benches in courts are Physically ‘above’ the congregations.
A number of reasons come to mind among them the thought that the speaker wants the audience to hear his/her voice but also a belief that the ‘Words’ to be delivered are so important that they should be seen and heard as coming from above.
It can be argued therefore that it is common sense to have elevated pulpits, but even so the practical aspects are often misunderstood to the extent that many who ascend into them can, by virtue of being up in the air, then start to think that their words and thoughts are higher than those of the common man seated below.
This was probably true in the past of some religious pulpits but is rare today. On the other hand, we are overwhelmed by what we hear from the secular pulpits of the media and parliaments of modern Europe.
Here we see keenly how the higher the pulpit, the greater the distance between the preacher and the public. So much so that I wonder if the modern political secular preacher is so far above the people that he has lost touch with both the Common Man and Common Sense?
Fortunately for Christians, as we climb the December steps of Advent up to the Pulpit of Christmas Day, we can ponder the mystery of how Ultimate Power was born as a powerless baby into Abject Humility. Christmas shows us that power can be exercised from the ground level with its feet in common-sense rather than from the secular pulpit up in the air.
Which reminds me of the proud young Methodist local preacher who was anxious to show off during his first sermon? The sermon was a disaster and he descended the steps duly humbled. His wise mentor later commented;
“If you had gone up the way you came down, you would have come down like you went up!”
View from the Pew 