“All of my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leadership recently offered the axiom “to stay current, stay ancient.” Right on. Reading very old things is an excellent use of study time. My wife, Kate, asks, “Why don’t you read something from this century?” I have found several reasons:
The texts tend to be the best, culled by many generations of readers. And few enough people are plowing this ground that it provides the chance to sound innovative and singular. I can say some things and be (sort of) bulletproof. It is an always-fresh thrill to find the dilemmas, conflicts, issues and questions of the Christian today in the Church of long, long ago.
Here are a few examples.
About Anger
“… the disposition of (rich) men … is turned to raving anger by pride.”
—Gregory the Great, Pastoral Care, ca. A.D. 590
I had been wondering about this for some time. Why is there so much anger around? Young men knife-fight at parties. Church council members become incoherent at meetings. People stay angry for decades. What is this?
We live in an affluent society, and many of the people we deal with are, by most standards, wealthy—though they may not see themselves so. It may be a medieval thought—Dark Ages, really—but wealth breeds pride, and that pride will often show itself in anger.
Along with insight, Gregory offers biblically based, practical advice for this and many issues that are startlingly familiar in a text that is 1,400 years old.
On Critics
“Would you wish for the praise of one who thrice an hour calls down curses on his own head? Would you please one who cannot even please himself?”
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, ca. A.D. 155
All right, Marcus Aurelius was a pagan, but various ages have nominated him as a kind of associate Christian. How much heartache could we avoid if we took this little aphorism to heart?
I have expended too much energy trying to please people who simply will not be pleased. I suspect we all figure this one out, sooner or later, but it is affirming to find it being observed in the second century.
On Escapism
“So, the cross is always ready and waits for you everywhere. You cannot escape it no matter where you run, for wherever you go you are burdened with yourself. Wherever you go, there you are.”
—Thomas a Kempis, Imitation of Christ, ca. A.D. 1440
It is medieval, not ancient, but if I could have only one book other than the Bible to help me with ministry it would be Imitation of Christ.
From a work so full of deep spiritual things, the translation of this saying rings with the faint smile of a saint in its phrasing, “wherever you go, there you are,” (the motto of the Federation Starship Excelsior, I believe), but it names a deep spiritual and practical dilemma that we see again and again in peoples’ lives, and in our own. Further, it puts the torch to a lot of the “if only” solutions we imagine for our cares and worries.
These quotes are a propos of nothing, except that I have been struck by how these ancient voices speak with insight, encouragement, and humor.
Neil Young Erindale United Church Mississauga, Ontario
Point Made Chrysostom on skipping church
“Still, such is the wretched disposition of the many, that after so much reading, they do not even know the names of the Books, and are not ashamed nor tremble at entering so carelessly into a place where they may hear God’s word. Yet if a harper, or dancer, or stage-player call at the city, they all run eagerly, and feel obliged to him for the call, and spend the half of an entire day attending to him alone; but when God speaks to us by the prophets and apostles, we yawn, we scratch ourselves, we are drowsy.
“And in summer, the heat seems too great, and we betake ourselves to the marketplace; and again, in winter, the rain and the mire are a hindrance, and we sit at home; yet at the horse races, though there is no roof over them to keep off the wet, the greater number, while heavy rains are falling, and the wind is dashing the water into their faces, stand like madmen, caring not for the cold, and wet, and mud, and length of the way, and nothing keeps them at home, and prevents their going thither.
“But here, where there are roofs over head, and where the warmth is admirable, they hold back instead of running together; and this, too, when the gain is that of their own souls. How is this tolerable, tell me?”
—John Chrysostom, On St. John, Homily LVIII, ca. A.D. 390
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