Confucius for Christians by Gregg A. Ten Elshof

Author:Gregg A. Ten Elshof
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, Co.
Published: 2015-09-04T11:48:58+00:00

Chapter 5

Ritual

At thirty, I stood firm. At forty, I had no doubts. At fifty, I knew the decrees of Heaven. At sixty, my ear was an obedient organ for the reception of truth. At seventy, I could follow what my heart desired, without transgressing what was right.

Analects 2.4

Every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.

Matthew 7:17-18

“I have tried to live my life without breaking a single rule.”

Who can forget these lines delivered at the end of what can only be described as a life of impressive moral seriousness? Victor Hugo’s infamous inspector, not unlike the incarnate God as he is sometimes depicted on the cross, would sooner see his own demise than suffer an unchecked infraction of the rules that govern human behavior and interaction. For all of his moral seriousness, though, we detect something deeply wrong with Javert’s pursuit of justice. It is maximally rigid, unnatural, and lacking spontaneity. Javert is a moral sphex; unable to make the adjustments to his moral understanding demanded by the complex conditions in which he finds himself. His morality is insensitive to the very human condition it seeks to honor and, for that reason, we find it deeply de-­humanizing. Javert’s rules, like John Irving’s cider-­house rules, seem imposed from a perspective that fails to anticipate present realities. They don’t make sense in the context to which they’re being so strictly applied. And to follow them is to depart dramatically from what would surely be the natural and spontaneous response of the person worthy of imitation.

Jean Valjean’s moral seriousness takes an entirely different form. It is spontaneous and uncalculated. It seems to flow naturally from a basic orientation of grace and love — an orientation born not of having mastered a code of conduct, but of having been himself on the receiving end of mercy and forgiveness. His behavior comes to us not as the deliverance of a calculated ethic but rather of the free and natural expression of his heart. He is, as a consequence, a little bit unpredictable. And we love him.

We love him because we love spontaneity. We love it in kids. We love it in music, art, and literature. The trained musician can hear the difference between a technically flawless performance and a technically flawless performance that exhibits the natural and easy flow of spontaneity. The latter is the expression of the artist’s having internalized the spirit of the piece. The former is, by comparison, robotic; inhuman. The same is true of the good life. Our moral sensibilities alert us to the possibility of a life lived in perfect conformity with the highest ethical standards but that fails to be good — fails to be good by virtue of its failing to be an expression of the heart.

Of course we wish (in our better moments) to abide by the highest of ethical standards. But we want more than that.

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