Louis Roney: A wondrous boy

A preacher I am not. However, in spite of myself, I think.

When people come upon a big crowd and cannot see what’s causing it, they usually ask, “What’s going on?”

At this time of year our shops, churches and thoroughfares are crowded with hustling and bustling. What is the source of the energy behind all this, in a world where people must pay advertisers to get attention focused on their products?

The source is so simple and unpretentious that it is hard for us complicated folks to deal with it.

The figure of a Nazarene boy of some 2,000 years ago would ordinarily not command much attraction in today’s helter-skelter world. The boy, born in Bethlehem, lived but a short life, never ran for office, and had very few worldly possessions. He had no publicity committee to spread his name, although since then, the words of his mouth have raced around the world under their own propulsion. He asked nothing for himself. He asked only that others do the ultimate for themselves, that is: Celebrate the source of their own worth. Two thousand years later his name is still the best known on our planet. If everyone of us followed his suggestions, it seems to me that the world would be better off—you certainly cannot say the same for any dictatorial forces in history, e.g.: Adolf Hitler, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, etc.

The evidence of mundane evil is seen everyday in the strife that kills so many of us in war and terrorism that leave little or nothing of lasting value in their wake.

Love may be the most beautiful and benign of human emotions, but hatred is clearly capable of destroying love’s purest manifestations. The Nazarene boy, at 33, was cruelly tortured and done in, in a way that should perhaps make all of us unsure of our own destinies.

A lesson learned from this tale may well inspire us all to ask ourselves: “Why should I strive to be better than my brethren, if at the end, they may murder me?”

The human spirit is always ready to welcome an excuse to let itself off the hook, and so the most divine of inspirations is often abandoned at its source.

All over the Western world are spires, some small and some monumental, that dot the landscape and command our attention often without our considering the spirit that caused them to be built.

The wealthy man who gives a generous gift to build a chapel, or even a cathedral, is perhaps motivated in part by a deep inner hope that he is buying off some of his past misdeeds and unkindnesses.

This writer makes no claim to being a religionist, but there is surely something very eerie about the Nazarene’s words that have made them endure through the centuries, and attract a devoted plethora of followers around the world.

Good words are declared and sung every week of the year in our steepled buildings, and the sound increases mightily at this season. The simplest words of the Nazarene are broadcast from the pulpit as though they contained profound secrets that would baffle Einstein. As to Einstein, when he was asked if he believed in a Creator, he shrugged his shoulders and answered, “Well, I didn’t make myself.”