A popular U.S. comic strip once held the attention of millions as it chronicled the misadventures of a boy and his stuffed tiger. The infamous pair was inseparable, lingering energetically in topics both adult and childlike. One day on a walk in the woods, six-year-old boy Calvin announces to Hobbes the tiger that he has decided he doesn’t believe in ethics anymore, because, as far as he’s concerned, “The ends justify the means.” “Get what you can while the getting is good,” Calvin reasons, “Might makes right.”
At this, Hobbes, who is a stuffed tiger in the eyes of all but Calvin, promptly pushes his human friend into a mud hole.
“Why’d you do that?” Calvin objects.
“You were in my way,” Hobbes replies, “and now you’re not. The ends justify the means.”
Finding himself in the mud, Calvin sees clearly that he cannot live with the outworking of his lauded theory. He seems to reach a brief and annoyed moment of enlightenment, until he uncovers a way to reconcile the conflict with self-interest: “I didn’t mean for everyone, you dolt. Just me.”
One of the more striking things to confront in each of the four gospel accounts, besides the human Jesus himself, is the reactions people had to him. When in his presence, some like Mary and the man with leprosy fell instantaneously at his feet, others like the young rich ruler or the people of Nazareth turned away. In his presence some cried for mercy and others who needed a doctor were confronted with the question of whether or not they wanted to be well. In the presence of Jesus of Nazareth, choices were made, theories adjusted, realities were challenged, affections transformed.
Ironically, those deemed unrighteous and dishonorable by the social standards of the day were often the most responsive to the demands of Jesus. I have often wondered if this was because they were the ones most willing to see themselves without pretense, those most willing to respond to their own inconsistencies with fear and trembling. In the presence of Christ, the paralytic at the pool of Bethesda came to see the contradictions he lived with, his broken refrain, and his need for a new song. The Samaritan woman at the well saw not only that Jesus was speaking truth, but that he was truth, and that his way of life was full of life, while her own had been forced to the sidelines. Called into the presence of Christ, Zacchaeus saw his ravenous, isolating ways and the great hunger of his life for a different sort of communion. Conversely, the rich young ruler walked away from Jesus’s instruction because it was a request and reality that he just could not face.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer coined the phrase “polyphony of life” as a metaphor for the various melodies of life that captivate or consume our affections. The invitation of Christ, he observed, does not come in such a way as to injure or weaken other loves, but always to provide a kind of cantus firmus to other melodies lest they run us adrift or out of tune. The cantus firmus, which means “fixed song,” is a pre-existing melody that forms the basis of a polyphonic composition. Though the song introduces twists in pitch and style, counterpoint and refrain, the cantus firmus is the enduring melody not always in the forefront, but always playing somewhere within the composition. Love of God was the cantus firmus for Bonhoeffer, the soul of the concerto and the clarifying essence for a life of various sounds and directions. “Where the cantus firmus is clear and plain, the counterpoint can be developed to its limits… Life isn’t pushed back into a single dimension, but is kept multi-dimensional and ployphonous.”(1)
It is both brave and essential to listen to the various melodies that hold our lives and shape our affections, and to ask what is the guiding song behind it all. The invitation of Christ is one that will engage all of life. The fully human Incarnate Son could make no lesser request. His invitation is that of fullness of life, a diversity of loves and desires shaped and flourishing around a firm cantus firmus. In this love, all things their find their coherence; the broken fragments of lesser songs are remade, re-tuned, and restored.
Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.
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