One Thing

“There is only one angle at which to stand upright, but many angles at which to fall.” —GK Chesterton

“Morality is complex,” my friend said. Well, not really.

I recall an occasion many years ago when Ray Stedman walked into a staff meeting with his hands behind his back. “I’m holding a crooked stick,” he said. “Tell me what it looks like.” 

We couldn’t, of course, for a crooked stick has many “looks.” Had he said, “The stick is straight,” we could have described it with no trouble at all, for “straight” has but one manifestation.  

“Virtue moves from the many to one; vice forsakes the one for the many,” Thomas Aquinas said. 

Some folks, like Legion, have become “many.” Confused by an addled culture in which moral claims are not facts but opinions, the opinions have become so many as to be unfathomable.

Others move from the many to the one. Take King David, for example: “I delight to do your will, Oh God” (Psalm 40:8). 

How simple is that? 

David Roper