"Here is a Splendid Image of God!"

A Splendid Image

Chapter Twenty, Essay One

I complained in a recent essay that current activists, dissenters and protesters fumble badly when young people ask them questions like,

"I know it is a cliché that a better world starts with changing myself, but there is no way around it. So, how do I connect my own personal improvement with the social and political changes you are suggesting we make for a better world?"

These leaders of thought, no matter how eloquent or influential, can say nothing to that because they are strictly secular in both training and outlook. They are concerned only with outer change and have no familiarity with the free, invisible, intangible realm of the heart where we find our place in infinity and eternity. Here our love and happiness forge the commitments that take each of beyond superficial externals, imitation, reflex, and reaction. Only genuine seekers of truth grow the reliable, strong social bonds with others that change requires. And the only word for this strong common bond that grows among seekers of truth of diverse backgrounds is religion. Today even those who invest heavily in spiritual things shy away from that dread word "religion."

This is where John Amos Comenius speaks to us across the centuries. Comenius was that rare bird, a true cosmopolitan, moderate and ecumenical, a religious leader who did not exaggerate his own faith group or blow the role of religion itself out of due proportion. This is because he was also both a master teacher and an inspired, visionary reformer.

Last fall in an essay series on the twenty-first chapter of Panorthosia dealing with his plan for a family constitution, we examined at length his suggestion that families post an escutcheon derived from their constitution prominently over their doorway declaring:

"This is the dwelling place of virtue, order, agreement and God among men! Therefore let nothing that is evil enter it!"

Now I would like to turn to the twentieth chapter of Panorthosia, whose title is: "The First Stage Of Reform, Which Must Begin Within Each Individual." This covers that often ignored launching ground of personal reform, the heart. If my work is ever to harmonize with that of other reformers in Timbuktu, in Mumbai or Argentina, it has to be because our hearts are in the right place. The escutcheon that Comenius suggests for accomplishing this is even shorter than the one for the family, consisting of only seven words. In the last paragraph of the twentieth chapter he puts it in block letters:

"Therefore no matter who you are, you must reform yourself according to God's good pleasure and with His help, so that angels and pious men are able, as it were, to read on your forehead the inscription: `HERE IS A SPLENDID IMAGE OF GOD.' (Panorthosia, Ch. 20, para 24, p. 28)

Next time let us delve into the application of this motto in the twentieth chapter of Panorthosia.

--
John Taylor

email: badijet@gmail.com
blog: http://badiblog.blogspot.com/

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