If I were to tell you the tale of the fox sneering at unreachable grapes or narrate the race between the plodding tortoise and the swift hare, you might scoff, brushing them off as quaint, moralistic fables of little modern relevance.
It doesn’t matter if Aesop’s fables reveal ancient truths or not. They are out of fashion. They are “corny” by today’s standards.
Yet, if I were to invoke the wisdom of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius speaking on the virtues of stoicism and philosophy – suddenly, you’d hang on every word as if it were gospel.
This contrast I believe underscores a profound truth about human nature: we often elevate the teachings of the past when they come from the mouths of the mighty, while we overlook the timeless lessons cloaked in simplicity due to social conditioning and cultural fads.
Real power of ideas lies not in the source but in the humility to recognize wisdom wherever it may reside—whether from the lips of an emperor or the tales of animals in a forest. Meaning is meaning. Sources should not matter, but we judge ideas by far more than their implications. This fact is underscored in Christ’s teachings across books of the New Testament.
But first, let me tell you a story….
Good Ideas Are Simple And For Humble People
There’s an old story about how one of America’s early advertising men, Albert Lasker, was once asked for the most important skill one needed to become successful.
Lasker replied:
“Humility in the presence of a good idea.”
Embrace the simple and good; that’s the secret to understanding.
Jesus Established This Hierarchy In His Teachings
The entire story of Jesus of Nazareth reinforces this very simple yet powerful concept.
In the book of John in the third chapter, twelfth verse, Christ says:
“If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?”
This statement is not just a rhetorical question; it’s an invitation to understand that the foundation of deeper, spiritual truths lies in our acceptance of the basic, tangible realities around us.
Jesus underscores that to fathom the profound, one must first embrace the simplicity of the earthly. He essentially mandates that simplicity is the very pathway to accessing the divine and esoteric truths of existence.
Evil Obfuscates While Truth Simplifies
The very nature of evil is that it uses information and institutional authority in a way to obfuscate the truth.
The entire New Testament is a rejection of this immoral corruption of institutional power while embracing elegant insights with real-world application.
In the book of Matthew, when Christ and his disciples were travelling by foot, they were hungry and picked grain in the fields as they walked and ate it.
The pharisees cried:
“Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.”
Christ replied:
“Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread—which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests.”
The book of Mark clarifies this in a similar story, where Jesus explains to the same type of allegations of unlawfulness, saying:
“The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.”
At the very heart of Christ’s message is the embrace of simple, clear lessons that lead to genuine good in the world.
Ultimately, institutions—be they academic or religious—are established to elevate humanity. When these structures begin to serve themselves rather than the people they are meant to uplift, they’ve lost their way.
The Christian ethos insists that if an institution strays from simplicity, from the straightforward path of good, it has succumbed to sin. This sin is not just a theological concept but a practical deviation that leads individuals away from authentic fulfillment and towards self-serving complexity.
