What’s the real thing?

WE seem born to desire authenticity. There is something of the poet, painter, musician, dancer or architect in all of us. It must be so if we are created in the image of God.

This is a world of tragedy and pain. It is also a world of joy and fulfilment and we have to be artistically creative to deal with the paradox.
Sadly, creativity has sometimes become the domain of those who exploit it for big profits, or for destruction.

Creativity gave us Hamlet and the Beethoven symphonies – but also the Hiroshima bomb, pornographic web-sites, Trident submarines, dictatorial governments and rampant consumerism.

As George Orwell said, we have a hunger for something like authenticity, but are easily satisfied by a facsimile.

That hunger can easily seek human happiness as the ultimate goal of the human condition. But true creativity seeks the beautiful and ugly truth about what it means to be human.

In a time of shrill and divisive religious rhetoric, a simple message of faith rings with refreshing authenticity.

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus explained it was all about paradox. You could be blessed even when in mourning. You could find greatness in being lesser than others. Peace does not come with the absence of troubles, but with the realisation that God provides adequate resources.

Irrational gobbledygook? No, a work of art.