The power of an embodied idea

I am often tempted to try and boil down the answer to large-scale problems to a set of tangible ideas that can be neatly packaged and propagated in order to bring about quick results. Here I am, my head filled with all sorts of ideas and idealism, and every time I strike at those glimpses of truth, I think, if only this can be spread and people can realize this, if only the right ideas win out, then the world can be transformed.

I am realizing more and more the limits of mere idealism. The world is already full of good ideas floating around. And it is full of people who are willing to talk at length about these great ideas. India especially if full of people who can talk about things. What it has seen very little of is people who are actually willing to do. Ideas that are actually incarnated into flesh. And until that happens, that’s all they remain – ideas floating around like dead leaves without taking root anywhere; theories that can succeed in exciting and inspiring people, that promise an ideal society, but that still fail to transform society.

The Word became flesh. What was unique about individuals like Christ or Gandhi or Mother Theresa is that they lived out their ideas. They didn’t just talk – they lived. They fully embodied the things they spoke about – it flowed from their eyes, their speech, their smallest of actions, from every pore of their being.

“We make the road by walking” (Paulo Freire). This is a radical statement. It is only by doing that change can be brought about, by truly believing and internalizing and incarnating the things I am talking about, the ideals I wish to see in society. “Be the change you want to see”…it sounds simple, yet why is it that so few individuals have actually done this, have truly lived out their beliefs and ideals?

Here I am daily talking and writing about the transformation I want to see in India’s education system, in its classrooms and its teachers – yet what have I done to really show it? Where have I labored in a village classroom to really bring these ideals to reality? I speak of things like bringing a culture of critical reflection and social transformation – yet how much do I really embody this, how much does this flow out in my daily actions and conversations with every person I come across? I am increasingly hit with the inconsistencies in my own words, the danger of my becoming just another academic, talking into a vacuum, great at theorizing but unable to demonstrate.

The world is not looking for more ideas or theories. People are looking for truth – truth which can not only be heard but also seen and touched and felt. Unless I’m willing to put my hands to the ground and do something, to live out my ideals in every minute and action, to give flesh to my words and show living proof of their truth, it will fail to cause a ripple in society.

It is not mere ideas that can change the world – it is ideas that have been embodied. The Word that has been made flesh.

“Gandhi was the meeting place of a person and a cause….the cause of India’s freedom. It came to embodiment in Mahatma Gandhi….why did the multitudes hang on every word as upon an oracle? It was because they knew that when he spoke the cause of India’s freedom spoke. That cause looked out of his eyes, stretched forth its hands as he stretched forth his hands, and suffered as he suffered…In Gandhi the word of freedom became flesh. When he spoke, freedom spoke…. Here was a man in a loincloth and with a lathee going out to do battle with the greatest empire that ever existed and promising not to return until independence has been gained. Never were two sides more unequally matched. But here was something more than a little man and a stick. Here was the embodiment of an idea: he would match his capacity to suffer against the others’ capacity to inflict the suffering, his soul force against physical force; he would not hate, but he would not obey, and he would wear down all resistance by an infinite capacity to take it. Here as a technique that had been applied here and there in history, but never applied to a problem on the scale of nothing less than the freedom of one fifth of the human race. The stakes were immense, and the cards seemed all stacked against him. How could he win? But we soon began to see the immense power of an embodied idea. The British were baffled…never in human history had a battle been fought with such weapons and with such a victory” (E. Stanley Jones, Gandhi: Portrayal of a Friend)

“The center of our faith, Jesus Christ, is the Word become flesh, not the Word become idea. Had it been the Word become idea, it would have been a philosophy, a moralism. In that case it would have taken its place among the great philosophies of the world – higher, but among. But the Christian faith is not a philosophy, but a fact – the fact of Christ. In him all the ideas have taken shoes and walked. The message is the Man, for the Man is the message – incarnate. Everything he spoke he lived, and more. This makes the Christian message not “among”, but apart from, different, sole, unique. Never man spake like this man”, for never man lived like this Man. You can’t tell where his words end and his deeds begin, or where his deeds end and his words begin, for his deeds were words and his words were deeds. They entwine like the words and music of a song” (E. Stanley Jones, A Song of Ascents)

“As he came among men he did not try to prove the existence of God -- he brought him. He lived in God and men looking upon his face could not find it within themselves to doubt God.
He did not argue, as Socrates, the immortality of the soul -- he raised the dead.
He did not discourse on the dignity of labor - he worked at a carpenter's bench and his hands were hard with the toil of making yokes and plows, and this forever makes the toil of the hands honorable.
He did not argue the worth of womanhood and the necessity for giving them equal rights -- he treated them with infinite respect, gave to them his most sublime teaching, and when he arose from the dead he appeared first to a woman.
He did not teach in the schoolroom manner the necessity of humility--he "girded himself with a towel and kneeled down and washed his disciples' feet."
He did not discourse on how the weakest human material can be transformed and made to contribute to the welfare of the world - he called to himself a set of weak men as the Galilean fishermen, transformed them and sent them out to begin the mightiest movement for uplift and redemption the world has ever seen.
He did not paint a Utopia, far off and unrealizable--he announced that the kingdom of heaven is within us.
He did not discourse on the beauty of love -- he loved.
He greatly felt the pressing necessity of the physical needs of the people around him, but he did not merely speak on their behalf--he fed five thousand people with five loaves and two fishes.
Many teachers of the world have tried to explain everything--they changed little or nothing. Jesus explained little and changed everything.” (E. Stanley Jones, Christ of the Indian Road)