You would have liked him as did thousands, perhaps millions. He was engaging, intriguing, brilliant, and humorous. Had you met him on the street you probably would not have guessed who he was -- a businessman possibly, even a taxi driver. But as a leading scientist he was known to thousands through his popular television series, The Ascent of Man, later developed into a marvelous book of the same title. His name? Jacob Bronowski.
I first heard Jacob Bronowski in Minnesota at a college conference on creativity. On a cold January day with crisp snow and a lowering grey sky outside, on the inside, Bronowski emitted a warm glow and radiance with his speech. Students and professors alike were drawn to him not only by his brilliance, but also by his charm and genuine humility. Accustomed to audiences of thousands, he spoke to this audience of hundreds as though it were the only audience in the world. He was really there, present with us, provocative and engaging.
And ironically and strangely, it was this brilliant scientist, the pioneer on the frontiers of human knowledge, who suggested we should approach reality -- all reality -- with a sense of wonder and awe, and an attitude of humility and even naiveté. "We need," suggested Bronowski, "a kind of second naiveté, a renewed, childlike innocence and openness to advance to new levels of understanding and insight."
"There was a time -- and a recent time at that," says Bronowski, "when scientists were less than humble. Confident they were on the verge of discovering the very core of Reality itself, they presumed to be close to explaining everything, at least everything that mattered.
"But no longer," asserts Bronowski. "All our information is imperfect. We have to treat it with humility. We have a paradox of knowledge," says the late Salk Institute scientist. At the very time scientists devise instruments more and more precise by which to observe nature, they discover the observations are fuzzy and that scientists are as uncertain as ever. Says Bronowski, "We seem to be running after a goal which lurches away from us to infinity every time we come within sight of it" (The Ascent of Man, p. 356). Consequently, we need to approach reality with awe and wonder and humility. We need, Bronowski might say, a second naiveté by which to see.
Another scientist and historian of science would, in his own way, agree. And for this scientist we move from the Salk Institute in LaJolla, California, on the West Coast, to the East Coast's Harvard University, and one-time professor Thomas Kuhn. A few years ago, Kuhn published a book titled The Structure of Scientific Revolutions -- a book that has had a significant impact on the philosophy of science and knowing. "How do scientific revolutions come about?" Kuhn asked himself in research. They often come about through anomalies, that is, through things that seem unusual or out of place. Anomalies do not fit into the accepted order of things and often are dismissed or ignored in research.
Dismissed or ignored, that is, by those who already have their minds made up. But to younger scientists, to those perhaps a little more curious or humble, the anomaly often proves to be an entirely new way of perceiving reality. Through a kind of second naiveté, what heretofore was ignored is observed by the open, inquiring mind. And very often a major paradigm shift occurs, something like the Copernican revolution. And as a consequence, we have a new way of seeing and understanding. It is the gift of the second naiveté.
I
Christmas Eve is not only the night of the Holy Nativity. It is also, we might say, the night of the Holy Naiveté, the Second Naiveté.
Of course, few of us would want anything to do with the first naiveté. Sophisticated, city-hardened, sensuously sated New Yorkers can spot country bumpkins of the first naiveté a mile away. Wherever they are from, New Yorkers know these stereotypical, gawking, guileless gullibles are from somewhere else. And New Yorkers inwardly thank themselves that they are shrewder, sharper, and far more worldly and cosmopolitan than these straightforward types from the West. But these so-called sappy Westerners are only too happy to get even when the New Yorkers venture beyond the Hudson to the wild unknown of a dude ranch or a big game hunting expedition in the mountains. "You don't like the bears and beans up here, buster?" asks the wiry-muscled, leather-skinned trail boss at 8,000 feet. "Well then, just catch yourself a taxi and go back home."
Naive people? We see them everywhere. Want to insult someone? Call them naive. Probably nothing cuts to the quick faster than being called naive, by which they mean gullible, credulous, unsophisticated, provincial, innocent, inexperienced, and unacquainted with the ways of the world. And when you think of it, sometimes naive people can be a bit much. In face of the world's grinding wretchedness, they exhibit a kind of giddy simplicity. In a society interlaced with duplicity and intrigue, they surge into the playing field like a rabbit in front of greyhounds. Within a humanity besieged with evil and suffering, and within human flesh stalked by disease and death, these naive wonderlings hold forth an optimism that is at once amazing and obnoxious. And to make matters worse, these babies in naive-land don't even know they are naive.
Naivete? No thanks. We prefer to be cosmopolitan, sophisticated, worldly-wise, skeptical, distrusting; critical, reserved, cautious, calculating, distant, and unbelieving. We'll be cool, thank you. You play the fool. We'll be coy, thank you. You can be the ploy. We'll be the sated; you be the simple. We'll be the controllers; you be the controlled. We'll make the money; you do the work. You want to change the world? We'll be content to let the world work in our favor.
Naivete? No thanks.
II
So much for the first naivete. Let's come back to the second naivete. In many ways, that is what this night of the Holy Nativity is all about -- about a second way of seeing and knowing, about a second look at something we might have missed before, an insight into an "anomaly" ignored by the sophisticated and worldly-wise, but seen by those with eyes to see and ears to hear.
And who are these of the second naivete? In the Christmas story they are the shepherd and the astrologer, both of them stargazers, both of them spending long nights absorbing the brilliant desert sky, both of them contemplating mysteries and wonders beyond the ordinary and beyond our control. We city- dwellers find the nighttime sky blocked by our own city lights. Our own minimal brilliance blocks the transcendent galaxies and the splendor of an infinite space.
Have we seen it all? Not so, say the shepherds and innocent lambs. Have we got a grasp on all the significant realities? Not so, say the angels and wise men. Does our worldly wisdom pretty much have it summed up? Look again, says Saint Paul. The foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men, and the weakness of God vastly more powerful than the power of men. "There is a sense," says Paul, "in which God himself has exhibited a second naivete toward the world."
God keeps coming into the world through lawgivers and prophets, through artists and musicians, through wise and holy people, and God seems to be ignored. Through his messengers, his angels, God says one thing, and people do another.
You would think by now that God would have learned his lesson. Doesn't he know people can't be trusted? Haven't the atrocities of the human race registered with him? Doesn't he remember what first brother Cain did to second brother Abel? Has he forgotten Sodom and Gomorrah? Has he overlooked the Armenian massacre, the Gulag Archipelago, the Holocaust, and the blood- baths of Cambodia's Pol Pot regime? Has God read the tabloids or does he peruse only the news that is fit to print? Is God naive, or what?
Not naive, says Paul, but exceedingly humble and kind. Not naive, says Paul, but patient and forgiving. Not naive, says Paul, but willing to take a chance again on humanity, and to take a chance this time not so much on Moses or Isaiah or Jeremiah, but to take a chance in one he would come to call his very Son, Jesus of Mary and Joseph; Jesus, an innocent, vulnerable, helpless infant born in a Bethlehem stable. Jesus, a very human baby, at risk -- greatly at risk in a world cold and callous and scornful of innocence and naivete.
But I tell you the miracle of a baby will get people on their knees faster than the monarchs or potentates. Presidents and executives and prestigious doctors and lawyers and ministers can be found all over the world humbling themselves before the miracle of a child or grandchild. And when God decided to favor a special child, shepherds adored him, kings gave him gifts, and even the angels sang.
After all is said and done, is God brash and arrogant, callous and aloof, proud and pompous? Does God adorn himself in peacock plumage and look upon the world with distant hauteur? Does God, in all his power and glory, sneer at our pretensions of power and scoff at our pathetic attempts at utopian glory?
No, says Paul. He looks at us with a kind of second naiveté. He empties himself of his glory and puts himself at risk in humanity again, making himself vulnerable, again, in a baby he hopes will be a new model man of obedience in place of the old model man, Adam, who failed with disobedience. And it was this baby, this Jesus, God's chosen second naiveté, who humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.
God will go to any lengths to waken us again to his higher reality, his deeper love, his steadfast patience with the human race, even if it takes a kind of second naiveté‚ on his part.
But then, of course, it takes a second naiveté‚ on our part. "Our heroic images we create for ourselves tend to be rather crude," says Jacob Bronowski. "But," says Bronowski, "the real vision of the human being is the child wonder, the Virgin and Child, the Holy Family" (p. 425).
Yes, that is the real vision -- the vision of the second naiveté‚ -- God's and ours. It is the vision of understanding, forgiving, eternal love. God doesn't browbeat us into submission. Instead he comes to us in humble, tender, suffering love. And as a consequence, we are lost in wonder, love, and praise.
Glory to God in the highest (and lowest) and on earth, peace, goodwill to men! Alleluia! Amen!
Prayer
Eternal God, Lord of all the universe, Creator of all galaxies and solar systems, and our Creator, we come to you with wonder and adoration. In all your majesty and power you have come to us so humbly, so gently and tenderly, with such patient love.
As long ago you visited Bethlehem with light and love and inspired the worship of shepherds and the adoration of wise men, so too visit us, and awaken our minds and heart to new realities we have been too busy or too conceited to see. God of this night's stillness and peace, who reigns over the stars and guides the way to the Prince of Peace; so lead us anew to the manger to behold the Christ. We confess our fascination with the world of time and sense, pomp and circumstance. But on this night of humble love and eternal truth, help us give up the idols of our vain worship, to center our lives on the Christ. Grant us release from false ideas and inadequate concepts which hinder our vision of you. Let our hardness of heart be melted in the warmth of this manger room of love.
On this night of the world's first family, we would remember our own. Some of us are home from school or service or distant work. Others of us are home after arguments and alienation, home, ready to be accepted and reconciled. As the coming of Christ bound Mary and Joseph together in love, so may his coming bind our families together in new warmth and affection. Let us have your blessing of a new family life of integrity and thoughtfulness. Cleanse our souls with fond memories, and gladden our hearts with the promise of a new day.
On this night of humble, but noble birth, we would remember all women in labor, all mothers with children of promise, all fathers with responsibility for shaping sacred life. Bless them and us with wisdom, we pray.
On this night of no room in the inn, we pray for all travelers and wanderers without shelter and food and clothing, for all pilgrims of mind and soul, that they may come to dwell in you. Make us agents of mercy and messengers of good will. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.