let us whisper

Have you noticed that the most powerful ideas are the most fragile? In Gladiator, Caesar Marcus Aurelius, calls General Maximus in to his inner chamber to be all alone and talk about ideas. The two most powerful men of the world at the time. Whispering.

MAXIMUS
You sent for me Caesar? [No response. Maximus turns to look at the weak and old Marcus.] Caesar?

MARCUS
[Straightening up from the desk,] Tell me again Maximus, why are we here?

MAXIMUS
For the glory of the empire, Sire.

MARCUS
Ah yes, ah yes. I remember. You see that map, Maximus? That is the world which I created. For 25 years, I have conquered, spilt blood, expanded the empire. Since I became Caesar I have known 4 years without war - 4 years of peace in 20. And for what? [He rises.] I brought the sword, nothing more.

MAXIMUS
Caesar, your life...

MARCUS
Please, please don't call me that. Come, please, come sit. Let us talk now, together now. Very simply, as men. Well, Maximus, talk.

MAXIMUS
5,000 of my men are out there in the freezing mud. 3,000 of them are bloodied and cleaved. 2,000 will never leave this place. I will not believe they fought and died for nothing.

MARCUS
And what would you believe?

MAXIMUS
They fought for YOU and for Rome.

MARCUS
And what is Rome, Maximus?

MAXIMUS
[Thoughtful pause] I have seen much of the rest of the world. It is brutal and cruel and dark. Rome is the light!

MARCUS
Yet you have never been there. You have not seen what it has become. I am dying, Maximus. When a man sees his end he wants to know that there was some purpose to his life. How will the world speak my name in years to come? Will I be known as the philosopher, the warrior, the tyrant? Or will I be the Emperor who gave Rome back her true self? There was once a dream that was Rome, you could only…whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish. It was so fragile. And I fear that it will not survive the winter.

Even the king of the world becomes just a man in the presence of an idea that is truly great. The greatest men bow to something so fragile that it must be whispered.

“Give me a lever big enough,” says Archimedes, “and I can move the world.” It’s a well-known maxim in the college of physics. But ideas are the true fulcrums for moving the world. Ideas whispered in basements, not public squares, in inner chambers, not courtyards.

In The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard talks about the “incredible power of ‘mere ideas’” He cites John Maynard Keynes, economist and social observer, who observes that it is ideas, incubating and distilling in the minds of powerful people as well as crowds, that change the world.

Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back…Soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

How true.

But I am not concerned so much with observing the power of ideas as I am their fragility. Powerful ideas, if they are to survive, must be carefully handled before they are ready to put their coats and galoshes on for a splash in the big world.

Powerful ideas do become incarnate when their time comes. And if they have been handled well, their power can be enough to move the world, even to overturn it. By that time it is forgotten how unlikely and how frail the idea was when it was conceived. But the truth is that all powerful ideas begin in fragility, in obscurity, as secrets.

Shrewd men and women know that if their adversaries have ideas that may very well take root, that they must call them out early, while still fragile. They must draw them from their incubators before they are ready to hatch. Witness gay marriage.

From Nazism to the Jesus Movement, from “God is Dead” to Civil Rights, you can bet by the time you hear it on the evening news it is anything but new. By the time an idea goes public it either does or does not have enough leverage to move the world. By the time a world changing idea comes to light, it has already been conceived, crafted, and fortified by cunning men and women. The true contenders in the world of ideas do not have podiums and megaphones—they have secret handshakes. And so it is not the pundits or the power brokers who truly change the world, but the idealists, whispering together.

The public forum always favors the hypnosis of the “ity” and the “ism”. Anything loud and fast and recycled will always play well with crowds. We are “smothered in slogans,” says Willard.

Commercials, catch words, political slogans, and high-flying intellectual rumors clutter our mental and spiritual space…We willingly emblazon messages on our shirts, caps—even the seat of our pants…Sometime back we had a national campaign against highway billboards. But the billboards were nothing compared to what we post all over our bodies. We are immersed in birth-to-death and wall-to-wall ‘noise’.

I would add “high-flying religious rumors” to the list of clutter. Rumors that play well, whether they find their origin in the bosom of God or not.

The stampede of the world and her cultures crushes the best ideas. And so Jesus tells us not to cast our pearls before pigs. Sows are not sowers; pigs don’t reap. They have neither the patience nor the shrewdness for it. They eat the leftovers cast to them by those who control the food supply, and trample whatever is left.

And so whatever is easily digested or even pre-digested rules the open meeting. Whoever has the best sound bytes and zingers and verses will command the crowds. That is, until he or she decides to be an agent of change. And then the crowd she thought she carried turns out rather to be carrying her. Or the parade he was leading keeps going straight when he turns.

The public never changes. Little knots in back rooms and back fields do. And if they can multiply fast enough, they have a chance of infecting the public and starting their revolution.

“You say you want a revolution? Well you know, we all want to change the world”, sang John Lennon. But it’s only those able to contain themselves to a whisper who really have a chance at it.

The best moment in any revolution is when the one enthroned says, “How could it come to this?” like Cornwallis in The Patriot when his defeat at the hands of scrappers was imminent.

Imagine the shock of the Caesar who realized that the most fragile thing imaginable had cost him his kingdom. God whispered, and a Baby was born somewhere in Palestine. At night. Among farm animals. His parents fled to Egypt to hide him. He grew up in obscurity until his time had come. He began to teach, but he spoke in riddles and stories, except he whispered the secrets of his revolution to the few he trusted. By the time he came to “his hour” (as he called it), there was so much force with him that even being tortured and killed could not stop him. Jesus and His followers “turned the world upside down” and shook it. The idea “Caesar is Lord” was history, which is the ultimate destiny of every other idea that sets itself up against this One.

Whispering is not for everyone. The world needs the public to push the buttons and turn the wheels, to keep everything going as fast and efficiently in the same direction it is currently headed. And even to argue about which direction it is currently headed. That is the business of the public square.

But somewhere, hidden away, right now, there are some ideas that are truly dangerous for good or evil. Some are in the hands of the most delicate incubators saying something like, “Come, let us whisper now. Let us speak of an idea in our still, small, voices. Very simply. Anything more and it will vanish. Let us whisper about our God, his Son, their home, and the way of its coming.”

MARCUS
Maximus, let us whisper now. Together, you and I. You have a son? [Maximus nods.] Tell me about your home.