A Puppet for Our Times

In days when saints are needed but lacking heroes will usually do for a time.  And when education and notions of the human person are deteriorating the world needs a puppet.  I am not alone in thinking this.  Italian author Carlo Collodi wrote his great work on Pinocchio to express this very thought, that education if it is to be true education must make a boy out of a potential beast.  Education must open up one’s eyes to the reality of the world by first making one see the self objectively, answering the fundamental question, ‘what am I?’

Now if you are made from dust or wood this kind of truth seeking makes complete sense but notice that in the end the conclusion is not just that one is a human.  No, it is a declaration that one is made for another.  ‘Male and female He created them,’ or so we hear in Genesis.  The evidence of the body, the reasonable answer to ‘what am I?’ is that one is male or female, a great gift of the Creator to and for another.

And so with Pinocchio let us try to educate this culture.  Let us boldly assert the questions that stir in the most reasonable of persons.  Let us give the microphone to a puppet who found the answer even if many claim today that they cannot.  ‘I am a real boy!’ said Pinocchio. Amen to that.