Have you ever wondered if people who create memes are in
some kind of competition to produce thought-terminating clichés? I recently saw
a someecard written by a petulant unbeliever: “I don’t need your Babylonian
puppet show to tell me to share with others. I learned that from Sesame Street™.”
Okay, smartass. Where did the writers and creators of Sesame
Street learn it from?
What’s the Right Question?
If Christ was and is who we Catholics believe him to be, it
shouldn’t be surprising that the natural order or that evolution would produce
in us a moral need to be nice to each other.[*]
It shouldn’t be surprising that some idea of justice, mercy, benevolence, and
every other common moral imperative should manifest in other cultures. Jesus
didn’t come primarily to be an ethical philosopher; God is the ultimate Source
of all natural ethoi.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that you could learn from
Sesame Street what the Church has taught for a couple of millennia, and the
Jews taught for centuries before us. Nor should it be surprising that the
Church teaches some moral principles other religions teach. In that much, it
shouldn’t surprise us that some things Jesus taught weren’t “original” … save in
that the Logos is the Origin. It
surprises me that some would find his “unoriginality” significant.