"Nuclear man is a man who has lost naïve faith in the possibilities of technology and is painfully aware that the same powers that enable man to create new life styles carry the potential for self-destruction." Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer, (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1972), 5.
To capture this situation of nuclear man, Nouwen tells the following Indian tale:
"Four royal sons were questioning what specialty they should master. They said to one another, 'Let us search the earth and learn a special sceince.' So they decided, and after they had agreed on a place where they would meet again, the four brothers started off, each in a different direction.
Time went by, and the brothers met again at the appointed meeting place, and they asked one another what they had learned. 'I have mastered a science,' said the first, 'which makes it possible for me, if I have nothing but a piece of bone of some creature, to create straightaway the flesh that goes with it.' 'I', said the second 'know how to grow that creature's skin and hair if there is flesh on its bones.' The third said, 'I am able to create its limbs if I have the flesh, the skin, and the hair.' 'And I', concluded the fourth, 'know how to give life to that creature if its form is complete with limbs.'
Thereupon the four brothers went into the jungle to find a piece of bone so that they could demonstrate their specialties. As fate would have it, the bone they found was a lion's, but they did not know that and picked up the bone. One added flesh to the bone, the second grew hide and hair, the third completed it with matching limbs, and the fourth gave the lion life. Shaking its heavy mane, the ferocious beast arose with its menacing mouth, sharp teeth, and merciless claws and jumped on his creatures. He killed them all and vanished contentedly into the jungle." Tales of Ancient India, translated from the Sanskrit by J. A. B. van Buitenen (New York: Bantam, 1961), 50-51, quoted in The Wounded Healer, Henri Nouwen, 5-6.
What a great story to convey our self-destructive ways. How much do we trust progress to achieve? Are we really as naïve as this story depicts? Better yet, are we really as proud as the story depicts?
Nuclear man (post-modern man, in my words), says Nouwen, is characterized by historical dislocation (a break in the sense of connection), a fragmented ideology (divergent and often contrasting ideas, traditions, religoius convictions, and life styles), and a search for immortality (a new way to transcend the limitations of being human).
Once the post-modern person awakes from her/his pipe dream, however, s/he's in shock, panics and reacts in one of the following two ways: mysticism (retreat to the inner life), or revolution (activism), both of which, on their own, are completely unbalanced and unable to solve the human predicament.
Jesus, however, is different: "For a Christian, Jesus is the man in whom it has indeed become manifest that revolution and conversion cannot be separated in man's search for experiential transcendence. His appearance in our midst has made it undeniably clear that changing the human heart and changing human society are not separate tasks, but are as interconnected as the two beams of the cross."
Indeed, "Jesus was a revolutionary, who did not become an extremist, since he did not offer an ideology, but Himself. He was also a mystic, who did not use his intimate relationship with God to avoid the social evils of his time, but shocked his milieu to the point of being executed as a rebel." (The Wounded Healer, Henri Nouwen, 20)
