Man is the Measure of All Things: The Scale of the Pandemic and Everything Else

Originally appeared on the Aquila Report.

We would do well to remember that when the infinite, eternal, and unchangeable God entered the world, he did so on a human scale. The cross upon which Christ died, and tomb in which he was laid, and from which he was raised, were both according to the measurement of a human being. The chair he sat upon after he ascended, and from which he now rules, is also proportionate to Christ’s human body.

The ancient Greek philosopher, Protagoras once famously said that “man is the measure of all things.” Over the centuries, he’s taken a lot of criticism for that remark. And as originally applied, not all of it was unjustified. This is especially true as this phrase has been used to support the philosophy of moral relativism which I ardently oppose on both logical and Scriptural grounds. But perhaps this phrase is worthy of a second glance. Indeed, Protagoras, without knowing it, was expressing a truth that needs to be recovered today because many things are now unmeasurable by any standard whatsoever.

We have entered the age of giantism. Nearly everything is larger than life: big government, big business, big tech, big data, big pharma, and the big city (and we might as well add the Big Gulp!). Ours is the era of the mega-church, mass marketing, mass-media, mass-transportation, mammoth industries, monumental architecture, massive armies, and extra-large public schools and universities.

We have big problems, too. As the late senator from New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, once observed, “We have entered the age of unsolvable problems.” One of the reasons these problems remain unsolvable is due to their enormous size.

It’s in this context that we should understand the present pandemic. Whether or not Covid-19 qualifies as one of the “super-viruses” that virologists and futurists have been predicting, is for others to determine. But few can deny that the size and scope of this virus corresponds with the magnitude of nearly everything else in our supersized world.

In other words, magnitude itself is part of the problem. In our pan-everything world, pandemics can be expected to occur with greater frequency and intensity. This virus, and others like it, cannot truly be mitigated until we deal with the problem of magnitude.

But tinkering around with magnitude is no small thing either. It’s like tampering with someone else’s religion. Make no mistake about it, the cult of the colossal is a cult, and we’ve all been more or less brainwashed.

Perhaps during this societal pause, and before things fully ramp back up, we can reflect on making our world healthier precisely by making it smaller, and more quantitatively modest.

Architects have long known that the ideal size of a bedroom, or a doorway, or a chair has not significantly changed throughout human history. Their ideal size corresponds to the stature of a human being. That is, they correspond to a human scale. The same principle applies to buildings, homes, farms, schools, and churches. It can also be extended to society, economics, politics, and the church.

The church too, as the body of Christ, is measured by the Son of Man.

The table, the cup, the loaf, and the baptismal font are all indicative of the human scale of the sacraments. The pulpit, from which we proclaim the eternal Word of God, also corresponds to the measure of a man.

So, in retrospect it appears that Protagoras was actually on to something. Had he lived some five hundred years later he may have revised his own statement to say, “The Son of Man is the measure of all things.”

Rev. Jim Fitzgerald is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and a staff member of Equipping Pastors International.