(7)It is expedient for you that I go
away: for if I go not away, the Comforter [or: the Defender] will not come unto
you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. 8 And when he is
come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: 9 of
sin, because they believe not on me; 10 of righteousness, because I
go to my Father, and ye see me no more; 11 of judgment, because the
prince of this world is judged. (John 16)
Deliver us
from evil. And then a youngish man detonates his backpack filled with a
nail-bomb, and takes with him to some imagined martyrs’ paradise the lives of
22 children, the health and cheerfulness of 60 others, and the life’s joy of
countless parents and siblings. And the eternal question knocks, like the
Gestapo, at the door of our hearts: how
can a loving God permit this?
Change
optics, as we say nowadays. Try to get into God’s mind. How can men do this to each other? I gave them life; I gave them love;
I gave them my Son, who healed them and died for them; and still they do such
things. What more can I give them?
They say I can do anything. They are
wrong: I can do almost anything but I cannot be other than I am. I cannot go
against my own nature. My deepest self is Love. The Life my creation imagined
for them is a lifelong, sustained and sustaining love between them and me. Such
a love cannot exist if it is coerced. If love is what we are to have; if love
is what we are to be; it must be freely given and freely returned.
I teach them this, and they turn away.
I urge them this, and they hate. I show them this, and they kill. They crucify.
They torture. When my Son was with them, he healed them by taking their grief
upon himself. He identified with them, by choice. He taught them that when they
fed, watered and helped each other, they were doing it to him. Now, when they
torture, bomb and kill, they are still doing it him. And to me.
This is Love’s vulnerability; this is
my vulnerability, my only one. Every child they wound is my child. Every
innocent they kill is my child, crucified. Can
they not see my tears that fall like galaxies?
The Prince of
this world, the Prince of Darkness, is judged. Is judged always already, now
and for all time. But he is not yet utterly defeated. Just as we are needed for
love, so are we needed for battle. The Spirit, that marvellous third Person, is
our Defender. Why is not believing in Him a sin? Because it is the refusal of
ultimate Love. Because it leaves the way open for the Prince of Darkness. Not
just into my soul, but into all the souls my soul touches, that might have been
pulled out of the drowning-ocean by my help. Yes, we are free. Free to return
Love, or not. But it is not all one.
The Spirit,
our Defender, is the Spirit of Love. If he reproves the world, if he judges and
condemns the Prince, it is simply by being here, by manifesting the hideous
contrast. The Prince kills twelve-year-old girls before their parents’ eyes,
and smiles. And reproves us thereby.
Love is here, it exists, it died for us, it was resurrected for us, it showed
us that it is immortal and eternal and, in the end, victorious. Whose side are
we on?
Whose side
are we on? It is no longer a game. If it ever was. It is no longer an
intellectual debate. If God says who is
not with me is against me, he is not being a bully: he is stating the most
painful truth about Love. Love is victorious; Love is powerless. He has given
us his Son; he has given us his Spirit to be our Defender. But without us the
job canot be done. He is not bullying us: he is begging us. Whose side are we
on?
