Suffering
September 10, 2012 2 Comments
We steal and lie. We tear human relationships apart. We abuse the gift of sexuality that God has given to us for purely selfish reasons. We create new idols that can never bring us happiness. We permit the destruction of innocent human life in the womb. We walk past the homeless and the beggars and ignore their plight.
We seek power over others and once we have it, use it to their detriment and our personal gain. We divorce those we made oaths to love and protect. We abandon all values that have served human happiness for centuries. We play God with human life in IVF and imagine that the eldest and weakest and most vulnerable have no intrinsic value. We deceive ourselves and raise ourselves in our own eyes above that which we are. We annihilate the vision of God from our horizon. We starve and dehydrate the sick to death and immerse ourselves in a culture of suicide and nihilism. Then, after we have done all of these things, we have the bare-faced audacity to ask the question of our Creator:‘Why does God permit suffering?’
A thousand thousand volcanoes could not achieve that which we do to ourselves and the human race!
Source: That The Bones You Have Crushed May Thrill
About Fr Stephen Smuts
Oh !!! how true you’re words are. Also how many people who are in the governments around the globe has let satan in to control the masses of people, to further the satanic agenda. Too many people refuse to open their eyes. God Bless
For Trinity 13, I wrote: ‘But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’’ (Luke 10.29)
This is a truly fascinating question which goes to the heart of the words spoken by Jesus Christ to fulfill the law: in the gospel of Matthew we read, ‘Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.’ (Matt. 5.17)
This idea of the law is especially appropriate as He, Jesus was speaking to one learned in the law: this law being the interpretation of the law as given by God to Moses, and which has ever after served as the foundation for Jewish observance, built as it has been on the interpretative authority of the very Levites, priests and lawyers who were gathered round Jesus where He uses the example of the Good Samaritan as a basis for understanding the fundamental difference between the interpretation of the law by man and the fulfillment of that same law as demanded by God the Father: this is the law that Jesus has come to fulfill, so that the true meaning of what has been misinterpreted by human authority might be rectified.
There is an old saw which says, ‘Give a man an inch and he’ll take a mile’. I found a current application of this proverb which reads, ‘My brother asked to borrow my car for a long trip. I agreed, and then he asked me to fill up the gas tank first, because he didn’t want to have to buy gas.’ It is an unfortunate aspect of human nature that we are continually looking for the advantage, the best option – at the best price, and to achieve this we will let other things slide, those other things sometimes including those little matters of ethics; the morality of a decision; those concerns for financial probity. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely: the truth of this weakness in human nature relates to the predilection that we all have of selfishness, and the need to build our ‘success’ on the efforts of the other: whether that other be family, friend, employee, or customer.
It is the same temptation that had infiltrated the very thinking of the Pharisees, scribes and lawyers with whom Jesus was speaking: these had become so conscious of their own self-importance that their ability to make right decisions had become polluted by their own self-esteem. If we consider our own times, we can see this so clearly illustrated in recent news and events: the Wikileaks news releases sowed the darker side of what passes for diplomacy, the corruption and raw ambition demonstrated in the leakage of documents from the Vatican, and the need to blame the victim for what has happened to him: President Assad of Syria is cited in the Vancouver Sun for August 30th as saying, ‘”If there is a Syrian citizen who knows of someone who wishes to flee but is hesitant to do so he should encourage him,” he said with a smile. “Whoever flees is either weak or bad. A patriotic or a good person does not flee.” (Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/Rebellion+will+take+time+quell+Assad/7165964/story.html#ixzz253dwP1Ef) The problem is not in me, I am good: all that is bad, that is evil, is their fault! Does this sound familiar, a common cry of our times?
In the story of the Good Samaritan, was the priest bad, for crossing the road away from the injured man? It may be that this same priest had a call that morning to go and anoint a seriously ill, perhaps dying, parishioner. And, as that priest was following the law, he had to be pure and clean, in a Judaeo-legal sense, to be able to fulfill his duty. If he even touched the bloodstains on the victim’s clothes, he would lose that purity, and so would be quite unable to make his pastoral visit, much less perform any sacramental duty. The Levite too, on his way, perhaps to perform his duties at the synagogue, has to maintain himself in a state of cleanliness, abstaining from so many corruptions, for the period of his service – remember the priest Zacharias and Elizabeth his wife, in the Gospel of Luke, ‘And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.’ (Luke 1.6) Zacharias duty was, ‘According to the custom of the priest’s office, his lot was to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord.’
So why have they been picked out as examples of wrong behaviour? They were after all doing their duty according to the law: but this is the law as it has been interpreted by humans, under the influence of the world, the flesh and the devil! Jesus is saying to them that the true interpretation of the law will mean that these administrative details have to be set aside when there is any assessment of the needs of any individual: the neighbour, so that we can in all charity love our neighbour. This is the fundamental difference between Christian teaching and that of many other faiths: faiths dogmatic in their development of a human mediated law: be that Jewish law, Islamic law, Canon law: where there is no acceptance of the priority for Christian charity, we are reduced from the fullest expression of human spirit and beauty to a more ugly and sour face – perhaps we can say ‘stiff-necked- reality.
If we can bring this neighbourly love into our lives each day, then shall we gains the rewards as written by St Paul to the Galatians: ‘But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.’ (Gal. 5.22-23)