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EASTER SPECTATOR
April 20, 2003
Master
I believe in one God: the Father almighty maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ the only-begotten son of God; and I believe in the Holy Ghost the Lord giver of life. These are words of the church's creed and my creed; I believe these things with a faith deeper than the knowledge of my senses. In Christ's own witness: "Heaven and earth shall pass away but my words shall not pass away." I believe because all my life since very early manhood I've been thinking it through and abandoning my adolescent atheism in successive stages. And I believe because I once stood in a moment entirely out of time when I despaired of the whole idea of Christ and the voice said I will cross this bridge with you. And yet how many times this faith has been shaken -- briefly ineffectively but shaken -- in the months that have passed since "9/11" as I have looked into human historical events with an attention I had never given them before. I and many in similar positions in journalism government the military and elsewhere have come to an awareness of evil at large almost different in kind from what we knew before. And this as a result of seeing so much of it compacted in space and time. We -- so many of us -- have come to know good and evil as realities in this world no longer as "concepts". Not merely the cynicism of politicians and tyrants but the spectacle of their beneficiaries; not merely the benefits of evil enjoyed but the idealistic posturing with it: the criminal's claim that his nemesis is "the enemy of peace" that he is its friend; that the man who must finally arrest him is himself the criminal. Again and again I have been made aware of some terrible injustice some lie that has been told and believed some good person who has suffered at the hands of bad people some crime some victim who cries to heaven; and it seemed there was no justice. And absorbed another constant spectacle: the frivolous way in which people whose scarcely examined views would be shattered by contact with facts simply turn away their attention. They believe what they want to believe; and therefore live in denial. Their beliefs have terrible consequences to others; and yet at heart these beliefs aren't serious. They do not take responsibility and will forget tomorrow what they said today; and others will pay for what they won't learn. This is one of the mysteries of belief or rather of false belief worth dwelling upon in thought for a moment -- that frivolousness of attention and intention. It was a point brought home to me by a very perceptive lady from the Yukon travelling in Germany: where this condition of "moral unseriousness" is even more advanced than here. Let me be more forthright: that in every such case when my faith was shaken it was because it seemed that evil had triumphed -- that the lie would be believed that the suffering would be unrelieved that the crime would go unpunished. I know my fellow men are strange creatures that there can be no more justice in them than in me. I know the temptations on which we act. I know something about the attraction of evil; though also thanks quite plainly to God about the attraction of good. And one's faith is recovered in a moment. "Lord I believe said the father of the afflicted child in St. Mark. Help thou mine unbelief." (Inscribe these words in your heart. Of all biblical passages they are the ones I have found most helpful in times of trouble. They are to my mind the key prayer of the Saturday vigil before the proclamation of Easter; before the announcement that He is risen. ) The Psalms are filled with these cries to heaven with the cries of the afflicted and that most prophetic cry in Psalm XXII: ... "They gape upon me with their mouths; ... all my bones are out of joint. ... They pierce my hands and feet; ... they stand staring and looking upon me. ... They part my garments among them." It is not only in the Bible -- though the truth of this sinful world is revealed most completely there. In the words of the learned rabbis The scriptures are our judge. Beyond them the truth is truth in all of its dimensions and a like story has been told in all the world's wise literature. Even Plato writing four centuries before Christ shows in the story of Socrates the mechanism by which the good man becomes the scapegoat of the evil; and yet will accept his fate turning finally to God. And with God all things are possible. Including even the defeat of tyrants under the sun on this brown earth. Evil triumphs now and good triumphs later even here below. King David slew the Philistines; and Socrates triumphed even in death. Even those who have not seen the Resurrection of our Lord have looked into the heart of darkness and have not feared. That is victory in itself and let me tell you today the story of the greatest victory that was ever won. It begins in the original Easter morning in Mary Magdalene's cry: "They have taken our Lord away from the sepulchre and we don't know where they have put him!" She had run to tell Simon Peter. And immediately they and another disciple went running to the tomb truly racing each other -- arriving breathless peering into its darkness. And Mary standing outside weeping till she herself looked in. And she saw two angels sitting one at the head and one at the feet of where Jesus had lain. And they said to her Woman, why are you weeping? "Because they have taken my Lord away." And a man -- she supposed it was the gardener -- said behind her Woman, why are you weeping? Who are you looking for? "Sir! If you have taken his body away -- oh please tell me where you have taken his body!" And the man said Mary. And she turned and beheld Him in his glory and she replied Master. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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