Modernity, particularly the Anglo-Saxon world, is confused. Our language routinely blur the lines between good and bad. Michael Jackson, “You know I’m bad, I’m bad, you know it”. It intends to assert that he is actually good. One has to be bad to be good which may account for the way movies portray how anti-heroes are actually the heroes. Our reality now is that the boundary between good and bad are blurred that we no longer know what is what. And for that, our culture reinforces this uncertainly by teaching us “not to be stupid”. In other words, “don’t be a loser”. Nobody will praise you for standing up in the bus or the train. Nobody appreciates you for sacrificing. If anything, society will think that you are merely showing off.
Today’s 1st Reading talks of anger and resentment and the inability to forgive. It flows into Peter’s question in the Gospel about how many times we should forgive. “How many times” is not really the question but “How should one forgive” or “If one can even forgive” are. These two questions touches or challenges our idea of what is it to be good or bad.
Imagine a woman traumatised by rape. What should she do? She should seek justice, should she not? The perpetrator/s should be punished to the fullest extent of the law, should he/they not? What if she chose to forgive the rapist and refuses to press charges? How?
Of course, the arm of the law is long and no matter what, the rapist should face the consequences of his or their actions. The notion that a woman, raped and traumatised, wanting to forgive her rapist is rather unacceptable to our mentality. At the very least, psychologists will label the woman as internally oppressed or she has been so traumatised that she no longer can think clearly or properly etc.
The absence of boundaries between good and bad is possibly a consequence of the loss of heaven. It means that we are not entirely certain that there is a heaven. The idea of having fun to the maximum is symptomatic of this loss. After all, what is the point of “delayed gratification” when there is no heaven, right? The other tell-tale sign is related the notion of justice. It must be seen to be done, for if not, then there will always be a sense of incompleteness, miscarriage of justice because the person has not been properly compensated.
When heaven is not certain, why is there a need to be good? Bad is even as good, is it not? What we do has no eternal consequences per se. Thus, the demands of justice require that all scores to be settled now. The idea of forgiveness does not make sense because there is no heaven to enforce justice. We. have heard that the arm of the law is long forgetting that the arm of eternity is even longer. In fact, God peers into the deepest recesses of the human hearts and He knows what our needs are, including justice, even before we ask for it. As the author of the Ecclesiasticus reminds us: God keeps a strict account of sin. That is an assurance,
How many people hold on to their past hurts? We might dislike a person, which is a mild enough emotion or we might “hate” a person, which is a strong emotion. The stronger the emotion, the more we are imprisoned. Therefore, to forgive is a deeply and truly an act of faith. God’s justice is far better than human justice. When we forgive a person, we trust, contrary to human perception, that God will not be blind and that we can trust Him to be just in His mercy and also be merciful in His justice.
The Resurrection is real and so too is heaven. These eternal truths give us reason to stand up for others. They help us not to hold on to resentment and not let go of our hurts. They give us reason to live even though everything seems bleak.
For many of us, our reality or truth is restricted to what we can perceive for seeing is believing. So we must be out there with all our cameras etc etc. Facebook, instagram, Tiktok etc. How about a woman who serves and is unknown? How about a soldier blown into pieces by an American missile? The point is not debating the morality or legality of the conflict in the Persian Gulf. Rather it asks the question of invisibility. What happens to those thousands of souls unknown, unheard of and unseen? Who will remember them?
God will. So, on the last day, all will be gathered before Christ the Judge and He will separate the sheep from the goats. Both will be ignorant of their actions but Christ reminds us how He sees everything done, if not to Him, then to the least of His brothers and sisters. We can get away with murder here on earth but we cannot escape God’s justice. It is with this certainty that we dare to give and not to count the cost. To fight and not to heed the wounds. To toil and not to seek for rest. To labour and not to ask for reward. We dare to leave what we cannot settle or solve not because we do not care but because we know that all is in the hands of the Jesus for He is the Lord of the living and the dead.
