A buddy and I have said over the years that karma is a b**** while grace is not. That isn't always the case for those experiencing the injustice to watch. It looks like they are 'getting away with it'. With the president being sick there are many who are delighting in it. It is easy to say the right things in certain company. But there is also the internal and schadenfreude that many are also experiencing. It is remembered the president telling an extremist group to "stand back and stand by." In the fight for civil rights this is a scary statement from the president of the United States. Plus the overwhelming feeling that the debate performance was one of an aggressive bully in-person twitter rant.
It is human nature to want to delight in the demise of our supposed enemies. The call of Christ is much more difficult. At least it is for me: to pray for my enemies, to love them as well? It is basically too much. When we love, empathy and compassion grow. Mortality calls to us all and it will be our ultimate reckoning.
Many a believer takes a twisted pleasure in the idea of hell, even if it's not proclaimed . The view that those who perpetrated evil will have evil delivered back in full measure and then some. It is a fear based tactic to drive people to Christ. It's not sustaining and essentially paints the face of an angry god on the Crucified One. Hell is none of our business and there is ample evidence to have hope in the mercy of God. The mercy of the Lord endures forever.
Mercy...grace...love...
To the killer?
To the abuser?
To the arrogant?
I would say karma is actually much easier to stomach. My belief, which may actually be closer to purgatory, is that when our reckoning comes that all things that are lies within us will rise to the surface and be exposed and burned up. This will have to be painful when it is resisted. I imagine we could all have a bit of resistance to having our projection of who we think we are be burned away.
This belief does have a basis in Scripture and also, personally, in my experience whenever I have faced the pain of lies that I have believed! It hurts! We don't choose to be deceived; that is the why it stings. Think about how our defense mechanisms hurt those we love. When we are afraid of the God-given potential within and don't take a chance. we experience regret and live in the lie of woulda, shoulda, coulda. What if we lead with pride/arrogance and self-sufficiency and then get smacked with our frailty when we get sick as well as the loneliness of believing we should be or are better and more than human. The lies humanity believe are as numerous as the stars in the sky.
"12 Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— 13 the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. 14 If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. 15 If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire."
1 Corinthians 3:12-15
The grace that is offensive to the moralist (we ALL have an internal moralist) is that those who build on the lies of a weak foundation will still be saved. The Purifier's fire may very well be the experience of hell if we cling to that which is burning.
I know not how to pray for those who cause real harm in the world, regardless of politics. Let's look at the extremes: child trafficking, genocide, nuclear war and war itself, dictatorships and oppression, greed and selfishness. It is disgusting to see grace for these perpetrators.
The novel, The Shack by Wm. Paul Young has a beautiful slippery slope of just how far back we would need to go in the experience of pain that causes pain to punish those responsible. Pain follows through generations until we allow it to be healed. Jesus said to the man waiting to be healed "Do you want to be made well? It can be easier to remain a victim. We have to face the darkness and we don't like it. We ultimately take our judgment all the way back to God themselves as the responsible party. It feels off to the believer to see it this way. It's a mystery. In identification with all human pain, as well as a judgment against the sin of humankind God judges and condemns sin in their own flesh, the human body of Jesus Christ. In a sense, God condemns God. This is too much to fathom! In the heavenly experiment of free will, genuine love is possible and so is the wickedness that twists the human into a near monster.
If grace, unconditional love and the new creation is the Gospel, the near monster can and will be restored and made new. It almost feels cliche but think of a baby or child, almost all of our bad actions or intentions come out of the unmet needs for love and/or correction that every child desires. Think of being guided through life by the monsters in this world. Many a monster smiles. What would be the ramifications of this? God remembers the children created and their original image. Evil enters into the vacuum of the soul that doesn't understand love, our hearts are prone to believe the lies about ourselves and others. The ultimate lie is that we believe we should be like God, apart from God and when we see we are not very godlike we experience shame. We hate shame and will do almost anything to avoid it. There could be those people who are independently evil but that doesn't seem probable. We don't live in bubbles. Even with good loving parents we all experience our woundings and shame. We don't like pain. The addict isn't stupid, they are often just more honest in their struggles.
I want to judge. I want to condemn. I want to think higher of myself than I ought. We do reap what we sow in this life; consequences are a good thing. Crying out against injustice to God is a good and normal thing. Look at the deliverance of Israel from pharaoh. Pharaoh was stuck in the system. Systems breed their own special evil. The systems can be a counterfeit god. We are called to work against these systems who scapegoat the 'other', even when the 'other' is 'evil'. We are also called to speak the truth in love to those stuck in these systems. The truth stings and so does grace.
I wrote a scathing blog last week after the presidents debate last week due to his religious enablers never speaking the truth in love to the man. It was surreal to see the week unfold after writing the blog.
It is not hard to root for a person's comeuppance. It is easier to see the bloviating bully who denied the severity of COVID-19 have to face it in his human weakness. It is much harder see inside to the boy who wanted to be seen and accepted A decent human would've loved and cared for that boy. It is a sadness and blindness for all of us when we forget to see the human. None of this means we have to endorse the way this child continues to act out in the man or to agree with how he has led. He is an enemy to many. We are called to mercy and prayer.
We may not know how to pray and that is ok. To utter his name before the Father is enough. We are humans too and our calling is impossible apart from grace. Perhaps the Jesus Prayer can be a good reminder to us before we lift up the president in prayer.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Amen