When you come to the Christian answer… that is, that man is abnormal now because at a point of space-time history he changed himself (not epistemologically but morally)… we can now explain what is, namely, that man is now cruel, without God being a bad God… there is a hope of a solution for this moral problem which is not intrinsic to the mannishness of man.
On this basis, we can have a real ground for fighting evil, including social evil and social injustice. Evil is… abnormal, contrary to what God made, so we can fight the evil without fighting God.
To me, what Jesus did at the tomb of Lazarus sets the world on fire; it becomes a great shout into the morass of the twentieth century. Jesus came to the tomb of Lazarus. The One who claims to be God stood before the tomb, and the Greek language makes it very plain that he had two emotions. The first was tears for Lazarus, but the second emotion was blinding anger. He was furious, and he could be furious at the evil of death without being furious with himself as God. This is tremendous in the context of the twentieth century. When I look at evil – the abnormal cruelty that is not the thing that God made it – my reaction should be the same. I am able not only to cry for the evil, but I can be angry at the evil – as long as I am careful that egoism does not enter into my reaction. I have a basis to fight the thing that is abnormal to what God has made.
No comments:
Post a Comment