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June 13, 2006
An absence of Grace
Following on from my ramblings on the subject of "Grace" on Sunday, I have been contemplating the situation vis a vis the killing of the terrorist leader al' Zarqawi in Iraq. Sadly the whole question of terrorism rests upon the presence or absence of "grace". Someone like Zarqawi is unlikely to have had anything even approaching the normal understanding of God's Grace, yet he, like every other religious zealot, will argue that it is their "love" of their God, or of the Faith they hold, which drives them to commit the most horrifying acts of violence "in defence of God's honour" or in "defence of 'The Faith'," whatever Faith they happen to espouse. The tragedy is that no one acting in the Grace of God could ever commit these acts of violence.
Far too often we confuse acts of worship or acts of religious zealotry with faith - and fall into the trap of thinking that this somehow puts us in "God's Grace".
St Paul's famous letter which spells out in the words "there remain these three, faith, hope and charity. But the greatest of these is charity," is often misunderstood today as the word "charity" has taken on a different meaning and become something more closely associated today with "good works" and "earning brownie points in heaven." The original meaning of the word in Seventeenth Century English is much more the Greek Philos - love without expectation of reward. That is true Grace. That is the love that forgives an enemy again and again, that is the love that meets the bomber with open arms and empty hands and says, "my brother/sister sit down with me and let us discover how we can save your life even if I must give mine in exchange!"
I find that I cannot rejoice in the death of a terrorist. I can feel relief that a threat is removed, that a vicious man is dead and no longer a threat to the fragile peace so many hope to build, but I find I must, in grace, mourn for his death and the fact that he died apparently in a state of ungrace - a state of hatred and burdened by his own refusal to accept that God loves Jew, Gentile, Muslim, Christian, Arab and even the unbeliever - and the true message of the Gospel is that we must too!
As John Donne wrote so long ago - "Therefore send not to ask for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee." If we all try to find it in ourselves to look for the good in others we may eventually be surprised at the good we find in ourselves. Pray, my brothers and sisters for the undeserved grace that is God's free and loving gift to us all. Only when we can all embrace that gift will we see an end to the likes of al' Zarqawi and his fellow travellers along the road of hatred and violence - a road that leads nowhere but downward to the destruction of all that is good in the world.
Posted by The Gray Monk at June 13, 2006 09:12 PM
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