FORGIVENESS AND THE FOE: A CHRISTMAS PROBLEM

New Zealand Herald, Volume 81, Issue 25084, 23 December 1944, Page 4

FORGIVENESS AND THE FOE: A CHRISTMAS PROBLEM

By E. M. BLAIKLOCK

"Glory be to God in the highest," runs the Christmas doxology, "and on earth peace among men of His good pleasure." A bold Hebraism in the last words shocked some sensitive Greek copyist of the early Church into the alteration of one letter, and the result was the incorrect reading perpetuated in our Authorised Version, and consecrated by Christmas card and carol. "On earth peace," it goes, "goodwill toward men." Better Greek was worse theology. Christ was born that day to be a challenge for ever to the consciences of men, but nowhere did He offer peace to arrogant iniquity, or God's goodwill for the unrepentant and defiantly rebellious of God's marred creation. Christmas has come again with memories of His deathless story, and in this tormented day it is altogether good that song and meditation should lead a few to ponder afresh the old problems of man's divided soul, "of love and hate, of justice and forgiveness. The air is full of echoes. "Father forgive them," comes the voice from tha Cross, "they know not what they do." He was dying at the behest of quisling priests, nailed to a cross by the occupation trobps of a triumphant totalitarian State. The same voice, three years younger, comes from the Horns of Hattin, the knoll where the Templars were to die in an after age under the Saracen swords. "Ye have heard that it hath been said, 'Thou shalt love they neighbour and hate thine enemy.' But 1 say unto you, 'Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you.' " It was, indeed, a novel command. Says old Simonides in Wallace's story, "Revenge is the Jew's right, it is the law." Ben Hur replies, "A camel, yea even a dog. remembers the wrong done to it." "Except Ye Repent ..." But what of those other words, sharp with urgency and hot with indignation? "Except ye repent yo shall all likewise perish." "Woe unto you I'harisees, hypocrites .... ye serpents, ye generation of vipers." What maimer of man was this? Where, how, when would Christ have His followers torgive? Unconditionally? Should Christians go beyond God Himself and pardon the unrepentant? If Christ remains the standard of all excellence can Christian hands join in chastising a broken Germany? Such questions are only simple to the thoughtless. Socrates confessed that he could not see how a just and righteous God could, of His nature, ever forgive sin. Sin is, and abides. Forgiveness is a violation of law. It is the unique glory of Christianity that, alone of religions, it solved the problem, and revealed a just God, able to forgive. The magnitude of that moral dilemma must not be underestimated, nor should the God of the Cross be weakly misunderstood. God. having wrought in Christ the impossible, must not forthwith be imagined in the human shape of indulgent fatherhood. "Of course," say the shallow, "God forgives Ilis feeble Creation." As Heine put it "e'est son metier," that is what He is for. Man Created Free Such misconception approaches blasphemy. God does not condone evil, and no Christian should degrade Him thus. The Christian finds experimentally true the Biblical contention that man was created free to choose his path, that he chose it, and rebelled. lle sees, too. the whole of history coloured by that act. Retributive justice, indeed, expressed in human law, and outworking

in the subtler sanctions of a moral law woven into o iron instance, is one of the deepest ideas in the world's history. Spinoza's maxim is incontestable. "It is not good that a guilty man should pi'olit by his guilt," and that is good theology and good law, Therein Ijes a duty. Kor Germans to be spared, in soft sentiment, the punishment of five years of crime without parallel in all time, would baffle a law of God. No Indulgence lor Sin Love for one's enemies involves no indulgence for their sin. C. S. Lewis, the Oxford don who has become one. of England's most popular religious broadcasters, pointed out recently that there are limits to our love of self. We are to love others as we love ourselves. That is a clear guide. There are things about ourselves which we should very properly loathe. We should hate our cowardice, bitterness, jealousy, and welcome their chastisement, hove for an enemy might involve willingness to suffer lor him, but includes no tenderness for his vice, or admiration for his person. There is, too, a judicial duty. The Englishman, whose generous soul can forget the blitz, VI and V2, is not entitled as readily to forget Lidice and Lublin, and the immeasurable sufferings of the helpless of a score of lands. "If thine enemy hunger feed him." He can send food to Aachen when Antwerp is feil. " I'rav for those who despitefully use you." He should strive to do The duty to punish the persecutor, and preserve the weak, the unborn weak, indeed, remains. Europe has a right to happiness. Those elements in Germany which deny that right must be destroyed or transformed. If pain can aid the transformation when reason fails, the infliction of Wat pain is Christian duty.

"11 thy brother repent," said Jesus, when Peter sat in the same dilemma, "forgive him." And he set 77 Limes against the Rabbis' three. Dare we indulge the dream of a truly repentant Germany? Germany will whine, make protestation, provide maybe, dishevelled scapegoats for her guilt. What will be the more genuine Mgns of repentance? These. Young Germans will write and speak of their lathers of the Hitler age with shame and indignation. Uniforms, the goose-step, the .swastika will be hissed in German streets. "Mein Kampf" will feed the fires. German women in multitudes will .surrender the kevs of houses confiscated from dead Jews, confessing that the very walls

breathe pain."Piled in city *halls, the loot of years, voluntarily surrendered, will await the dispossessed. German labour will petition to rebuild Germanmade devastation. Before the world, Germany, reborn will ask for pardon for the horror of her deeds. Meanwhile there are victims to save, and a future to ensure. Without selfrighteousness, "but conscious that we serve an unfolding purpose," we must go on. It was said of Judas the Hammer who made Israel free, that "he fought with cheerfulness the battle of the Lord." Such is the answer to the Hammer of Thor. TREATMENT OF GERMANY STATEMENT BY ROOSEVELT PUNISHMENT FOR LEADERS "As for Germany, that tragic nation which has sown the wind and is ■now reaping the whirlwind, we and our Allies are entirely agreed that we shall not bargain with the Nazi conspirators, or leave them a shred of control —open or secret —of the instruments of government." said President Roosevelt in a speech to the United States Foreign Policy Association. "We shall not leave them a single element of military power —or a potential military power. "But I should be false to the very foundations of my religious and political convictions if I should ever relinquish the hope—or even the faith—that rti all peoples, without exception, there live some instinct for truth, some attraction toward justice, some passion for peace —buried as it may be in the German case under a brutal regime. "We bring no charge against the German race, as such, for we cannot believe that God has eternally condemned any race of humanity. We know in-our land, in the United States of America, how many good men and women of German ancestry have proved loyal, freedom-loving and peace-loving citizens. "Rut there is going to lie a stern punishment for all those in Germany directly responsible for this agony of mankind. "The German people are not going to lie enslaved. Why? Recause the I'nited Nations do not traflie in liuma<n slavery. But it will be necessary for them to earn their nay back —earn their way back into the fellowship <>l peace-loving and law-abiding nations. And in their climb up that steep road we shall certainly see to it that they are not encumbered by having to carry guns. We hope they will be relieved of that burden forever."