Thinking Anew:MOST of us believe that we would never break the fifth commandment. Sadly that's not true. Quarrelling, fighting, drunkenness, hatred, anger and revenge are also covered by its cloak and we all experience those. This traditional list comprised the opening salvos of those actions which normally lead to killing. All violence starts with small incidents. As a church we have learned that the venom in the prelude is as strong as in the killing itself.
The problem is that we forget that too easily. Societies begin to decline when they learn to ignore smaller acts of violence and tolerate, with either humour or disregard, attacks on other people. If it is amusing that an egg is thrown at a public figure is it also amusing to throw a stone? If gangland murders leave us unperturbed do we agree on the line between executable criminals and other? Do we all know where the line beyond which we should not go is drawn? Do we all agree where the line lies?
Being a church is supposedly about being the Kingdom of God as Christ taught us; a kingdom of justice and of peace; a kingdom of mercy and forgiveness; a kingdom of life and love. But that message is often rendered impotent when the crimes of the institutional church are recalled. The church, intertwined with wider society, tends through waves of good and bad times but is, and I would think this true of every era, is still a church filled with essentially good people.
At its best the church is always trying to reform itself and the wider society in which it lives – at its worst it is humanly real and drawn by prestige, money and fame. As much as the shame of the sexual assaults we have to admit that the Christian churches in Ireland also bear a humbling shame for their failure to realistically oppose the sectarian violence which sent 3,526 of our people to their graves. On top of that we have spent centuries demonising people who failed to live up to the standards, norms and demands.
The sins of God’s Kingdom include Inquisitions, pogroms and crusades. We closed our eyes to slavery, colonialism, plutocracy and many other abuses besides. Christ might well have told Pilate that his kingdom was not of this world – but it is made up of fallible people who live in this world and are more easily controlled, blinded and swayed by it than they were by the commandment of love.
Yet beyond all the bad that can be levelled there is the invincible spark of faith that cannot be quenched by the blind swinging control. For all the bad there is still a hope for a society based on justice, love and mercy with Christ as its King. There is still a hope in many of our hearts that we can make our society, that we call church, a better place.
We face obstacles from without and from within. We are priests and homemakers, servants and merchants, lawyers and parents, children and spouses. We have talents and dreams and a hope for all that is good. We try to live good lives. We encourage forgiveness and beg the same in return. We certainly haven’t always got it right in the past and probably still aren’t getting it right.
Jesus confronted the chasm that yawns and closes between faith and the way some lived it in his own day – the scribes and the Pharisees occupy the chair of Moses so you must be guided by what they say but not by what they do. Yet from our pock-marked history we made lists to guide us on the way as we struggle to live the way of love that Christ our King taught us. Let us never forget that the “Final Solution” began with night breaking shop windows and a silent response. All killing begins with quarrelling, fighting, drunkenness, hatred, anger and revenge!
– FMacE