MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING?

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING?

When I was about nine years of age my brother was seven, he got a rugby ball for his birthday. It was a special ball, cost a lot of money because a hog gave its life, and hide, for the sport. Some days afterwards my brother and I skipped to the park across the road to test drive his ball. Sometime during our play I quickly skipped back home to contribute a little gold for the potty Olympics. As I climbed over our ground floor balcony wall, I remember looking over my shoulder and saw in the distance, two much older boys talking with my brother. I dashed inside, tinkled and dashed back to the park where I found Gerald with his two little chubby fists in his eyes – crying. No boys, and no ball. My father was angry and for a while drove the streets that early evening scouting for the thieves, but that ball was never recovered nor replaced. My earliest introduction to injustice I carry like a scar.

As much as I try and avoid it I occasionally fall into frustrated critique of under ten soccer. Most games are ok, but with an undevoted coach, a choir of passionate paternal voices, mine included, saw the Rockets play an appalling game last weekend. They won, by far, but only because we had six opportunistic strikers up front facing a pint-sized little redhead girl-goalie each trying to themselves get that ball into the goal without a single pass between them. Selfish soccer I was chillingly more ashamed on how this speaks for the human race, each person for himself, having promoted themselves as judge, jury and executioner on a variety of topics they very often know little about, without ever having been verified or justified to do so, it is really no surprise what we have.

A world in squalor.

Noa asked me why God sent his Son to pay the price for our sins and die, when it is in His almighty power, being God ‘n all, to continually wipe the slate clean? So I asked her who pays if a rapist is shown mercy by the courts and placed back into society without consequence? Who pays? Will he do it again? Answer; yes of course and so, society pays. Even without God in the picture someone always, always pays. In this one week I’ve seen more injustice than the freckles on my back; more shootings, rapes, beheadings, IS recruits bolstering the Middle Eastern crescent around Israel amidst the usual quota of agitprop and popularity paraded on seedy carnival floats as new truths, society is getting easier to blame all the time, making these wuthering heights the blithering pits, enough to curl up and short this mortal coil. Through all this, my brothers and sisters are expected to show love, tolerance and forgiveness because this benefits all, and indeed this is right and tests our faith, but my extended family are also expected to stand for, crave, speak, fight and pray for vindication… and justice.

But what is justice?

My kids ask me if justice is not just another word for punishment. I tell them it is oh so much wider, deeper, longer and larger than that. Justice is having the right response, the fairest word, the most appropriate action and outcome to every situation, which in many ways paves the way for reconciliation, which makes this week’s rulings and activities just, fair and an appropriate response to accommodate what should be accommodated, to pave a way for reconciliation. But who decides what is appropriate? And who decides what that ‘golden standard’ is, that an appropriate action can be measured against? Surely it is not ourselves? Surely not our ‘rights’ to our definition of freedom? Are we not far too inconsistent, unreliable and selfish to uphold a standard that speaks for the entire human race? Is love perhaps that golden standard? Is it John Lennon’s short-sighted pyrite? Or is it a supreme intelligence’s definition of love for his creation? “I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in his grace…. If I had my mouth, I would bite; if I had my Liberty, I would do my liking. In the meantime, let me be that I am, and seek not to alter me.” – Don John echoes an attitude prevailing long before he existed and long after he’d gone.

Who decides?

“Judge not, lest you be judged.” One of the most mis-used verses in the New Testament for its continual truncation, conveniently deployed by those who would rather we shut-up. The full statement is to ‘take the plank out of our own eye first, before looking at the splinter in another’s’. And who takes out the plank? Jesus Christ removes the plank. And once the plank is out, who has the right to judge what happens in this world? Those who have submitted, rely on and are in relationship with Him have the right to judge, because they have been justified and are verified. It may sound controversial and condescending if we don’t grasp it, but when we do understand it, it is both frighteningly bold, excruciatingly humbling and weighs like a tombstone.

Our Lord paying for our mistakes is the appropriate, and loving, response to the world’s dilemma, but what is our appropriate response in response to this truth? Ignoring Him is not an appropriate response, especially in light of the evidence available for any spiritual archaeologist.

“Done to death by slanderous tongues,
Was the Hero that here lies.
Death, in guerdon of (his) wrongs,
Gives (him) fame which never dies.
So that the life that died with shame,
Lives in death with glorious fame.”

Reads the stentorian epitaph by Claudio for his, and by all accounts may as well be, our Hero. If there is a more appropriate response to Jesus Christ’s sacrifice, please tell me, for if it is better, more intelligent, sensible, just, more loving, then it would only be fitting for me to abandon both my faith… and this search for my brother’s rugby ball.