Main news for 18 October 2024

Answering the question religious people have asked in every age, "Why has this happened to us?", Jesus points them to an event whose details history has not preserved for us. But even without details it becomes clear that this was, as we would call it today, a technological disaster: the tower of Siloam, about which we have no other information, apparently collapsed unexpectedly, and people died under its rubble, people who, judging by the Savior's words, were by no means the worst in the city.

This is His answer to another question asked at the same time: why did people known for their faith and piety die at the hands of Herod, who then ruled Galilee? Here too it is an event mentioned nowhere else, but everything we know today about Herod and his reign says that there could have been many such episodes under him.

As one can see, Jesus' answer to the question "why?" is clear enough and terrible enough, though in the fallen world it was hard to expect another. In the fallen world there is no reward for the righteous and no punishment for sinners. It is amoral, and evil rules in it. Here anything can happen to anyone, and neither faith, nor piety, nor a person's good qualities can change anything in his position.

There are no guarantees that something horrible will not happen to a good, believing, pious person, and not only at human hands, but simply because of what we are used to calling absurd accident. After the fall, man found himself in a world where there is no place for God, where He is not wanted and where His access is extremely limited, limited by the very free will of man that man loves so much to abuse. And God will not force His way where man does not want to see Him. Yet He can still help a person, but only in His world. In the Kingdom.

There, where He is full master and where therefore there is no place for chance, at least when a person is concerned. There everyone receives not a reward, no, but what he sought and could not find in the fallen world when he walked the path that finally brought him to the threshold of the Kingdom. "Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish": it is strange to hear such words from the Savior, addressed to people deeply and sincerely believing, religious, and pious. But Jesus is speaking about the Kingdom.

"Make at last the final step on the path and enter where evil has no place": this is essentially what He calls them to do. Here, in the world where evil rules, nothing can be done. As the Kingdom enters the world, it will change, but in its present state it cannot become good. The answer is completely realistic and frightening in its realism, but it also offers an alternative. The answer of the Messiah, who brought the Kingdom into the world.