Main news for 25 December 2024

In spiritual life, and in life in general, it often happens that a person must bear the consequences of another's choice, a choice not made by him. Bear them in a world characterized by inexorable cause-and-effect patterns. Once set in motion by someone's careless choice, they no longer obey anyone's intentions. And God has to act precisely in such a world. In a completely merciless world. Merciless, above all, because of human irresponsibility. Indeed, our world most resembles a very complex and, if wrongly managed, very dangerous mechanism. How it will work depends on us. Meanwhile we behave like children in a sandbox playing with their toys.

Taking offense at one another, we are sometimes ready to use a force that will destroy not only our offender, but also many who have nothing to do with him. Perhaps even ourselves. And this force is hatred. Hatred that manifests itself most clearly in revenge. It is hard to condemn a person who uses force to defend himself, his family, his home from evil. Sometimes in the fallen world a person truly has no other possibility to defend himself.

Revenge is another matter. Revenge is taken not for self-defense, but for self-assertion. In order to demonstrate one's strength, mercilessness, ruthlessness. In order to frighten. And few think at the same time that the mechanism they have set in motion can no longer be stopped by any human power. The sacrifice of the cross was needed to stop this monstrous flywheel. The flywheel of consciously committed sin, whose consequences were considered ineradicable.

The coming of Christ changes the situation: now everyone has the possibility of beginning a new life in God from a clean slate. But all the greater is the responsibility of the one who has begun this new life for the clean slate he has received. Before, any revenge, any self-assertion of one's destructive power, was revenge first of all against God, who certainly is in no way guilty of the cycle of sin that spun on earth after the fall. Now any sin committed by a Christian becomes a blow struck against the Kingdom.

Of course, neither God nor the Kingdom fears such blows. And God's vengeance is not human vengeance. God does not take revenge; He simply lives His own life. A life incompatible with any evil. A life that by its very existence destroys every self-assertion of evil. The life of His Kingdom, which denies every sin. Therefore it is terrible for every sinner who does not want to part with his sin. But joyful for everyone who is ready to leave his sin and step over the threshold of this Kingdom.