NOTES for Wis 2:12-22

Righteousness has always been an object of envy and hatred for those who did not want to walk the path of righteousness. Many different objections were raised: it is hard, completely impossible, unprofitable, meaningless... And behind all the objections there has always stood one thing: fear. What is the wicked person afraid of? How can the righteous person threaten him? There is, of course, a peculiar aggressive "righteousness," whose bearers think that a sinner deserves death, or at least severe punishment, for his sin.

But a true righteous person never takes such a position. He always condemns sin unambiguously and firmly, but he never rushes to pass sentence on the sinner. And this is not a matter of softheartedness or indecision, but of the fact that every human righteousness is the result not of the absence of sin in the righteous person's life, but of resistance to it. Every true righteous person understands that he is not sinless and that he follows God despite his sins. He also understands that his path will end on the Day of Judgment together with everyone else's, whether they are righteous or sinners. Then it will become clear who is worth what. Therefore the righteous person does not rush to conclusions when it concerns his neighbor.

The threat the righteous person poses to the wicked lies elsewhere. It lies in the very fact of the existence of righteousness and of righteous people. In the fact that there is an alternative to the world order that is founded on falsehood and evil. Of course, at times the wicked person is annoyed to see someone whom he senses is better than himself, despite all his bravado. But the matter is still not only this annoyance; it is that the existence of an alternative to the order of things familiar to the wicked person devalues and eventually inevitably destroys that order. Against this background, an attempt to force the righteous person to turn aside from the path of righteousness, using the whole force of the evil in which the fallen world lies, looks quite natural. It is as if the righteous person is being told: it is easy for you to be righteous and to speak about righteousness as long as you have not seen the world as it is, without embellishment, in all the fullness of its ugliness. Let us see what you say when you see that!

If even in such a situation the righteous person remains faithful to himself and to God, the wicked person usually becomes confused, though he tries not to show it. That is no surprise: the triumph of righteousness in the face of the world's evil can mean only one thing: there really is an alternative to this evil and to the world that lies in evil. There is a Kingdom where neither evil nor sin has any place, and it is stronger than the world's evil. And that means evil is doomed. Together with those who live by it and defend it.