The poor soul who tried to teach us English struggled to get us to see wider than the words as we worked through William Golding's 'Lord of the Flies' and although I still wonder what Ralph thought when he saw Piggy's body, I think my teacher did a good job.
The word's of Lord Acton, which my teacher droned on about (endlessly), and also added to obviously stuck. "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, so we need to be careful in how we control the power we have!" His warnings about how the book taught us regarding "The thin veneer of civilisation which separates from the natives," ring true, especially as I watch the news following Bin Laden's death.
Seeing people waving the headlines:
Did nothing to convince me that what many were about was revenge of the most distasteful kind.
Meanwhile elsewhere, images were shown of images of Bin Laden being kissed and him being mourned over:
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction (Thanks Isaac) and one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter (unless we build bridges and convince him otherwise).
What we need now is to not gloat triumphantly, but to understand that Bin Laden has reaped the harvest of his wickedness, and perhaps to hope that we won't reap ours (before God, not at the hands of man).
I was blessed and touched to see one man at the site of the WTC with this placard:
He echoes my sentiments completely. We need peace, not revenge, not cries of vengeance (isn't that what brought Bin Laden here?).
We need to look at ways of bringing peace and justice to our world, not seeking to settle scores and not believing in the power that we, or our nations, hold. For it is folly to believe we can achieve anything, that we are all powerful and can conqueror all before us, only God can claim that. Only God can live up to that billing.
Let's pray that the dust settles and that those who might seek to bring their own brand of retribution have their hands stayed.
Justice - Mercy - Humility, this is the way that true power is handled, this is the means by which everything can be achieved and walls broken down.
Pax
1 comment:
'What we need now is to not gloat triumphantly, but to understand that Bin Laden has reaped the harvest of his wickedness, and perhaps to hope that we won't reap ours (before God, not at the hands of man).'
Thank you, Vic. That is just about right, in my view.
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