Forgiveness
God’s in His heaven—
All’s right with the world!
If to err is human, whereas to forgive is divine, then perhaps we can be forgiven for feeling mistakenly, from time to time, that this platitude has got things backwards So many of us live tragedy-benumbed lives under a pious variant of Stockholm Syndrome. Floods, quakes, twisters, plagues, strokes and cancers - each and every natural disaster and bodily affliction results in someone praising the Almighty for what has happened, and usually, the more catastrophic, the better. Whenever our faith gets shaken to its foundations by cruel happenstance, we immediately start in on rebuilding the temple while we drum up near-to-hand reasons for why our Lord must have been righteously miffed or maybe just "testing us."
Paradoxically, the celebration of God requires that one learn, first and foremost, the humbling lesson of forgiveness - not necessarily of forgiving others, but of forgiving the Almighty Himself; yes, forgiving Him having invented and abided all the unkind, unwarrantedly bad shit that goes down in this world, immiserating our loved ones without fairness or mercy. Maybe we're just not seeing the bigger picture? Randy Newman frames our quandary in brief:
I burn down your cities - how blind you must be
I take from you your children and you say how blessed are we
You all must be crazy to put your faith in me
That's why I love mankind
You really need me
- "God's Song" (1972)
TITLE - "Our Forgiveness"
WHERE - Locals repair an ancient temple f