How acts of love can pierce the darkness
Here is how I write these columns usually. The deadline is Sunday afternoon. The process usually starts on the Thursday before.
On that day, usually when I’m showering or something, I’ll start pondering on what I might write about. By Friday morning I’ll have a few ideas and that evening I might make a few notes on the alternatives. I’ll then write the column over the course of about three hours on Sunday.
Last Friday, I was feeling good about my options. There was the capital gains tax debate again, which has been a fruitful source of content. Shane Jones was in the news – always a gift for columnists.
Schoolchildren were, with the encouragement of the political and media establishment, cutting school to protest global warming.
So by all indications it was going to be an easy Sunday. Hog heaven. But after being alerted to the events of Friday – the ides of March – none of it seemed to matter much. The cold-blooded murder of 50 Muslim men, women and children will tend to do that. Terror at home on such a scale brings things into sharper focus.
We debate issues small and large every day in this country. Sometimes, those debates are founded in different conceptions of morality and what a just society looks like. It is not so often that we are confronted by the unadulterated malevolence that showed its face on Friday.
The fate of the planet hangs on how we respond to climate change, the experts say. And given the drastic changes to be made in the timeframes advised, it sometimes feels like an insurmountable task. And yet, it is a material problem that will be solved – if it ever is – through material means.
Friday’s atrocity, on the other hand, confronts us in an entirely different, more unsettling, manner. There have always been people who choose to give themselves over to hatred. Few use the word these days, but there is just something in our nature that gives us the potential to become evil. While we can and should strive to keep that dark power at bay, we will never be able to eradicate it entirely. In a free society, people who have gone bad will sometimes be able to implement their wicked designs. It is distressing, disconcerting and depressing.
Most New Zealanders are not particularly religious. Nevertheless, many of those not affiliated to a particular creed will still have an inkling that a benevolent force watches over the universe.
We can assume that most of those killed in the attack believed in God, of course, since they were murdered at prayer.
For anyone who holds such beliefs, there is another dimension to the pain of March 15.
The Abrahamic conception of God is of an allpowerful and all-good deity. So how could such a being allow a person’s heart to be so blackened that he could commit such reprehensible crimes against those who had gathered to worship that same God?
Philosophers and theologians have argued about the problem of pain and suffering for centuries.
Various logical solutions have been put forward to square the circle, but they are never quite satisfactory. But whatever the answer really is, I think we can be sure that it will have something to do with love.
Something that has always stuck with me is an exchange that occurs in the epilogue of the late William Peter Blatty’s novel The Exorcist.
The mother of the young girl who had been possessed meets with a Catholic priest. She relates that, while she can now believe in Satan, she still struggles with the idea there could be a God.
‘‘God never talks,’’ she tells him. ‘‘But the devil keeps advertising, Father. The devil does a lot of commercials.’’
Quietly, and respectfully, the priest answers: ‘‘But if all of the evil in the world makes you think that there might be a devil, how do you account for all the good in the world?’’ And so it is that, amid the all the depravity on Friday, acts of love continually pierced the darkness. There were victims who threw themselves between bullets and their loved ones and who tried to stop the murderer or buy time for others.
They ran towards the sound of chaos because their instinct was to save others even at the cost of their own lives – the highest form of love there is.
The fallout of these terrible crimes will take precedence over all other news for months to come.
But the heroic example of those brave men and women will also be a key element in the legacy of that awful day. And let us hope that New Zealanders, though reeling from the horror, will rally around the Muslim community so that, as far as it is possible, they feel safe, protected and wanted. That, too, would be an act of love.
Whatever the answer really is, I think we can be sure that it will have something to do with love.