4 The Edifying In The Thought That Against God We Are Always In The Wrong
4 THE EDIFYING IN THE
THOUGHT THAT AGAINST GOD
WE ARE ALWAYS IN THE WRONG
Prayer
FATHER in Heaven! Teach us properly to pray, that our hearts may open to you in prayer and supplication, and may hide no secret wish that we know is not well-pleasing to you, but neither any secret fear that you may deny us anything that is truly to our advantage; in order that the labouring thoughts, the restless mind, the anxious heart may find rest in that in which, and through that by which, it alone can be found, by always rejoicing and thanking you as we gladly confess that before you we are always in the wrong.
As it is written in the Holy Gospel according to St Luke, chapter nineteen, from the forty-first verse to the end:
‘And when he was come near, he beheld the city and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee: and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another, because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation. And he went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold therein, and them that bought, saying unto them, It is written, My house is the house of prayer: but ye have made it a den of thieves. And he taught daily in the temple. But the chief priests and the scribes, and the chief of the people sought to destroy him, and could not find what they might do: for all the people were very attentive to hear him.’
What the Spirit had revealed to the prophets through visions and dreams, what in voices of warning they had proclaimed to one generation after another, the repudiating of the chosen people, the dreadful destruction of proud Jerusalem – that was now drawing nearer and nearer. Christ goes up to Jerusalem. He is no prophet proclaiming the future. What he says does not awaken restless anxiety, for that which is still hidden he sees before his eyes. He does not prophesy, there is no more time for that – he weeps over Jerusalem. And yet the city was still standing there in its glory, and the temple still rose as proudly as always, higher than any other building in the world, and Christ himself says: ‘If thou hadst known at least, in this thy day, the things that belong to you’, but also adds: ‘but now they are hid from your eyes.’ In God’s eternal design its destruction is decided, and salvation is hidden from the eyes of its inhabitants. Was the generation then living more to be damned than the one before it that gave it life? Was the whole nation depraved, were there no righteous in Jerusalem, not a single one who could stay God’s wrath, none pious among all those from whose eyes salvation was hidden? And if there were such, was no gate opened to him in that time of anguish and distress when the enemy compassed the city round and kept them in on every side? Did no angel descend and save him even when all the gates were shut? Was no wonder worked on his behalf? But its destruction was appointed; in vain the besieged city searched in its anguish for a way out, the enemy army crushed it in its mighty embrace and no one escaped; heaven remained closed and no angel was sent out except the angel of death who brandished his sword over the city. So, for the sins of the nation it was this generation that had to make atonement, for the sins of this generation every single generation had to pay the price. Shall the righteous then suffer with the unrighteous? Is this the jealousy of God, that He visits the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generations, so that He punishes not the fathers but the children? What should we answer? Are we to say: ‘Nearly two thousand years have now gone by since those days; never before has the world seen such a horror and surely it will never do so again; we thank God that we live in peace and safety, that the cry of anguish from those days reaches us only faintly; we would hope and believe that our days and those of our children may pass in peace, undisturbed by the storms of existence! We don’t feel strong enough to think of such things, but we would like to thank God that we are not subjected to such ordeals’? Can anything more abject and forlorn be imagined than such talk? Is the inexplicable to be explained by saying it happened only once? Or is not this what is inexplicable, that it did happen? And has not this fact, that it did happen, the power to make everything inexplicable, even the explicable? If it once happened that human circumstances departed essentially from how they otherwise always are, what assurance is there that it cannot recur, what assurance that that was not the truth and what ordinarily happens the untruth? Or is it a proof of what is true that it most often happens? And is it really the case that what those times witnessed does not happen often? Is it not the case, as we have all of us in so many ways experienced, that what happens on a big scale is also experienced on a lesser? ‘Suppose ye,’ says Christ, ‘that these Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices, were sinners above all the Galileans because they suffered such things?’;1 ‘Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem?’ So some of those Galileans were not sinners above all other men, those eighteen were not guilty above all others who lived in Jerusalem – and yet the innocent shared the lot of the guilty. It was a dispensation of Providence, you will say, not a punishment; but Jerusalem’s destruction was a punishment, and it fell with equal severity upon the guilty and the innocent; so you will not alarm yourself by pondering things of that kind, for the fact that someone can suffer adversity and hardship, and like the rain these can fall on good and evil alike, that you can understand – but that it should be a punishment – and yet that is how the Scriptures present it. Is, then, the lot of the righteous like that of the unrighteous; has piety no promise for this life; is every uplifting thought which once made you so rich in courage and confidence an illusion, a legerdemain in which the child believes, the youth hopes, but in which one who is a little older finds no blessing but only mockery and offence? This thought offends, it cannot and must not acquire power to delude you, it must not be capable of dulling your soul. You will love righteousness, practise it early and late, you will even practise it though it has no reward, you sense it, there is a claim in it which sometime, after all, must be satisfied; you will not fall into languor and then decide that righteousness held promises that you had forfeited by not practising it. You will not wrestle with people, but with God you will wrestle, and you will keep hold of Him and not let Him go without His blessing you!2 Yet, the Scriptures say, ‘Thou shalt not contend with God.’3 Is it not this that you are doing? Is this, then, yet another forlorn speech, is the Holy Scripture only given to man to humiliate him, to annihilate him? By no means! What is meant, when it is said ‘Thou shalt not contend with God’, is that you shall not wish to prove you are in the right against God; the only way you can contest who is right with God is to learn that you are in the wrong. Indeed, that is what you yourself ought to want. What the prohibition against contesting who is right with God signifies, then, is your perfection, and by no means that you are a lowly being with no meaning for Him. The sparrow falls to the earth, and in a way it is in the right against God. The lily withers, and in a way it is in the right against God; only man is in the wrong, only for him is reserved what to everything else was denied, to be in the wrong against God. Should I speak otherwise, should I remind you of a wise saying you have often heard, one that knows conveniently enough how to explain everything without doing injustice to God or to men? ‘Man is a frail being,’ it says, ‘and it would be absurd of God to ask the impossible of him; one does what one can, and if now and then one is a little negligent, God won’t ever forget we are weak and imperfect beings.’ Ought I to admire most the lofty conceptions of the divine being this shrewdness betrays, or its deep insight into the human heart, the searching consciousness that ransacks itself and arrives at the comforting and convenient conclusion, ‘One does what one can’? Would it be so easy a thing for you, my hearer, to decide how much one can do? Were you never in such danger that you exerted yourself almost to despair yet so infinitely wished you could do more? And perhaps someone else was watching you with a doubtful and imploring look to see whether it was possible for you to do more. Or were you never afraid for yourself, so afraid that it seemed to you no sin was so black, no self-love so odious, that it might not steal in upon you and as a foreign power gain mastery over you? Did you not sense this fear? For if you did not sense it, then you do not open your mouth to reply, for you are indeed unable to answer what is asked. But if you have sensed it, then, my hearer, I ask you, Did you find repose in those words ‘One does what one can’? Or were you never in fear for others, have you not seen those wavering in life to whom you were accustomed to look up with trust and confidence, and have you not heard a soft voice whisper to you: ‘If even these could not accomplish what is great, what is life then but evil affliction, and faith but a snare that draws us out into the infinity in which we could not live; far better then to forget, to renounce all claims’? – Did you not hear this voice? For if you did not hear it you do not open your mouth to answer, for you are indeed unable to answer what is asked. But if you did hear it, then, my hearer, I ask you, Was this, then, your consolation that you said, ‘One does what one can’? Was this precisely not the reason for your disquiet, that you did not know within yourself how much it is a man can do, that at one moment it seemed infinitely much, the next so precious little? Was it not that your fear was so embarrassing because you could not penetrate your consciousness, because the more earnestly, the more sincerely, you wanted to act, the more dreadful became the quandary in which you found yourself, whether you had not done what you could, or had done what you could but no one came to your aid?
Therefore no more serious doubt, no deeper concern is appeased by the saying, ‘One does what one can’. If man is sometimes in the right, sometimes in the wrong, to some extent in the right, to some extent in the wrong, who is it then but man who decides; but then again, in the decision may he not be to some extent in the right, to some extent in the wrong? Or when he judges his action, is he a different man from when he acts? Must doubt, then, prevail, constantly discovering new difficulties, and must uneasiness walk at the side of the fearful soul and impress upon it its experiences? Or might we prefer to be always in the right in the way that irrational creatures are? We then only have the choice between being nothing before God and the eternal torment of constantly beginning over again yet without being able to begin. For if we are to decide definitely whether we are in the right at the present instant, this question must be decided definitely concerning the previous instant, and so on, further and further back.
Doubt is afoot again, uneasiness once more aroused; so let us endeavour to set it at rest by considering:
The edifying in the thought that against God we are always in the wrong.
Being in the wrong; can any more painful feeling be imagined? And do we not see that man would rather suffer anything than admit he was in the wrong? We do not approve such obstinacy, either in ourselves or in others, we think it better and more wisely done to admit the fact when we are really in the wrong; and we say that the pain accompanying the admission will be like a bitter pill that makes us healthy; but that it is painful to be in the wrong, painful to admit it, that is not something we hide. So we endure the pain because we know that it is for our own good, we put our trust in managing sometime in the future to put up a stronger resistance, perhaps even coming so far as very seldom really to be in the wrong. This is such a natural point of view, so obvious to everybody. There is, then, something edifying about being in the wrong – that is, inasmuch as by admitting it we improve ourselves with prospects of its occurring more and more rarely. And yet it was not with this consideration that we wanted to appease doubt, but by considering what was edifying in always being in the wrong. But if that first consideration was edifying, which held out the hope in due time of no longer being in the wrong, how can the opposite consideration also be edifying, the consideration that would teach us that we are always in the wrong, in respect of the future as well as the past?
Your life brings you into manifold relationships with other people. Some love right and justice, others seem unwilling to practise these and they do you a wrong. Your soul is not insensible to the suffering they inflict on you in this way, but you search and examine yourself, you assure yourself you are in the right, and you rest calmly and strongly in that conviction. However much they hurt me, you say, they can never take from me this peace of knowing I am in the right and that I am suffering wrong. There is a satisfaction, a joy, in this consideration, which we have no doubt all tasted, and when you continue to suffer wrong you are edified by the thought that you are in the right. This point of view is so natural, so comprehensible, so often tested in life, yet it was not through this consideration that we wanted to appease doubt and cure concern, but by considering what was edifying in the thought that we are always in the wrong. Can, then, this opposite consideration have the same effect?
Your life brings you into manifold relationships with other people. You are drawn more to some by a heartfelt love than to others. Now if such a person who was the object of your love were to do you a wrong, it would pain you deeply, would it not? You would go over it all carefully, but then you would say, I know within me that I am in the right, this thought will put me at ease. Ah! if you loved him it would not put you at ease, you would look into everything. You would be unable to come to any other conclusion than that he was in the wrong, and still that conviction would disquiet you, you would wish that you might be in the wrong, you would try to find something which could count in his defence, and if you did not find it you would find repose only in the thought that you were in the wrong. Or if you were made responsible for the welfare of such a person, you would do everything in your power, and if, notwithstanding, the other showed no appreciation and caused you only sorrow, you would draw up the account, would you not? You would say, I know I have done right by him. – Ah! no, if you loved him, that thought would only distress you, you would grasp at every probability, and if you found none, you would tear up the account in order to be able to forget it, and you would endeavour to edify yourself with the thought that you were in the wrong.
So it is painful to be in the wrong and the more painful the more often one is so, edifying to be in the wrong and the more edifying the more often one is so! It is indeed a contradiction. How can it be explained but by the fact that in the one case you are forced to recognize what you want to recognize in the other? But if the recognitions are nevertheless not the same, how can one’s wanting or not wanting help? How can this be explained but by the fact that in the one case you loved and in the other you did not – in other words, that in one case you found yourself in an infinite relationship to a person, in another case in a finite relationship? So wanting to be in the wrong expresses an infinite relationship, wanting to be in the right, or finding it painful to be in the wrong, expresses a finite relationship! So the edifying, then, is to be always in the wrong, for only the infinite edifies, the finite does not!
If, then, there were a human being you loved, even if your love succeeded in piously deluding your thought and yourself, you would nevertheless be in a constant contradiction, because you would know you were in the right but wanted to be – and wanted to believe you were – in the wrong. If, on the other hand, it was God you loved, could there then be any question of such a contradiction? Could what you knew then be anything but what you wanted to believe? Could it be that He who is in heaven is not greater than you who dwell on earth, that His wealth is not more abundant than your sufficiency, His wisdom not more profound than your shrewdness, His holiness not greater than your righteousness? Must you not of necessity recognize this? But if you must recognize it there is no contradiction between your knowledge and your wish. And yet, if you must necessarily recognize it then there is indeed no edification in the thought that you are always in the wrong, for it was said that the reason why it could prove painful on one occasion to be in the wrong and edifying on another was that in the one case one is compelled to recognize what in the other case one wanted to recognize. So you would indeed be freed in your relationship to God from the contradiction, but you would have lost the edification; yet that was precisely what we were to consider: what is edifying in being always in the wrong against God.
Is it really so? Why did you wish to be in the wrong against a human being? Because you loved! Why did you find it edifying? Because you loved! The more you loved, the less time you had to consider whether you were in the right or not; your love had but one wish, that you might always be in the wrong. So, too, in your relation to God. You loved God, and therefore your soul could only find repose and joy in the thought that you must always be in the wrong. So it was not through the trials of thought that you came to this recognition, you were not compelled, for when you are in love you are in freedom. So if thought did convince you that the situation was as you wanted it, that there was nothing for it but that you must always be in the wrong or that God must always be in the right, that followed later, for you did not arrive at the certainty that you were in the wrong from the recognition that God is in the right. It was from love’s highest and only wish that you might always be in the wrong that you came to the recognition that God is always in the right. But that wish is a matter of love and therefore of freedom, and so you are by no means compelled to recognize that you were always in the wrong. So you were not made certain that you were always in the wrong by reflection; the certainty came from your being edified by that thought.
It is an edifying thought, then, that against God we are always in the wrong. If this conviction did not have its source in your whole being, that is, in the love that is within you, your reflection would have acquired a different appearance. You would have recognized that God is always in the right, this you would have been compelled to recognize; as a consequence of that, you would have been compelled to recognize that you are always in the wrong. The latter would have already caused difficulties, for although you can certainly be compelled to recognize that God is always in the right, you cannot really be compelled to apply this to yourself, to let your whole being appropriate this recognition. So you would have recognized that God is always in the right and, in consequence of that, that you are always in the wrong, but this recognition would not have edified you. There is nothing edifying in recognizing that God is always in the right, and neither, therefore, in any thought that follows necessarily from it. In that case, when you recognize that God is always in the right, you are standing outside God, and similarly when in consequence you recognize that you are always in the wrong. If, on the other hand, on the strength of no precedent recognition you claim, and are convinced, that you are always in the wrong, you are hidden in God. This is your divine worship, your religious devotion, your reverence for God.
You loved a human being, you wished always to be in the wrong against him; alas! he was unfaithful to you, and however reluctantly, however much it pained you, you were nevertheless shown to be in the right against him, and in the wrong in loving him so dearly. And yet your soul demanded to love in that way, only in that way could you find peace and rest and happiness. Your soul then turned away from the finite to the infinite; there it found its object, there your love became happy. I will love God, you said, He gives the lover everything, He fulfils my dearest, my only wish, that against Him I am always in the wrong. Never shall any anxious doubt tear me away from Him, never will the thought terrify me that I might prove to be in the right against Him, against God I am always in the wrong.
Is it not so? Was this not your only wish, your dearest wish? Was it not the case that a dreadful fear seized you when for a moment the thought could arise in your soul that it was possible you were in the right, that wisdom was not the governance of God but your own plans, that righteousness was not God’s thoughts but your own achievements, that love was not God’s heart but your own emotions? And was it not your bliss that you could never love as you were loved? This thought, then, that you are always in the wrong against God, is not a truth you are forced to recognize, not a comfort to soothe your pain, not a substitute for something better; it is the joy in which you triumph over yourself and over the world, your rapture, your song of praise, your worship, a proof that your love is happy as is only that love with which one loves God.
That against God we are always in the wrong is, then, an edifying thought; it is edifying that we are in the wrong, edifying that we always are. It proves its power to edify in a twofold way, partly by staying doubt and alleviating its anxieties, partly by inciting to action.
Perhaps you still recall, my hearer, a wise saying we mentioned earlier. It seemed so trusty and dependable, it explained everything so easily, it was ready to give everyone safe conduct through life unmoved by the storms of doubt. ‘One does what one can,’ it called out to the perplexed. And it is indeed undeniable that it helps just to do that. Beyond that it had nothing to say, it vanished like a dream, or became a monotonous repetition in the doubter’s ear. Then when he wanted to use it, it turned out that he could not, that it entangled him in a mesh of difficulties. He could find no time to ponder what he could do, because he had at the same time to be doing what he could. Or if he found time to ponder, the scrutiny gave him a more-or-less, an approximation, but never anything exhaustive. And how is a man to measure his relation to God with a more or less, or with an approximation? He then convinced himself that this wise saying was a treacherous friend which, under the guise of helping him, enfolded him in doubt, frightened him into a perpetual cycle of confusion. What before had been obscure to him but did not cause him worry, now became no clearer but made his mind troubled and anxious. Only in an infinite relation to God could the doubt be allayed; only in an infinitely free relation to God could his trouble be turned into joy. He is in an infinite relation to God when he recognizes that God is always in the right, in an infinitely free relation when he recognizes that he himself is always in the wrong. The doubt is then stayed, for the movement of doubt lay precisely in his being at one moment in the right, at the next in the wrong, being to some extent in the right, to some extent in the wrong, and that was meant to signify his relation to God. But a relation like that is no relation, and that was what gave food for doubt. In his relation to another human being, it was indeed possible to be partly in the wrong, partly in the right, to some extent in the wrong, to some extent in the right, because he himself, like every human being, is finite, and his relation is a finite relation which consists in a more-or-less. He remained in doubt, therefore, so long as doubt made the infinite relation finite, and as long as the wise saying filled the infinite relation with finitude. So whenever doubt makes him anxious with the particular, whenever it teaches him that he suffers too much or is tried beyond his powers, he forgets the finite in the infinite thought that he is always in the wrong. Every time the anxiety of doubt makes him sorrowful, he lifts himself above the finite into the infinite, for this thought that he is always in the wrong is the wing on which he soars over finitude, it is the longing with which he seeks God, it is the love in which he finds God.
So against God we are always in the wrong. But is this not an anaesthetizing thought? However edifying it may be for man, is it not dangerous, does it not lull him into a sleep in which he dreams of a relationship to God which is nevertheless no real relationship, does it not consume the power of his will and the strength of his purpose? By no means! Was the man who wished always to be in the wrong against another man, dull and inactive? Did he not do everything in his power to be in the right and yet wanted only to be in the wrong? Should the thought that against God we are always in the wrong not then be an inspiring one? For what does it express other than that God’s love is always greater than our love? Does this thought not make him happy to act? For when he doubts he has no strength to act. Does it not make him fervent in his spirit, since when he makes finite calculations the fire of the spirit is quenched? Then if, my hearer, your only wish were denied you, still you are glad; you do not say, ‘God is always in the right’, for there is no jubilation in that; you say, ‘Against God I am always in the wrong.’ If what you wished was what others, and you yourself in a sense, might call your duty, if you were not only to forgo your wish but in a sense be unfaithful to your duty, if you lost not merely your joy but honour itself, still you are glad; ‘Against God,’ you say, ‘I am always in the wrong.’ If you knocked but it was not opened unto you, if you sought but did not find, if you laboured but nothing gained, if you planted and watered but saw no blessing, if heaven were closed and the witness failed to appear, still you are glad in your works. If the punishment which the sins of the fathers had called down were to fall upon you, still you are glad, for against God we are always in the wrong.
Against God we are always in the wrong; this thought then stays the doubt and alleviates its anxiety, it puts one in heart and inspires one to action.
Your thought has now followed the course of this exposition, perhaps hurrying on ahead when it followed familiar paths; it gave you the lead, slowly, perhaps reluctantly, when the way was unfamiliar, but nevertheless you must admit this: that it is as it was set forth, and your thought had no objections. Before we part, one more question, my hearer: did you wish, could you wish, that it were otherwise? Could you wish that you were in the right, could you wish that that beautiful law which for thousands of years has borne the human race and every generation of the race through life, that beautiful law, more glorious than that which keeps the stars in their courses across the vault of heaven, could you wish that law breached – more dreadful than if the law of Nature lost its force and everything was dissolved in terrible chaos? Could you wish that? I have no words of wrath with which to terrify you. Your wish must not proceed from dread of the blasphemy of the thought of wanting to be in the right against God. I ask you simply, could you wish that it were otherwise? Perhaps my voice is not strong and warm enough to penetrate to your inmost thought; ah! but ask yourself, ask yourself with the solemn uncertainty with which you would address a person you knew was capable of deciding your life’s happiness with a single word, ask yourself even more seriously, for in truth it is a question of salvation. Stay not the flight of your soul, do not sadden what is your better part, do not enervate your soul with half wishes and half thoughts. Ask yourself, and keep on asking until you find the answer, for one can recognize a thing many times and acknowledge it, one can want a thing many times and attempt it, yet only the deep inner movement, only the indescribable motions of the heart, only these convince you that what you have recognized ‘belongs unto you’, that no power can take it from you; for only the truth that edifies is truth for you.