Tuesday, April 12, 2011

The terror of untethered "tenderness"

One of the tendencies of our age is to use the suffering of children to discredit the goodness of God, and once you have discredited his goodness, you are done with him. . . Ivan Karamazov cannot believe, as long as one child is in torment; Camus' hero cannot accept the divinity of Christ, because of the massacre of the innocents. In this popular pity, we mark our gain in sensibility and our loss of vision. If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced-labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber. -- Flannery O'Connor Mystery and Manners

1 comment:

Sibyl said...

The suffering of innocents (women raped, children starving, disease and death) is due to the influence of evil upon the earth and human souls. God sent a rescuer and a redeemer to pay our way out of this hellishness. God is good, compassionate and very concerned about his creation. He cherishes and watches over the least sparrow and will save whatever can be saved.