For too many, ’tis a wicked and unjust world,
Where crooked deeds lay hidden and go unpunished,
Where winds of time carry wrongs to memory’s deepest fold,
Are Justice and God at work, or are they merely fantasies unleashed?
Two years ago, I began an essay by saying that few of us would likely live and cry long enough to see justice served in the horrible downing of Flight MH17.
Sadly, the words remain true to this day.
On that inky black and depressing night, I cried to the maker of Heaven and Earth, and wrote: “I think Lady Justice has tried very hard, and has made many pay the price for the awful injustice they committed against others. But to those who suffered greatly and do not know who made their lives so miserable, or who still await an uncertain prosecution of the perpetrators in the courts of law, she offers no consolation. These piteous people are yesterday’s headline, today’s footnote, tomorrow’s fading word.”
Even now, when I think about it, I easily fly into a rage. Yes, the wheels of justice turn slowly, but surely. That we are told by the Greeks and Longfellow. But when waves of anger overwhelm, I turn into a vengeful Ahab, ready to chase after Moby Dick, after the one who launched the BUK missile, “round Good Hope, and round the Horn… and round perdition’s flames before I give him up... till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out”.
My companion and I also felt these wrathful waves a short time ago when we saw several frail Filipino grandmothers weeping about their wretched lives during the Japanese Occupation. Theirs was a tale of rape. Of being violated over and over again.
“They took us to the Red House,
Where we felt all the pain we could ever feel”
For them, there is no apology. No justice. Only deep wounds and deeper anguish.
It took a long while to calm down after hearing their forlorn forms give voice to the plaintive lines. A long while for the heart to stop shooting harpoons tipped with bile, and to begin releasing tears of sorrow for their pain.
A good number of my friends, though, point out that these injustices — MH17, the rapes, the attack in Nice on Friday and too many other brutalities — are proof that God is merely imagination’s creation. “He is as unreal as fairies,” says one. How could a compassionate, omnipotent ruler allow the “bad guys to win? It is not logical”.
Is he right?
I do not believe it. Not even for a space in time.
The philosopher, Alvin Platinga, does not think so either. “Could there really be any such thing as horrifying wickedness (if there were no God and we just evolved). I don’t see how. There can be such a thing only if there is a way that rational creatures are supposed to live, obliged to live… A (secular) way of looking at the world has no place for genuine moral obligation of any sort…”
For sure, I could line up one thinker after another to persuade my friends that we will struggle to talk about injustice if we claim we live in a Godless, totally “natural” world. To echo my dear friend, “it is not logical”.
But I say all these things, which may sound strange and maybe even sterile, only for one reason. So that, in those who have been victims of injustice, the flame of hope is not extinguished and the strength of the mind is not made weary. With this conviction I ended my essay two years ago. And, on its wings come this final song today:
Aye, it’s a tearful and unjust world,
Crooked schemes and thievery are cleverly hidden, murderous deeds go unpunished,
Aye, gales of time loosen the bad from memory’s hold,
But none can escape the final reckoning, they will be reached.
David Christy has been with NST for 20 years, and has a keen interest in history