The Place for Guilt and Injustice
I have been perusing some of the forgiveness blogs on the Internet and there is one theme that comes up often: If we think of the world as having injustice and guilt, this blocks out love in our lives. As soon as we understand that there is no injustice, then we see that there is no guilt. As we see there is no guilt, we do not judge anyone guilty. As we do not judge anyone guilty, we do not judge. As we do not judge, we do not divide the world into the innocent and the guilty. As we do not divide the world this way, we eliminate conflict. As we eliminate conflict we are free to love.
Nope. This is too high a price to pay for inner peace. It is a false peace achieved by hiding under a bed of illusions.
Inner peace is not won through a lack of conflict, but instead by our response to the conflict itself. Inner peace is a steadfast will to love in the face of injustice and guilt and judgement and conflict in this world.
Otherwise, we have a situation as in the movie, The Time Machine. It is the year 802,701. The peaceful Eloi have all the peace they think they want, until the Morlocks choose some of them for slaughter. The Eloi, you see, have shut out of their minds that there is conflict so that they see nothing wrong with some of their brethren being slaughtered. It is the price they pay for a full stomach, to ignore injustice. In this Time Machine world, the Morlocks are not guilty. In this world, there is no judgment. In this world, the innocent are not divided from the guilty. In this world, there is no perceived conflict.
And there’s the rub. There is no perceived conflict when conflict is all around the Eloi. They do not have the courage to see it.
Love requires courage and so in the futuristic new age of the gentle Eloi, they talk of love but even their love is an illusion because ultimately they care little for their fellow man. It is inner peace they seek at all costs, including the abandonment of love while calling all of this love.
The Eloi are now all around us. Sad to say, but so too are the Morlocks. They are at the door even if the gentle Eloi fail to recognize them for who they are. And in the seeing, we can still love, but it will be a love that sets limits and strives for the betterment of all. Such striving involves much pain, which the Eloi have refused as part of their growth in love. As a result, they fail to grow in love.
R.E.
I have seen this kind of thinking and I just don’t get it. People from every walk of life and from every culture talk about right and wrong. It is so natural to do so. If right and wrong, justice and injustice were illusions, why would all cultures talk about them?