Dear Theophilus, 

In your last letter you raise some questions as to this inner self of ours and the outer self. I agree with you that this is a very important topic because it opens up much of what our faith teaches and shows it in a new light. Our outer self, what is commonly referred to as the ego, has become so influential with most of us that we have almost totally ignored the inner person that is in all of us.

There are many horrors in the world that we live in - wars, disease, inhumanity, natural catastrophes, but, I think, the most difficult to accept is the horrible manner in which humans treat each other. This is something that is so horrific and yet, so common throughout history. What I would like to do in this letter is to look at this aspect and to see if we cannot find anything redeeming in all of this.

I think, that if you look at what motivates us and governs us to a large extent, we would be surprised to realize that it is fear. And it is out of this fear that much of our inhumanity is born. There are two ways to react to fear - through power and through love. Unfortunately, the ways of the world seem to lie on the side of power to the almost total exclusion of love.

All governments use power and it cannot be denied that the biggest crimes committed throughout history are inevitably committed by governments. But a government is an abstract thing - there are people in the government who make the decisions, who carry out various acts, who rule. It is these people who sometimes act inhumanely to others. Consider a person such as Stalin. If one looks at his political career, the common thread is that he struck terror and fear in all who were under his rule. And yet, it is ironic that this man, who is a cause of fear and trembling in other people, is himself uncertain. He has his henchman carry out his rulings, but, at the same time, he is afraid that these henchman will turn on him. So what does Stalin do? He destroys these lackeys of his and substitutes them with another group who in turn fall under the same cloud of mistrust, and the cycle repeats. It repeats because Stalin, as all dictators and murderers, is himself afraid and his life is ruled by fear. The only way he reacts to this fear is to destroy others in order to assure himself of his power but this assurance is deceptive and unsatisfying because the inner person cannot be fooled.

When we see inhumanity in this light, it may make it a little bit more comprehensible and it may make the Christian response to evil acts, a little bit more understandable for us. When we see a wrong committed, we often impute this to evil motives and that there is something evil in the person. However, if we come to see this person as being overpowered by fear we will react differently and more compassionately. However, you will say that some acts committed throughout history are so horrendous that there must be more than just fear operating here. You are right, Theophilus, and even these events which boggle the mind with their meaningless violence speak about the war that is going on in the human soul.

It is a given that people seek what cannot be satisfied with material wealth, with security or distractions. They need to know that there is meaning in their lives and that they matter. Much of life is spent running from this question of our ultimate meaning and we try to forget and distract ourselves but this works for only a while. Eventually our defences fail as we age or become ill or some disaster overtakes us.

I was struck, looking at a program on lions and how they hunt and survive, at how much of life seems to be a struggle culminating in the death of another living thing. The reason for this in this case is understandable - the need for food for physical survival. But humans, sometimes fall below this and seem to revel in killing and violence for themselves without any redeeming factor of survival. It is ironic but this depravity of man points to depths in man which are greater than those in animals. In other words, what I am saying is that our violence indicates we are different from animals in some fundamental way. If we look at history, in a sense it is a search for contact with what is beyond history and what we refer to as God. Some people try to contact God through prayer, through behaving in ways pleasing to God and through other means. Others have given up on this, but they are still frustrated and still seek reassurance that God is out there. These people throw out a challenge to God - if you will not answer my prayers, I will commit acts which will force you to respond, even if it is to destroy me. This need to have someone else out there is so strong in man that they will go to such lengths to elicit a response.

Any view of life which sees ultimate satisfaction in getting what we want is bound to be false and unsatisfactory. It is a difficult lesson for us to learn, and how few of us do learn it, but we must focus outside ourselves to our neighbors, and our "largest" and most influential neighbor is God. We see life as a struggle, as a competition, as survival. These views are skewed and wrong. Our life is a gift but, not for us, but for someone else. We fail to live up to this and then we are crowded with one of the most negative of reactions - guilt. This is a strange emotion because in a sense, guilt is love that has gone into inflation. In the past, unfortunately, this feeling of guilt was used by the Church to cow people. And it is in reaction to this, that a lot of people have become disenchanted with the Church and seek answers to their deepest questions elsewhere. Guilt is corrosive because it makes the other to be alien, foreign to us. We react then in violence and hatred an we project onto the other motives of ugliness or fear or hatred. An interesting illustration of this is Abraham's conclusion that God wanted him to kill Isaac. Guilt made Abraham think God wanted a living sacrifice of Abraham's son; love made Abraham see that this was wrong.

God attracts us not because some wrong doing of ours is forgiven. Any relationship built on judgement will fail. It cannot last. It must eventually find its basis in love. There is a curious saying by one of the German mystics, Angelus Silesius which goes along the following lines: if God ceases to think of me (that is, keep me in existence), He ceases to be. It is easy to misunderstand this saying (as so often happens when something of great depth is said) in that Silesius is equating himself with God. This is not what he is doing. He, in fact is saying something very important about God. God is so full of love for each and every one of us that for Him not to love us (permit us to disappear from existence) is impossible ("He ceases to be"). Our history is a record of man failing to hear this and struggling to earn the notice and love of God. The good news is that this is not necessary. Conversion is the realization of this fact, a realization not just intellectually, but with our emotions and with all of our being. Man finally gets the answer to the question that continually haunts him: what am I to You? I love you is God's answer. We need to feel that we are significant and we strive to attain this significance through power. But as we saw from the discussion above, this fails.

A lot of what passes for religion is simply some theory of self-improvement. How to be good and happy and contented. This has nothing to do with a true encounter with God.

But, in a world where there is death, it is impossible for us to know completely and continually that God loves us. We therefore do not live in knowledge but in faith. No matter how we may explain death as a passage, as something temporary, we cannot deny that death is horrible and very painful. It challenges our very ideas of eternity. But you will notice that death is not something foreign to the God of Christianity. It is in this and in the Resurrection that we see most clearly an answer to our anguish about death.

With this Theophilus, I end this somewhat heavy letter. But from time to time, this is unavoidable. Write soon to me, and I remain,

Yours truly,

Bar-Abbas

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