Having spent the greatest portion of my years as both a layperson and a professional minister allows me an observational perspective of the many strains people endure to live out their spiritual commitments.
I have come to realize that it is all too easy to focus our attention on religiously petty matters and disregard spiritually grievous areas. (Not unlike Jesus’ accusation of the Pharisees “tithing the anise the mint and the cumin but omitting the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy and faith.”)
In truth it is much easier to satisfy ourselves as being “religious” because we say a blessing before our meals, help take up the offering in worship on Sundays, never smoke tobacco and do not use bad language.
But those junior-grade concerns are rather easily achieved when contrasted to the more challenging mainstays of the teachings of Jesus, such as forgiveness and turning the evil that is done to us into a righteous outcome for others.
In the New Testament, I recall the father of the Prodigal Son welcoming home his errant child who has wasted half of his life savings. From the Old Testament I think about Joseph being sold into slavery in Egypt, but welcoming his brothers who are searching for food in the midst of a famine.
Oftentimes good is not always readily evident. It must be diligently sought.
On today’s date of April 11 in 1814, an evil man was forced into exile. His was Napoleon Bonaparte, due to his egotistical, war-ravaging attempt to rule the world, millions of men lost their lives and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of other people suffered.
He was supposed to spend his life imprisoned on the Mediterranean Island of Elba. He did not. He escaped and managed to cause even more international havoc resulting in the deaths of up to three million men and perhaps hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Out of that absolutely true historical fact, how does one find something good?
But there is another aspect of Napoleon’s life that in our minds we tend to compartmentalize almost completely separately away from him. He was also responsible for the Napoleon Code, and it is judged by experts on jurisprudence to have left a greater influence upon world history, and specifically the governments of democracy than his wars.
In the event you have little familiarity with this document, the Civil Code of the French, as it was technically named, assured that all were to be treated equally under the law, did not recognize privileges of birth or social rank, secured religious freedom for everyone, separated government affairs from any religion and guaranteed any person to work in their field of choice.
Furthermore, it strengthened the family and guaranteed civil liberties. It also became the basis for the United States Constitution.
For our purpose here, good was able to come from evil.
In the song “I Believe” there is a refrain that goes, “I believe for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows; I believe somewhere in the darkest night a candle glows.”
A beautiful hymn of I hope, but I would have loved another line about believing forgiveness and love could come out of even disastrous and painful occurrences.
I must admit that a strategy for achieving good from evil is not easily discerned, but I am convinced it begins with Christ’s concept of forgiveness. And it is only the spiritually acute individual who can forgive in the thick of being wronged.
Perhaps our prayers should be “Lord, help me to be more like Joseph when he revealed himself to his brothers who had sold him into slavery saying, ‘Be not grieved… for God used an evil plan of others to bring about good — life for many people.’”
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