A GOD-SHAPED HOLE

A GOD-SHAPED HOLE?

or AN EXAMINATION OF EVIL and FORGIVENESS

By a Non-Church-going Christian

"Be human in this most inhuman of ages; guard the image of man for it is the image of God."

(Thomas Merton)

Shoot a political opponent, massacre 1200 innocent civilians? Do we have here the presence of a God-shaped hole, a vacuum into which a lurking spirit of evil has, since time immemorial, been sucked?

This is a question for the theologians, I suppose.  

Theologians or not, I think we can jolly well judge for ourselves when something is creative or destructive to our mutual well-being.

Is it possible or viable to hope that the well-being of all people might become the priority in the coming days and years?  Yes I think it is, but not if we keep pitting ourselves against our brothers and sisters, when we think it right to judge each other, let alone to fight or even kill over each other’s ‘faulty’ views.  

It seems that our identification with our polarised views and positions has become more important than our willingness to live alongside each other with care and respect.  

BATTLE LINES?

Many have been rejoicing at the murder of Charlie Kirk.  A proportion of people are astounded, angry and alarmed by this and, along with the sense of being vulnerable to attack as Charlie was, feel that battle lines are being drawn up. Physical or metaphysical, who knows?

For years, and from far away, we have relied on and taken in reports from various sources regarding the Israel/Gaza question. Complicated as the situation has always been, we have always done well to suspend judgement or at least hesitate to come to solid conclusions and opinions. Today this is even more challenging. Some news we receive is relatively unbiased. Some, though, might be regarded as propaganda and therefore should be very cautiously received.

Either way, because of this (actually age-old) difficulty in receiving a true picture, and bearing in mind our own political biases, we need, if we sincerely wish for the good of all of humanity, to be careful to stand judiciously above the maelstrom.

Bear in mind that some, angry and thus maybe not aware of the legal definition of the term, see Israel's response to this attack as 'genocide'. Others, whilst finding any war abhorrent, support Israel's right to defend themselves. So who on earth is right? Whichever way you look at it, horrible suffering has resulted.

We are I think asked, if we believe in true compassion, to stand above our emotional reactions, justified as they may seem, and seek a higher response, a willingness to understand a bigger picture. This is a picture which is not and cannot be apparent, certainly not via our limited minds, but which is quite clear in the mind of God.

That willingness might be seen as the first stage of forgiveness.

Why, though, should one even consider forgiving patently destructive things, particularly when we feel that, by doing so, we would be condoning those things? That is a seemingly moral and spiritual contradiction that I want to explore.

And what do we gain from forgiving anyway?

FORGIVING THE UNFORGIVABLE?

Some, such as Mosab Hassan Yousef, son of a Hamas leader who left the organisation as he could no longer stomach the violence being committed against Israel and the West, consider that the massacre in Israel on 7 October 2023, and the rejoicing that followed, points to a tangible evil that must be literally destroyed.

Some, who see Palestinians suffering, believe that Israel's actions are evil and that therefore they should be stopped, if not destroyed.

So, here we have some serious polarity! People think they are right and, somehow, they believe that destruction is the only possible response. Is conciliation, let alone forgiveness, even viable under the umbrella of such belief?

And who does forgiveness help, if anyone?

BRIDGING THE CHASM

The attack on the synagogue in Manchester last week has only highlighted this chasm between people. There are those who believe in living in peaceful co-existence with all and who were appalled by the murders visited upon a very particular group of people. There are those who, if not openly antisemitic, walked the streets of Britain that same day calling for ‘global intifada’.  This term means, to radical Islamists, ‘the elimination of Jews’.  This means not just the destruction of Israel and its people; it means Jews everywhere. Students and others joining Palestinians in solidarity might, to give them the benefit of the doubt, not understand the implications of what they are parrotting?

This call for the death of Jewish people, whoever is shouting what, is a line that no right-thinking and feeling person should even countenance crossing.  It arouses, in me, the utmost horror, bewilderment and a fierce protective anger.  I can see how easy and gratifying it would be to confront and challenge these people.  I can see how my emotions might become volatile, to say the least.

But if we allow ourselves to be solely powered by emotion without allowing ourselves any reflection, we move from the stable territory which is based on our Christian values and we will cross the line to the other side, which represents nothing more than conflict, blame, and spiritual death.  

So at which point, if at all, should we literally fight people espousing evil?  Is it not evil itself we are fighting? Notice that an angry Jesus overturned the moneylenders' tables but did not kill the moneylenders themselves.

"For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" (Ephesians 6:12)

 If there is battle looming, I think we might first start by examining the battles we wage within ourselves.  Do we, day by day, choose consciousness or unconsciousness?  Polarity or unity?

MICRO AND MACRO

A person carrying unconscious anger inside is more likely to be reactive to outside conditions (ask Carl Jung for clarification), thus risking exacerbation of any conflict.  Adding fuel to the fire, if you will   One who is conscious of his tendencies has a choice of response, which is more likely to bring careful reflection and reason to a situation.

Our willingness to hold fire by insisting upon staying in an inalienable place of peace could, if I understand it spiritually, lead to a space into which grace could enter.

Perhaps acting with grace is possible only if we can stand steady and, excruciatingly difficult as it may be emotionally, abandon what we, with our incomplete understanding, judge to be the 'right' way, and by doing so affirm our faith that with God all things work for good.  

IF YOU DON’T RELATE TO THAT KIND OF RELIGIOUS TALK, HOW ABOUT SOME LITERATURE?

J R R Tolkien, as far as I know, did not directly refer to Christian ‘teachings’ in his stories.  However, the stories themselves are actually soaked in them, with each character demonstrating one aspect or another of the human condition, the choices in life that lead us towards good or bad outcomes.   The stories in themselves, in telling the consequences of peoples’ choices and actions, are enough to illustrate the Christian teachings in a way that is much more relatable for many than literal religious  preaching.  

This Youtube video, from @firsttimereaders, is entitled, ‘This J R R Tolkien line is changing how I think about terrible people.’   Click on link to play. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQjPuKLk_jE&t=119s

The line, uttered by the ‘white’ wizard, Gandalf, and referring to the treacherous Gollum, is as follows:

“Let us remember that a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend.  It can be so sometimes.”

This young man has, with wisdom and maturity, extracted the ‘life lesson’ inherent in this line from The Lord of the Rings in order to to help him make sense of his own life, his own regrets, his past difficult encounters with ‘terrible people’.

He realises that, rather than being bitter towards people or frustrated with a past that he cannot change, he can choose to utilise these events to positively deepen his response to others as he now goes forward in life. 

He is suggesting that Tolkien understood that ostensible ‘evil’ can be the very ground from which growth comes.  It is the individual choice of response that defines whether destruction or creation comes from that evil.  This young man’s willingness to ‘love’ his enemies’ strikes me as a beautiful example of someone living Jesus’s teachings.  Again, with God all things work for good. 

ISRAEL, 7 OCTOBER 2023

“I sometimes feel appalled at the thought of the sum total of human misery all over the world at the present moment: the millions parted, fretting, wasting in unprofitable days … quite apart from torture, pain, death, bereavement, injustice …

“… all we do know, and that to a large extent by direct experience, is that evil labours with vast power and perpetual success … in vain: preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in …” (my emphasis)

This is an extract from a letter Tolkien wrote to his son Christopher during the Second World War.  It could have been written today.

Tolkien’s first paragraph perfectly expresses the feelings of many of us now, two years after the atrocities committed by Hamas in Israel.  We’ve seen, and see, suffering in Israel and in Gaza, not to speak of other areas of the Middle East under the rule of Islamist regimes.  We are, rightly, appalled and heartsick.

The second, more difficult, paragraph in Tolkien’s letter points to the possibility, already mooted, that evil can serve good.  That is, surely, a challenging proposition right now as we observe conditions, not only in the Middle East, but in our country too.  

For me, in considering all this, I feel that Tolkien, in his way, is echoing the deeply profound teachings of Kabbalah, the esoteric system of Jewish mysticism that seeks to understand the nature of God, creation, and humanity's relationship with the divine.

There is a Hebrew Kabbalist term: Tikkun Olam, which means restoring, repairing the world, both by ethical outer actions and by internal awareness and correction.

The Opponent, Satan, is for the Kabbalist the gift.  The Opponent presents us, imperfect beings as we are, with difficulties to face head-on and to, with humility, grow from.  How else do we strengthen, come closer to God?  They teach that this willingness to grapple with difficulties and surmount them, is a powerful way in which to fulfil our divine task of bringing more light to the world, thereby repairing the world.

Therefore, of difficulties, the Kabbalist joyfully says, “Bring them on!”  He is literally loving his enemies!

Could that willingness actually be seen as forgiveness? Not liking but accepting life as it is, no exceptions, with an attitude of blessing that it is offering an opportunity for wisdom, growth and repair?

12 OCTOBER 2025

With the imminent release of the final Israeli hostages tomorrow, we can surely only rejoice!   

We can watch and hope that Phase 1 of this deal will lead to an honourable and positive way forward for all concerned in the Middle East.  It is a deal of course that, on the surface at least, is predicated on purely political stances and angles.  We would certainly be naive to believe, at this early stage, that it is a 'done deal'.  

But we can hope and, above all, we can seek to cultivate our own inner peace, for our own sake and for the sake of the whole, the collective consciousness. 

Many, in the meantime, may find it hard to accept any peace deal, or to give up protest.  A tiny but simple illustration of this is the action of a pro-Palestinian protester yesterday, who cut down the yellow ribbons tied to a fence in North London in tribute to the victims of the Hamas massacre.  

Do her scissors symbolise her own pain, her own anger, at the whole bloody situation?

Perhaps, just as the Bolsheviks, in order to quell their consciences, dehumanised the Russian aristocrats they killed by calling them ‘former people'', was she perhaps cutting away reminders, not only of the terrible conflict raging outside, but more importantly, the conflict she maybe feels inside? 

Is she having difficulty reconciling her support for Palestine with the loss and agony of innocent families, symbolised by those yellow ribbons?  Would she sooner destroy those reminders than let herself feel the entirety of the human suffering in the region?  Is it hard for her to accept the moral culpability of those responsible for the massacre?

Maybe her heart is literally at odds with her convictions?  Perhaps such physically harsh actions as cutting the ribbons down is helping ease and dispel some painful inner conflict, just as self-cutting can help release intolerable internal emotional pain?

Her actions, though, will have hurt those who put the ribbons up as an expression of their devastated and broken hearts. 

There has been, since, aggression and death threats directed towards this protester by many who feel outrage at her actions.

Here it is again. Hate meeting hate, ad infinitum.

Is conciliation even possible here?  

Knowing that countless young Palestinians have been, are being, indoctrinated from kindergarten onwards to embrace martyrdom, that their highest aim is to kill Jews, we can only hope that they can still hear their hearts murmuring beneath the loud, angry and destructive soundtrack downloaded into their minds. 

Perhaps, on reflection, my above analysis of the pro-Palestinian protester’s inner workings is, in light of this indoctrination, completely and utterly naive and wrong.  Perhaps her only driver is her literal hatred of Jewish people?  Perhaps her heart is now out of reach?

If so, we have to consider the tragic possibility that these innocent young ones have been literally robbed of their humanity.  Can a human being come back from this?   

I would like to think that seeking to keep our focus on her integral humanity will help keep the light of that possibility alive.   With God all things are possible.  (Matthew 19:27).

We could do the same for those who feel justified in sending death threats, and in doing so have abandoned their own humanity. I admit, I find this rather difficult, perhaps more difficult than focusing light on the pro-Palestine protester.

Is that because, unlike brainwashed Palestinians, it seems that many sending death threats have only fed on the nasty thin gruel served up by social media, only then to be stirred with the spoon of their own unconscious knee-jerk anger and outrage.

"They are not brainwashed. They feel justified. But they should bloody well know better." These are my honest thoughts, my opinions, and I feel my own anger is justified. Horrible bloody people.

This is truly an Opponent worthy of a good old street fight! Am I up to it?

Can I heed my own words, all the words set out above, and offer light to these nasty people? Light without exception? The most difficult ones are the most important. But I really don't want to let them off!

Oh well. Onward I go, my work cut out for me. Onward and, hopefully, upward.

IS THERE SUCH A THING AS IRREDEEMABLE EVIL?

‘The Son of Hamas’, Mosab Hassan Yousef, does not, I gather, think that Hamas or those who espouse the Islamist ideology are redeemable. He feels there is no choice but to destroy them.

He, along with others like lawyer Natasha Hausdorff, have revealed that many of those brainwashed children, now grown, took part in the massacre of 7 October.  There are young Palestinian people who are even now becoming teenagers and coming of age who are carrying the same destructive ideology.  In which case, Hamas defeated or not, the effect of this brainwashing, widespread as it is way beyond Gaza, will remain. He is, perhaps, thinking we are trapped in an 'urgent' time limit, and is trying to save the Western world before it is too late! 

LOVE THESE ENEMIES?

Putting aside the threat that this radicalisation poses to the Westernworld’s safety, and holding on to the hope of ‘deradicalisation’ in the region, we might, even more importantly, put aside any and all historical facts that can, if not understood in their unbelievable complexity, from British mandates to Roman hatred for the Jews, place either one on a 'good' side at one time or another. Oppressor and victim. Victim and oppressor.

The point, without condoning anything, is to transcend the very idea of 'sides' altogether.

OUR SACRED RESPONSBILITY

On an even deeper spiritual level still, I believe that to sully the innocence of children, whether by brainwashing or otherwise, is heresy. I think it is the foundational bedrock of everything, everywhere.

The trust our children have for us, their parents, and their society, whichever culture they live in, in my eyes imbues us with a sacred responsibility. When any of us fail in that responsibility we become culpable for what results. 

I can hear Jesus saying, loudly and strongly, in Matthew 18:6:

“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

Gosh. That is a tough one. Did 'little ones' even refer to children? That is not clear. So I am going to riff a bit on what Jesus may have meant. Food for thought for myself.

Was He suggesting that those knowingly turning the innocence of children towards hate puts them beyond God’s mercy because they now, perhaps, dwell where God is not.  Would that, 'the depths of the sea' be hell itself?  

Is, going further, Jesus actually addressing Evil with a capital ‘E’ ?  Might He be drawing a very definite line and be condemning, absolutely, destruction consciously chosen?  

By allowing their consciences to be overridden, by ignoring the voice of ‘good’ within them in order to obey an outer ‘deity’, Hamas and their brethren, as well as entering into gleeful slaughter, have consciously decided to train their children to kill other human beings.

Beings who are made in the image of God. 

They have, arguably, by abandoning their own humanity, forfeited their own God-given human rights by voluntarily entering a 'Godless' place.  Perhaps forgiveness is not even a possibility in such a place as this 'hell'?  ‘Forgiveness’ could perhaps only reach them if they were able to repent? In other words, only by turning back to God in recognition of their actions could they have access to forgiveness.   

In the meantime, by keeping their backs towards God, their actions can be seen as a desecration of the Holy.

THE PARADOX WHICH POINTS TO THE FUNDAMENTAL POINT?

But can even Evil such as this be seen to potentially serve ‘good’, as Tolkien pointed to?  It surely must if we are to continue believing that Jesus’s teachings of love, for neighbour and enemy alike, are to be seen as transformative.  

But surely repentance is still required for that transformation to be possible?  Choosing to repent brings you back to the only place that love can actually reach.  But that is a scary idea.  It implies that there are places beyond God’s reach.  Can that be true if, as we are told, God is omnipotent?

The physical eradication of apparently unrepentant people, terrorists who appear inhuman, as urged by Mosab Hassan Yousef, troubles me.  They are, according to him, unreachable and are an existential threat, just as a roaming pack of rabid dogs would be.  To save lives the threat must be eliminated.

But surely it's the belief, that the Jews are a threat, is the very thing Hamas believe, and which powers their actions. Is Yousef, even though he has changed 'sides', perpetuating the same concept of 'threat' and the same modus operandi?  

I am troubled because the very existence of the need for any extreme solution to threat points to the fundamental spiritual problem. That there can be a threat denotes an utterly desolate pit of despair that surely comes from an absolute absence of love and an according lack of trust in God?  

If this is so, have terrorists become utterly immune to love through the conscious choices they've made or are they too victims of some deep-rooted evil from who knows when and where?  Who is responsible in the end?  Are such people redeemable?

Could our refusal to hate and to judge, without exception, bring light even to this darkness? Can we, can I, accept that even terrorists are people made in the image of God?

IS THIS, MORE, A POWERFUL ANALOGY FOR US ALL?

Perhaps the millstone and the sea are, rather, analogies which Jesus used to illustrate the weight He sees humanity itself carrying, the lifting of which was the very reason for his mission.  Perhaps he was, by the stark power of this illustration, warning us all, not just terrorists, of the spiritual and literal consequences of our choices.  Was He, in the severity of his statement, seeking to save us all from dark places of our own making? Does the act of judgement itself lead to a dark place?

So many questions! But, as ever, I remember the words “Judgement is mine, saith the Lord.”  I can only attempt to explore and try to understand Jesus’s fierce and apparently uncompromising words.  I suppose there must be theological angles I don’t yet, and cannot hope to, understand.

THE PEACE OF GOD, WHICH PASSES ALL UNDERSTANDING

But I remember the prayer spoken as a blessing at the end of the services of Holy Communion I attended when I was a teenager:

The peace of God,

which passes all understanding,

keep your hearts and minds

in the knowledge and love of God,

and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord;

and the blessing of God almighty,

the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,

be among you and remain with you always.

This tender, gentle but powerful benediction stays with me after all these years as a reminder that peace is present, always, in spite of, beyond, outer conditions!  Be on this earth but not of it.  John17:14-15

The experience of true peace, the peace of God spoken of in the prayer above, might become possible if, as we watch for resolution in the Middle East, we (without for one minute condoning anything, nor denying one’s very human and understandable feelings of horror and anger) nevertheless put our feelings gently to one side in order to surrender up all our opinions and feelings to God.

Yes, even our empathy for the Palestinians!   Yes, even our heartbreak for the Israelis, and, yes, even our utter horror at the savagery of Hamas!  Can we do this knowing that a pure unfaltering focus on God, in other words even an intention to embrace unconditional ‘good’, a heartfelt wish for progress which serves all, can be the only choice if grace is to be given space?  

On an invisible but very tangible level this grace might be seen in the effect of the powerful electro-magnetic fields, resonating with love (or, if you like, qualities of love such as understanding, blessing, willingness, gratitude, appreciation), emanating from countless people who want good for all!  

(www.heartmath.org/articles-of-the-heart/global-interconnectedness/each-individual-impacts-the-field-environment/)

On a rather fanciful level maybe, this could be seen as the creation of endless gossamer waves, delicate but as strong as steel, filling the atmosphere.   They may even be mistaken for angels!  

But, visible or not, this consciously chosen attitude of grace may turn the tide.  It may bring unexpected insights, ideas, solutions that weren’t available before because the static in our anxious minds was distorting and blocking the 'small, still voice' within!

It may affect even the hearts of countless politicians of various hues whose pursuit of power, after all, surely only speaks of their own God-shaped vacuums?

Rumi, the divinely inspired Sufi poet, wrote:

Beyond your ideas of right and wrong

There is a field.

I will meet you there.

GOD’S CHOSEN PEOPLE?

We read in Isaiah 49:6 (English Standard Version):

“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

Might Israel be ‘a light for the nations’?  It’s not clear at the moment how that might be so, politically or theologically.  Not on the surface. 

But how ironic it would be, especially to the many who regard Israel as the sole villain in this horrible war, that the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, and the resultant conflicts stemming from its presence, may eventually be seen, at least by "those with eyes to see”, to be the very opening of the channel of light that finally brings lasting and absolute awareness to the world’s nations as to how polarity perpetuates hate and disunity and, thus, holds us from God.

Certainly this situation challenges us to examine where we truly stand in our relationship to ourselves, to each other and to God.  Where do I take sides?  What do I consider 'right' and 'wrong'? Would I be willing to kill, or be willing to justify killing, to support a ‘righteous’ cause? 

Like Charlie Kirk's widow could I, in the face of agonising pain and loss, feel that emotion and yet at the same time reach for a place of forgiveness?  I don’t know, to be honest. 

But I finish with this, a Celtic version of our Lord’s Prayer.  It serves as a reminder to me of at least my aspiration to find a loving way that seeks the good of all.

Holy One beyond all names

Eternal Wellspring

May love rise again in us today

With food for every table

Shelter for every family

And reverence for every life

Forgive us our failings in love

And free us from all falseness

That the light of our souls may shine

And the strength of our spirits endure

For Earth and all its people

This day, tonight, and forever.  

Amen

by John Philip Newell

The Celtic cross.  

The cross, I believe, symbolises heaven and earth intersecting, with the horizontal, ‘earth’, presenting the challenging but very necessary polarities intended to bring consciousness, combined with the vertical, ‘heaven’, signifying the opportunity to integrate God, into our earthly life. 

The circle symbolises the ultimate aim, which is the unity that comes when those polarities are transcended in the name of God.