Reflection on the shadow side:”natural disasters, illness, incurable pain, death and grief.

Nature has its shadow side. It is easy to praise a creator or feel at one with nature when the sun is shining, the blossoms are out and Spring is all around us. But there is a shadow side; natural disasters, illness, incurable pain, death and grief. Lest we think we can separate out deliberate forms of human evil, we have to admit that we too are a part of nature. Our hatreds, violence, greeds, and unkindnesses are as natural as earthquakes, floods, bushfires and illness. The only difference is that the suffering we cause seems to come, at least in part, from the choices that we make. The seas do not decide to inundate the land in the way that we decide to go to war or take more than our share of the world’s resources. But our deciding does not make our choices unnatural; there is just a different natural process at work behind the activity which is our deciding and the actions that flow from these decisions.

We have just celebrated Easter, the greatest of all Christian celebrations. The one who died has risen from the dead. On the cross, Jesus was embraced by the shadow side of human nature: God succumbed to a painful death meted out upon Jesus by the worst of human nature. But Jesus rose from the dead, so does that make it okay?

In ‘Faith and Fratricide’ the American theologian Rosemary Reuther wrote:

“The crucifixion of the Messiah by the unredeemed forces of history cannot be overcome by the proclamation of Easter and then transformed into a secret triumph. Easter gives no licence to vilify those who cannot “see it”. Indeed, we must see that Easter does not cancel the crucifixion at all. There is no triumph in history. Easter is the hope against what remains the continuing reality of the cross”.

We still live in the shadow of the cross – we still see it in our inhumanity to one another, in our failure to see and treat the rest of creation as our fellow creatures, as our brothers and sisters, children of the same God Christians call Father. We so often see our fellow creatures as a means to an end, rather than ends in and of themselves.

Yes, it is easy to embrace the beauty and the light, but how should we live in the knowledge and experience of creation’s shadow side and our part in it?

Easter is not moment in history, nearly two thousand ago. Easter is a process that began nearly two thousand years ago, and one that continues. In being incorporated, integrated into, and invited to share in the life of God in Jesus Christ, we have not become perfect, we are being perfected and recreated. This is the hope with which we live, and which sustains us in making good choices. Choosing hope is choosing the light. It is not choosing perfection but the hope of it. It is choosing to learn about and understand the world. It is choosing in our everyday living, in small and sustainable ways, the virtues of compassion, love and kindness, and to cultivate an attitude of diligence and perseverance towards them.