Grace. (3 of 3)

[The last in a series of posts on Grace, excerpted from personal correspondence.]

"you can accept something with grace - like, without jealousy or anger or pride or vanity or whatnot."

-Right; I think that's true. This is a case of you extending grace to someone else, right: like taking someone's apology, when they have no way to force you to do it.

"can you struggle for grace? is it something to fight for?"

-I think you can struggle to give grace. But you can never struggle to receive it (because that would be earning it, making someone give you grace).
-But you can struggle with giving grace: because, like I said above, we're sinful. And because we're sinful, whatever we are supposed to do, we dislike doing; and whatever we're not supposed to do, we like doing. So, in the same way we were made to be like God, we were made to give grace; and, in the same way that we fail, daily, to be like God, we fail to give grace.

"if you have to fight for it is it somehow no longer grace?"

-I think it is still grace; the struggle, in the case of struggling to give grace, comes not because what you are giving is not truly grace; it comes because we, as flawed individuals, are unaccustomed to doing what is supposed to come naturally to us (in one of the analogies above: our lungs, filled with water, choke as we try to force in air).

"does it then equate to something akin to charity?"

-I think so. I think, really, that it all comes down to charity: our existence comes down to charity, to receiving something that is not ours to demand, but was, in God's abundance, God's to give.

"is that a totally irrelevant question if all of people's actions are a component of a god-given world?"

-I don't think it is. Yes, all of people's actions are a component of a God-given world; but just because we work within God's given framework doesn't mean that each individual action that we perform is directly licensed by and caused by God (if so, that's an incredibly messed-up version of a deity that I really don't want anything to do with). God created us with free will (if you want to talk about why, there's a whole separate discussion there), and I do think that us having free will is for the greater good. And I do think that God will, at the end of everything, make everything Right, for forever. But, in-between, there is a lot of us messing up, and God cleaning up after us, and us messing up again, etc.

Much love;

-jglc

Grace. (2 of 3)

[The second in a series of reflections on Grace, excerpted from personal correspondence.]

Who Gets It?
I said that Grace is offered to all, and I think that is true. From the sickest pedophile, to the cleanest-living Mormon, to the most hypocritical Protestant, to the loneliest homeless kid. I do think that is true. And Grace is unconditionally offered: God does not discriminate based on past, present, or future sins; God is not interested in striking a bargain of good behavior with us. Grace is ours, free for the taking, and we can have total surety in the assurance that this grace is effective and aesthetically ideal.

But, as I mentioned above: "faith without works is dead." I do not think that this means that faith can be alive but then, due to a paucity of good works, sort of sputter off and die. But I think it does mean that there is real, living, Grace-giving faith; and a kind of faith that is faith in name only, faith that calls itself faith, that says outwardly "I have received Grace", but, on the inside, never really understands what Grace means. And a present, even if freely and repeatedly offered, if it is rejected, or left unopened, languishes in neglect.

Then there are the tricky cases: people who never hear about Christianity? People who were abused by religion, who now hate the word "God"? All the good people, who lead beautiful lives of selflessness and yet never assent to the truths of my particular form of theology. What about them?

I could go into great length on each case, but I think two broad strokes might suffice to give you the general picture: (1) Everyone, from the best of us, to the worst of us, has broken the relationship we were supposed to maintain with God. And, again, no matter how well we live - no matter how hard we try to undo our brokenness, or to earn it back - Grace cannot be earned. BUT: (2) I don't know what it means to accept Grace, either. I know it has something to do with loving God, with realizing our inability to do it on our own. But I do not know exactly what the minimum standard of "wanting to find God" is, to qualify one as having accepted the gift of Grace. But I'm not interested in the minimum: sure, maybe I'd be OK if I weren't actively working on my relationship with God. But, believing that this relationship is precisely the point of my existence, I would be silly to abandon it; and kind of a jerk to my friends, if I were to give up on them finding and cultivating the same relationship that brings me such total fulfillment.

What About Human Grace?
So, if we're talking about grace, it would be silly or dismissive to avoid talking about the grace that we, as humans, give one another. But, in order to get to the point where I can address this mundane human grace, I think we need to understand what I believe the greatest Grace to be: because the two are, in my mind, intrinsically the same.

There's this idea, in most religions, that God made Man in God's own image, right? Adam and Eve and all that stuff. And that doesn't mean (though maybe it does also mean this) that we look physically like God. That means that, whatever we do, is a reflection of something that God does or can do. So our love, our care, anything in our relationships with others is an imitation of God's Love, Care, and so on, in the same way that anything a man or woman does can be traced to their parents, mentors, friends, media inspirations, etc. (even if they have placed some innovative twist or spin on it).

[Last, to close: addressing questions raised.]

Grace. (1 of 3)

[Some thoughts on grace, excerpted from personal correspondence.]

All right.

You ready? Sit down for this one, it's gonna be long. Feel free to read thru in a few sittings.

I have been wanting to get back to this question, for quite some time.

Grace is such a difficult thing to talk about, primarily because it is so mystical (mystical in the purest, least "religiousy" way possible... mystical in the sense of transcending what we are used to thinking about), so personal, and so rarely seen. That said, I think that the core of Christian faith and belief must be Grace: so it is also an incredibly important thing to talk about. So I'll try.

Let me see... OK. First things first: I am gonna say what I think Grace is, including what it's not, where it comes from (both in a mundane and divine way, though [as you could probably guess] I think the two are actually the same), and then, based on those beliefs/definitions, address some questions commonly raised.

What Is Grace?
I think the simplest and most impactful definition I've heard is simply this: Grace is receiving what we don't deserve. But packed into that definition (really more of a description, actually), is a lot of mind-twisting thought.

For one: by definition, we cannot deserve grace. And thus, grace is something that cannot be worked for; nor can it be pursued, strived for (one of my favorite Bible verses says that "equality with God is not something to be grasped"), or earned in any way. This is one of the biggest, worst, most fundamental mistakes that people (even many of the Christian faithful) make: they confuse the grace of and from God with something that we work to get. And so you get people "doing the right things" to "stay out of hell".

Nahhhhh.

[Side note: there is a point to doing "good" things, even after receiving grace: doing good things is a response to receiving Grace. It serves as a sort of sign that receiving Grace has changed us, and that it has really impacted our lives in a meaningful and life-altering fashion (another favorite verse says, "faith without works is dead").]

So, grace is something that we don't deserve, but that we receive. More than that: Grace is something that we don't deserve, but we need. It is literally vital to us: without grace, not only will we die, but we are dead. Grace is like the air in CPR, being breathed into unresponsive lungs. The lungs are made for that air, will quickly die and atrophy without it, but cannot, on their own, pull that needed air into themselves.

Why is this? It seems stupid for something to be made (humans) that intrinsically need something that they cannot grab hold of (grace), right? What kind of designer (ahh shades of "intelligent design" rhetoric... sorry.) would do something as stupid and broken as that?

Why Do We Need Grace?
Well, it comes back to a pretty oft-repeated topic: sin. What we humans nowadays consider to be our "natural" state is not the state of our nature as intended at creation (and I don't mean some dogmatic anti-scientific Creationist creation, either, I mean, at the metaphysical point where God designed the human). We were created to love God and to be loved by God; to know our Creator and be known by the Creator. But at some point in the history of our race - a point that is repeated in each of our individual lives - we broke ourselves. We were greedy, or fearful, or weak in some other way, and we heeded our own understanding of our purpose instead of the understanding of our Creator. And so we removed ourselves from that love, care, and nurture that was supposed to be the air in our spiritual lungs, replacing it with some noxious fluid of our own creation. And so now we lie, on the beach of this earth, gasping for nourishment. It is my fault, not the Creator's.

But, thank God (literally), the Creator still has a purpose for us; God still holds onto God's perfect love for us, despite our having abandoned it. So God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves: the Creator seizes the Creation and provides for us. It is my absolute and convicted belief that the way in which God provided that Grace (which is, really, a sub-heading of the greater umbrella of Love) is by a living act of sacrifice, the act and person of Jesus Christ.

Because, you see, Grace is free and offered to all (we'll get to it), but it is not cheap: to breath air into a victim's lungs, the person administering CPR must sacrifice her own air, right? It takes work to resuscitate the near-dead.

So this great illness that besets us - this fragmented person, this broken identity, this thing that is not as it ought to be - has to be made right, at some great cost; and, in the Christian faith, that cost was Jesus Christ, a perfect God and a sinless (and hence unbroken) Man, condescending to our level and taking our sins on himself. Dirtying himself, to clean us off. Which we in no way deserved, but which God wanted to give us. No child deserves a present - have they ever truly earned it? - but yet good parents love to give good things to their capricious children :)

[Next: Who gets Grace? And then - closing questions.]

wise words

Pastoral advice from MC Naledge of Kidz in the Hall:

"...I don’t have to make the whole “this is the socially-conscious record” with a bunch of opinions, metaphors, big words and similes. I can just tell you a story and sometimes that’s what people need. They wanna feel like the music is genuine. I’m just saying shit from my heart and what’s going on in my life. It makes the music easier to perform and easier for me to rest my case. If you like it, you like it. If you don’t, you don’t. This is me." (The Smoking Section, March 2010)

Mourning

My friend Landon is one of the more inspirational presences in which I've ever been. A lanky transplant from Vermont, I described him the other day as "something of an urban Tom Bombadil", JRR Tolkien's cheery mystical nature-presence. Landon stoops on a dingy subway platform to scoop up trash; when we meet in Manhattan, en route to his house uptown, he inevitably winds up at Harlem House with palms stretched out over fast food bags, paper trash, and plastic bottles, depositing them in his trash can or recycling bin. Landon talks to strangers when it is incredibly inappropriate, and Landon smiles at people in a city where glances shouldn't - don't - linger too long.

Landon is either incredibly deluded, in extremely specific ways, or an unprecedented blessing to this city around him.

I trailed behind Landon yesterday, as he wound his joy-bearing way through the city, wondering where my own sense of childlike glee and sharing went. After all, isn't this world meant to be a community? And community relies upon openness.

Yes, this is an idealistic thought - but I am OK with being an idealist. They don't crucify men for being realistic: a realist is accepted, even if disagreed-with. An idealist is scorned, even when agreed-with.

This is mourning, I think. I'm discovering that to mourn cannot be equated with merely being sad. Mourning is harder, and better, than sadness. To be sad is to feel sadness. Mourning is not an emotion - mourning is a process. You know, I am sure - we all know, I believe - that feeling of an utter and unbelievable frustration, when all that is within you cries out that this should be but then all that is without you shouts back but it will not. When there is something you truly, really hope for - not just want, but need - and yet everything tells you, you cannot have it!

This is the definition of mourning I'm coming to have: the state of disengagement between what should be and what is.

The loss of innocence. I look into my life, and I see my innocence dying. Harsh language - towards myself, towards other people, towards the world - comes faster to my lips. I'm a little faster to be cynical; my laughter sounds mocking, sarcastic. I no longer just laugh; I have to laugh at things. All of us express it in different ways:

-We drink a little more.
-We go farther or faster when we hook up.
-We value money more, and our dreams less.

Loss of innocence. I think this is what happens when we mourn at length, without hope. We lose our innocence - our dreams of what should be. What is an "innocent thought"?

-That love means not getting divorced?
-That innocent people won't get hurt?
-That a community can be a real reflection of love, acceptance, and forgiveness?
-That our purpose in this world is to make a change, not only to make a living?
-That people can care for a stranger?
-That it will be better to do what is right than what is easy?

These are all hopes that I know I've had - that I'm sure some of you have had - that my experience of this world tries daily to shut down. To tell me is my own idiocy, ridiculousness.

But WHATEVER! WHAT. EVER. I am OK with being ridiculous! This is something that the world did not expect. I am OK with being a fool, being an idiot. No, I want to be more of a fool. If that means being more like Landon - being more like Lucas - being more like Jesus of Nazareth, the ridiculous son of a carpenter who said that he was God - then YOU LOSE, WORLD. You are powerless over me, because I don't care about being made a fool.

Well. I do. But I don't want to. I'm going to pray to continue to find the strength to keep on mourning.

Matthew 5:4 - Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted.

The Responsibility of Christians in Art.

[A talk originally presented during Café a Dieu, at The Golden Center, on 04.04.2009.]

The first personal encounter with art that I can recall comes from the age of ten, when my sister and I attended a class taught by a professional artist from our church. Once a week, we would pick up our sketchbooks and shoeboxes full of art supplies, be packed up in the back of our minivan, and dropped off at a church classroom. There, Mrs. Barrett would teach us about perspective, colors, or shading, then turn us loose, pencils and oil paints in hand. Our parents, as they arrived to pick us up, were be greeted by arms filled with paintings and sketches, the fruits of our labors and their monthly tuition checks.

Even now, returning home, I still occasionally come across sketchbooks filled with my youthful handiwork. Browsing through the artwork, I often wonder what my mother must have thought, every week, as her son returned bearing page after page of lovingly, painstakingly, and poorly drawn STAR WARS spaceships.

My mother has preserved sketchbooks that are literally filled, cover to cover, with illustrations of X-Wings, TIE Fighters, and the occasional attempt to illustrate the Battle of the Death Star. And, let me tell you: what I lacked in aesthetic skill, I more than made up for in productivity.

By high school, I had begun to regard these drawings with a hint of embarrassment. It wasn’t that I had grown artistically; but I had grown ashamed of my youthful enthusiasm for Luke Skywalker. Recalling my younger artistic streak, I would wonder what could possibly have motivated my parents to store such pitiful things away so carefully.

Reflecting back now, I think I’ve begun to understand why my parents saved those drawings. It’s not that my art - in either content or execution - was of any aesthetic value. But they are still dear to them because of what they represent: memories of me running up to my mom after class, bearing my latest work, filled with the childish joy and simple pride of spending my youthful reserves of skill and energy to produce something just for her. And, while my mother has never been a STAR WARS fanatic, her love for me transformed my interests and delight into her own. For this reason, I think, my mother finds twofold pleasure in that artwork: first, as a symbol of her importance to me; and, second, as a genuine representation of me as I was at the time; my childhood interests and passions.

I suspect that the work of a Christian Artist is best performed when it stems from similar desires, turned towards God: beyond displays of ability, or the production of aesthetically stunning works, the Christian who finds herself engaged in Art is engaged in the same pursuit as that child painting, singing, or dancing for his loving parents: we are conveying, to God, His unequalled significance to us; and we are producing work that brings its audience into an honest encounter with the truth of our love and passions.

I. To convey to God our unequalled enjoyment of Him.

These may sound vague: what does it mean to tell God that He is of unequalled importance to us?

The first answer that springs to mind comes from the Protestant and Catholic catechisms, which open by addressing the goals of human existence: in the Reformed Church’s Westminster Shorter Catechism, the first question is asked, What is the chief end of man?, and this answer provided: Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever. Similarly, the Second Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church begins with a prologue that trumpets that “The Life of Man” has as its purpose “To Know and Love God”.

To Know God; to Glorify Him; to enjoy Him; to Love Him. If these are the primary ends for which we, as Christians, believe we have been created, how do we pursue them? How do we, limited, weak, fragile human beings, bring Glory to an almighty God?

In 1^st Peter Chapter 2, Verse 9, the apostle writes that “you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, so that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” Receiving the love and care of a vast and intimate God uniquely enables us to bring Him glory by proclaiming in His presence our joy at having seen ourselves “called out of darkness, into His wonderful light”. We were once guilty of an infinitely terrible crime, and faced with an infinite punishment, the only escape from which comes by an infinite grace, which, having been received, evokes in us infinite gratitude and joy.

And, in just the same way that my youthful dedication to my parents led me to hand them the fruits of my artistic labor – poorly executed, but faithfully offered – our infinite gratitude to God finds its expression in faithfully handing Him the poor fruits of our lives: our paintings and poems, songs and dances. In every facet of our selves, including the artistic, it is right to find ourselves desiring, first and foremost, to bring God praise, by demonstrating the quality and abundance of our lives in Him. As we begin to understand what it really means to be saved by grace, this desire to respond in joyful gratitude begins to push out all the other competing desires and patrons clamoring for our attention and service.

But, there is an objection that can be raised to all this; after all, it may sound troubling to limit the scope of our artistic expression simply to those things which bring God glory. After all, why can’t we let art be free of such external constraints, let it simply be “art for art’s sake”?

Well, for one thing, love, even as it brings freedom, also necessitates limits. Any mutual love imposes on the lives of those whom it touches; but it is a joyful imposition! Yes, Love limits us; it limits us in our impatience, when we desire to withhold forgiveness; It restrains us in our jealousy, in our boasting, in our pride, and in our anger. Love, when truly tasted, makes us long to stare into its depths and lose sight of everything else as we contemplate and adore the object of our love.

II. To provide audiences an honest encounter with the truth we find surrounding us.

And also, by saying that our art should bring God glory, I don’t simply mean that the truths we convey have to be uniformly pleasant.

A natural part of becoming a Christian is that a man gradually finds himself peering into two worlds at once: the world that is “real-at-the-moment”, and the world of “actual reality.” The world of the moment is the world of suffering, of distance, of sin; but, being brought more and more sharply into focus as we grow more familiar with God, is the world as it actually was intended to be: a world of peace, of intimacy, of healing and loving unity.

This is what I mean by saying that it the second goal of the Christian Artist to provide the audience with an honest encounter of truth: God’s revelation of Himself – at once intimately personal and immensely large-scale – provides the Christian with two points of view, both of which serve the artist as inspiration. To limit the scope of artistic revelation to one or another of these viewpoints rings false: while our hope is sure and our faith secure, to claim that we can distill our experience of Christ into feel-good, pastel-colored images of serenity and passivity is a dramatic oversimplification. If we do so, we create kitsch, a shallow sentimentality that is the opposite of Good Art, because it has no connection to the complex experiences and dreams of the audiences we invite to partake in the artistic experience with us.

The opposite oversimplification – presenting the dire state of sin, while withholding a sense of overpowering hope – is equally poor art, for it is also untrue. As Christians, for whom “in all things, we are more than conquerors, because of Christ who loved us” (Rom. 8:37), it is disingenuous to pretend that our eternal well-being can be jeopardized by the passing and momentary ills of this world.

We Christians have space to discuss both despair and hope precisely because our hope can be counted on to endure. In the Christian life, there is room for both the sad truth of the fallen world as well as the glad tidings of the redemption that is beginning to shine through its cracks. After all, without death, resurrection is meaningless; but, without resurrection, death is simply a cold, inevitable end-of-story. So it is necessary to present, in our every creative work, the full trajectory of the Gospel, never shrinking from honestly portraying the total story of fallenness and redemption; but always hinting at glimpses of the Hope to overcome the despair, and the Comforter who seeks us out in our loneliness.

Art expresses the truth, hope, and passion that we have found, or want to find, in the world around us. At age 10, I found my passion in STAR WARS; and my art reflected that. But now, for today, and tomorrow, and increasingly as the days pass, that passion is focused on the being and character of God. And I hope that the work of my hands can come to daily reflect that focused passion more and more.

Once, I drew pictures of spaceships, and happily presented the results of my work to my parents. Today, right now, we are all creating, not just as artists, but as humans going about our daily lives. I pray that we can, one day, happily present the results to our Heavenly Father.

To the rulers.

¹⁰ The righteous will be glad when they are avenged,
when they bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked.

¹¹ Then men will say,
"Surely the righteous still are rewarded;
surely there is a God who judges the earth."

(Psalm 58:10-11)

Finding myself the sole attendant at our nightly prayer meeting on Monday, I scrolled through my Bible and found myself face-to-face with Psalm 58. Ever since, I've been reflecting, mulling over these verses.

Even a preliminary read-through reveals the stark and gory tone of Verse 10, contrasting even with the angry and intense need seeping throughout David's repeated cries for divine retribution against his persecutors. The image - a man rejoicing in his enemy's maiming and thorough slaughter, dabbling his feet in the carnage - is shocking. Horrific. This isn't your grandmomma's Bible (actually, it probably is - I've discover that grandmommas can be shocking and wonderfully incisive individuals).

Being honest, part of me recoils to read these verses. Even as I worked my way through them again, my mind squirmed - wriggling left and right to find a way to excuse, to write off these words, anything to distance myself from their utter gore, the naked anger and vengeful bloodthirst that roars from the lines.

But there simply isn't a convenient answer. To write them off as uninspired, merely human, ungodly, calls into question what I hold most dearly, most truly Good: that the Bible is, in its entirety, precisely the fantastical sort of artifact or relic of which dreams and stories boast, around which epics are constructed and over which kingdoms were wagered. It is such, precisely because at its core it is the inspiration and mind of God brought into language, in the very same way that Jesus Messiah is the person of God brought into human flesh.

But then what? If the Bible is inspired - for every reader, in every context - then there must be something in these words for me: "The righteous will be glad when they are avenged, when they bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked." Should I, then, look forward to divine vengeance being called down upon my enemies - to the slaughter of all who have wronged and slighted me?

I don't think so.

¹ Do you rulers indeed speak justly?
Do you judge uprightly among men?

² No, in your heart you devise injustice,
and your hands mete out violence on the earth.

(Psalm 58:1-2)

The word translated above (in the NIV) rulers is only found twice in the entire Bible, and once - here - in its content (the other is the title of Psalm 56).

Variously translated gods, congregation, or judges, this word implies a silent host - the root is a word, silenced or made dumb - of distant and careless men passing judgment arbitrarily, with no thought in mind to the well-being of either accuser or accused. By referencing these judges with this term, the question answers itself:
do they speak justly? Do they judge uprightly? No!

They are, in fact, not judges at all: for, as verse 2 continues speaking, these men "devise injustice... mete out violence on the earth." These men are, in fact, anti-judges: rather than prescribing all that is Good and Just, they pronounce hatred, evil, violence - wickedness.

The men being addressed by David are thugs, plain and simple. And evil, whether through physical might or instead the subtleties of political, economic, or social power, is not content in merely wallowing in its own depravity. Hatred is no more than a cheap perversion of love: and, as love desires another beside itself to serve, sacrifice for, and rejoice in, hatred finds its depressive slyness most low and darkly attractive when there is someone whom it can oppress. In addressing these wicked rulers, David implicitly notes the presence of a third party in the equation: the oppressed.

So, from the very first verse of this Psalm, there are two parties: the evil men, silently and wantonly immoral, to whom David addresses himself; and their oppressed.

In which group do we find the righteous?

It's not an enormous leap of logic to see that David is identifying the righteous with the oppressed. Having been oppressed, these righteous men do and will cry out to a Heavenly Judge - and find Him, in the end (Verse 11), not silent on the subject of the farce of justice that has been contrived by the wicked judges. As the True Judge comes forth, the wicked judges will be crushed, dismantled, maimed - and the righteous will rejoice, their sufferings not forgotten, but transformed into victory over their oppressors.

Who am I?

Having this revelation, you would think that my curiosity over these verses would have been satisfied. But rather to the contrary, I instead found myself rather discomforted. The source of the discomfort being, I found, this uncomfortable inquiry: to which of these parties do I belong?

After all, while I would love to identify myself with the righteous (who wouldn't?), I don't know if I can honestly do so. If, as I suspect, David is equating the righteous with the oppressed - and the wicked, conversely, with the oppressors - I don't know if I can in any clear conscience label myself as the former. While I have been slighted - hurt - even, perhaps, abused - I cannot say that I find myself the victim of some grand scheme of social, political, or religious neglect. I have no impotent rage, no tears of frustration and soul-shaking indignation at the wrongness of the world around me. My parents are not slave labor, living in a heap of waste; my sister has not been kidnapped to be raped; I am not being forced to kill, to labor, to die. Unlike the majority of the world's population, I - at least, at the moment - am not being conned, manipulated, coerced, or exploited to a gross degree.

But if I am not being oppressed.... then is it possible (is it?) that I am the oppressor?

Am I the one whose money is being funnelled - whether through taxes, discretionary spending, or the corporations providing my daily needs - into entities and companies whose actions are destroying the lives, bodies, and dignity of the oppressed? Am I - in my Nike shoes and Levi's belt, using my Toshiba computer and eating my McDonald's burgers - telling men and women that I'm OK, they can go ahead and use that underage labor, destroy small businesses, and corrupt entire countries' water tables, clean air, and forests?

I don't know if I am. I pray that I am not - but I fear that I am. And thinking this, reading through Psalm 58 again, I shudder. Because the True Judge is coming, and His coming is certain; and when He comes, He will judge the earth - He will bring Justice to the oppressed and oppressor alike.

Do I find myself on the side of the oppressed, the hurt, the poor - the victorious, the saved, the redeemed?

Or am I, too, yet another one of those who abuse, exploit, commodify - the wicked, the oppressors, the ones at whose downfall their enemies will rejoice and heaven will say, now all is made well

I shudder, and I pray.