The right is wrong

The horror that struck Norway is also our horror. What makes that horror more terrible is that it was perpetrated in the name of Christianity. Europe’s extreme right pretends to embody that Christianity.

They say they are Christian brothers bent on saving us from Islam. Their manner of behaving – even when it does not reach the dreadfulness evidenced in Norway – is neither Christian nor brotherly. Their hate is the antithesis of Christianity and brotherhood.

Our Bible is different. It communicates God’s intense love for us as shown through events in history. Its composition and style reflects the spirit of the age when it was written and the stage in humanity’s appreciation of God.

God is sometimes communicated as if He is a human being. The spirit of vengeance and savagery present in man’s behaviour in different eras is attributed to divine.

Some of the passages of the Old Testament are crude indeed. The carnage of Norway pales into insignificance.

However, little by little, humans started to realise and appreciate more that men and women were created in the image of God, not vice-versa.

It is much better for humans to emulate the attributes of God than to try and thrust on God the finite attributes and miserable imperfections of humans. Humans then started to discover a God who was a loving Father and a tender mother. Read Isaiah and taste the tenderness of this God.

However, this discovery was just the prelude to the discovery of the Father as shown to us by Jesus Christ and daily made present to us by the Holy Spirit. Our God is Love.

God became man so that man could experience and share in the divine. Christ became the human, loving, tender face of God. He was the God who sacrificed himself for humans instead of expecting humans to sacrifice their dear ones to Him.

Christ communicated to us the weaker side of God, that is, one not able to carry his own cross without the help of others. He can, therefore, surely understand our weakness. This is a God so tender that tears rolled down His cheeks when confronted by the sufferings and death of others.

He is a God so strong when confronted with the arrogance of the priestly caste, the Pharisee fundamentalists and the snobs called Sadducees. These three groups thought they had some hold on God. They believed they could tell Him what He should think and do; whom He should save or condemn.

They were wrong. The God who invested the blood of His only Son in us poor sinners is not going to let anyone dictate to Him whom to save or whom to condemn.

This God does not see people as men or women, white or black, Christians, Muslims or non-believers. This God sees people as sons and daughters; His sons and daughters.

Throughout the centuries this Love was debased and abused, many times, sacrilegiously, as it was debased and abused supposedly in the ‘service’ of this very Love.

Sometimes this abuse had the blessing of those in authority who should have known better. Now it is being abused by these fanatics who call themselves Christian Brothers.

The so-called Christian Brothers of Europe’s far right got stuck in some dark passage of the Old Testament.

They live hundreds of years away from the Christ they say they want to defend and light years away from the spirit He fosters and breathes.

The right has definitively got it wrong.

joseph.borg@um.edu.mt