Love and Evil

St Paul speaks to us of love in Corinthians chapter 12 and 13. Love is patient and love is kind and without love all is for nothing.

He tells us also to not brood over wrongdoings.

We understand this to mean when someone does us wrong we need to let it go and in the context of his speaking of love we do this because we love.

We love not only the other person, even when it is not reciprocated, but we love ourselves enough to know that brooding or dwelling on it and being angry over an offense to us does not do us any good, but hurts us more than the person who we perceive as doing us wrong.

This is a truth even the pagans understand.

But we can find ourselves forgetting this admonishment from Paul means to not brood over any and all wrong doings to us. Like when we are injured in a fall or have an accident. Maybe it is clear who caused the event or maybe like falling on ice it is the weather or our own fault for forgetting the risk we are taking venturing out on the ice or up the wet ladder. Maybe it was the brokenness of man that led to cancer or illness.

Who should we be angry with then?

Paul says, do not brood over wrongdoing. Does it not extend to all wrong doing and evil done to us? Are there boundaries that we pick and choose who and what is included?

No, the effect on our spirit is the same. So we must choose to hold on to love in our life and in gratitude for what we have and all blessings, even in the face of injury or illness. It is then we must let go and choose love again.

In our losses and our illness and injury our question should not be who did this, so we can direct our wrath rightly, but what will we do with it. We may never know who wronged us at work or elsewhere. We may never understand why we had an accident. We may never understand fully why we suffer illness.

We do know our Father in heaven loves us. We do know God is love and as children of God, children of love, we too are at our best when love rules our heart.

But it is not easy when we are wronged, or our loved ones are wronged. We might then feel it is even appropriate to take action, at least in words in defense of those we love, but if we do that, we have terminated living in love and now are living with vengeance, hostility, anger and maybe resentment. We are back to brooding.

We hurt. We are going to get ill and even cancer.

It is then we must love more. Not the injury or illness or evil done to us but certainly all people involved and love ourself not to allow evil to direct our actions.

How we react to wrong doings tells us who we are. Are we children of love, or anger and sorrow.

Each day we must choose anew to hold onto love. As St Paul says,

“Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, it is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.”