I can’t remember taking any major risks recently. I take minor risks all the time. I don’t like to skip the daily prompts. I’d be afraid that I’d break the habit. That last scary thing was going to the dentist yesterday to have my teeth cleaned. You never know when you might get excruciating pain as he pokes around your mouth, but it only lasts for a few moments. And it wasn’t a pleasant experience, but it’ll do me good.
I often wonder how I’d cope under real torture. Sometimes, I watch history shows of England during the Reformation when people were tortured into betraying their Catholic or Protestant friends. It happened all over Europe. Nowadays, parts of the middle east and Africa seem quite scary because of Isis, Hamas, Al‑Qaeda Core, Hezbollah, Boko Haram, Al-Shanaab and so on. But following the Reformation and sometimes before, Europe was quite a scary place if you didn’t tow the line about religion. In fact, I can even remember hearing horrific stories of Irish terrorists torturing and murdering people in my lifetime.
Some years ago, I stumbled on this video, which begins with a young child whose mother was murdered weeks before the 1994 ceasefire. One wonders what the point was if they were about to stop the violence anyway.
I was very moved by what the little girl said about 1 minute into the video. She wondered who could stop the violence and if God could stop it. This was before her own mother was murdered.
I’m pleased that the violence has ended in Ireland. You might hear of the odd incident, but things have changed. And I hope and pray that we’ll see the same across the world. There’s nothing wrong with disagreement about religion, politics and ideologies. But surely we can disagree without tribalism and hatred towards those outside out tribe. And you would hope that people would be confident enough in their own message without terrorizing or bribing people into following their religion. You don’t get true believers that way. And whatever religion I was, I’d like it to consist of true believers who love God and love others, whatever their faith.
Anyway, what’s all that got to do with my dentist visit? As I sat there, I did feel terrified, and I was tempted to ask him to stop and leave. But perhaps it gave me a taste of what some people have had to endure for their faith in various parts of the world and down through history. And most of all, I think of Jesus being crucified. My goal was to have my teeth cleaned. His goal was to have the joy of rescuing millions from eternal judgement in hell. Maybe I shouldn’t compare myself with Christ, but if we didn’t know what awful pain was, we wouldn’t understand what hell is and we wouldn’t understand the physical torture that Christ endured for us. And it wasn’t only physical. We can never know how deep it went.
Matthew 26:38
38 Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”
1 Peter 2:21-14
21 To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. 22 “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.” 23 When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. 24 “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”
Hibernia Gospel 