When confronted by people who have so completely given themselves over to evil that there is no good quality to love—I’m talking about people who weaponize love, rejoice in suffering, and delight in maliciousness—how do we find a way to love such people without succumbing to their evil?
As with so many important spiritual principles, the answer may lie in something we usually interpret as weakness.
Jesus was “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” [1] We’re used to thinking of grief as something broken or something to heal from. But what if, in the context of a sinful and broken world, grief is the only healthy response?
What if the reason Jesus was so well-acquainted with grief was that it was the natural outpouring of love?
Social media has provided this helpful definition:
Grief is love with no place to go.
What if grief—something we usually consider weak and broken—is the only godly orientation towards people who have so completely given themselves over to evil?
We don’t rejoice over their eventual destruction. We grieve over who they could have been, what their lives might have been like—if only they’d been willing to embrace the Light that shines in the darkness. But the darkness comprehends it not. [2]
One day, those who have given themselves over to evil will face its consequences. This is a tragedy. They could have been forgiven, redeemed, and transformed into beautiful, vibrant people rejoicing in the goodness of God rather than their own depravity.
It didn’t have to be this way.
And so we grieve.
NOTES
[1] Isaiah 53:3.
[2] See John 1:5.
