Daily Reading for November 13
No nation is well served by illusions of its righteousness. All nations make decisions based on self-interest and then defend them in the name of morality. Saint Augustine gave excellent advice not only to individuals but to nations as well when he said, “Never fight evil as if it were something that arose totally outside of yourself.” He was reflecting Saint Paul’s “all have sinned and fallen short.” It is tempting, of course, to believe that some have sinned—for example, “that evil empire”—or that “most have sinned, but not us.” Paul’s insistence, however, that all have sinned makes an important point: if we are not one with our enemies in love, at least we are one with them in sin, which is no mean bond, for it precludes the possibility of separation through judgment. That is the meaning of the injunction “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”
Innocence may be beguiling in children, but it is spiritually disastrous in adults, who ought to know that in the sullied stream of human life it is not innocence but holiness that is our only option. As with individuals, so with nations, their salvation lies not in being sinless but in believing that there is more mercy in God than sin in us.
From “Beyond War” in A Passion for the Possible: A Message to U.S. Churches by William Sloane Coffin (Westminster John Knox Press, 2004).