Gloria:

Dear God, I saw a powerful movie yesterday called The Mission. It was a movie of high integrity with people of high integrity, and it was based on fact. It was in the 1750's in South America where a few Jesuits tried to save the beautiful native people from capture from the Portuguese and subsequent slavery. These high-minded Jesuits chose excommunication and giving their lives in order to maintain their integrity to God and to the native people. This was a movie of high stakes, God.

If the world were those dear Jesuits and natives, what a great world.

But there was also politics in the movie, and the Bishop sold out the South American Jesuit missions in order to save the Jesuit missions in Europe. It was a trade, so to speak. The Bishop did what he thought he had to do in order to save the Church. He later regretted it.

The beautiful head Jesuit priest said he did not want to live in a world where might made right. The invading Portuguese who were taking their "legal" property killed him as he walked praying and holding a cross.

The movie was devastating to me, dear God. It could have made me lose my faith in You. I kept thinking, Where are You, where are You?

Jaymie asked recently about suffering. I guess I am asking about it too, or about raging injustice or about man's cruelty to man.

God:

Look, the human world is filled with injustice. There is plenty of evidence of smallness in the world.

There is also truth and integrity and courage.

I know you wanted Me to come out of the Heavens and save the Jesuits and that beautiful native people. They were good, and where was I? By everything you know, they should have won.

Gloria:

Yes. And I feel the same way about the conquest of the American Indians. By what right did we overcome them? They were close to You and nature. How could You let them lose?

God:

Truth is never lost, Gloria. If you look solely at the physical world, you will have despair. Because you look at what you call loss.

Courage and integrity won. They were not lost. That movie proved that courage and integrity win. Love wins. Greed loses. World victory, what is that? How much is that worth? World victory is a hollow thing.

And is it faith that says an outcome must be what you want? What kind of faith is that? That's more like a bargain: If you see Me do what you know to be right, then you will have perfect faith in Me?

You accept in your personal life what hasn't gone right. You don't blame Me. You can let those things go by. You have. You don't blame me for whatever injustices you have undergone. But on a bigger canvas, it is hard for you. You cannot forgive Me, can you?

Gloria:

I didn't know that, but, yes, I do find it hard to forgive You. In that movie, You let the bad guys win. You let the profiteers profit.

God:

In order for forgiveness to flower, there has to be blame first. If you did not blame, you would not have to forgive.

If two children played with toy soldiers, and one won and the other lost, would you blame Me?

If you played the lottery, and someone else won, and you lost, would you blame Me?

If there is a shoot-out between the police and gangsters, and the gangsters win, do you blame Me?

But when invaders take over a land and a people, you blame Me.

Gloria:

Yes.

God:

What is the difference? The difference is that you have ideas of what you think I should or should not do. You hold Me responsible for certain things and not for others.

You think: A loving God wouldn't allow massacres. Small-scale murders, well, okay, but not whole peoples, no, not whole peoples.

Separation of peoples is a man-made idea. That sense of apartness causes havoc. And that havoc will cause you to look at what matters.

That movie made you look at honor and integrity.

Debacles in history make you see the foolishness of what man fights over.

Now here's another aspect. How do you know that the Portuguese who committed those crimes were criminal? Perhaps they were heroes who chose to prove the courage and honor of others and not their own? Perhaps they elected to prove the folly of greed and slaughter at their own expense?

You cannot judge an individual from the outside. Do you agree on that?

Gloria:

Yes.

God:

You also cannot judge wars and injustice from the outside. There are so many levels of life going on.

Gloria, if you did not see bodies, could you see battle?

Bodies fight and hurt other bodies.

Only the temporary is hurt.

The permanent is not touched.

Just as your broken toe points to what matters, so do wars.

Without that battle in the movie, could the fine Jesuits have become heroes? Who made them heroes? The opposing side allowed those kind Jesuits' truth and integrity to be revealed.

Gloria:

In the case of the movie, God, the native people could have fled to the jungles and not have been killed or taken as slaves. At least right then. The Jesuits could have gone with them. But the native people did not want to leave their home. So they decided to fight.

God:

So both sides fought for their rights.

Gloria:

Should they have acquiesced and fled to the jungle?

God:

They had choices. They made one and not another. They have every right to make their choice. And so did the Portuguese, no matter ill-gotten in your eyes.

But, Gloria, you are right. If all people had the unity and peace that those native peoples and the Jesuits had, the human world would be a different place. Does that not give great hope?

Do you feel better?

Gloria:

Yes. Some better.

God:

More better will come.