(The Nationalist, 16 September 2005)
A common experience among people, young and old, is to have the feeling that they were not loved by their parents as much as some of their brothers and sisters. They have the feeling that father or mother cared for another more than for them. The memory, true or false, of past unfairness may linger for years and leave a lasting sense of grievance.
But love is a strange thing. Unlike other things, it is not divisible. Parents with three children do not love each of them with a third of their love, and then, if a fourth child is born, re-adjust so as to give each a quarter. They try to love each child with all their love. Unlike money or property, love grows by being shared. The more we give love, the more loving – and lovable – we become.
And this brings me to Anne Robinson. I have to admit that I don’t like The Weakest Link. Anne passes judgment, happily sending her guests packing, humiliated, with a snappy, razor-like, ‘You are the weakest link’. I know the real Anne is different from her self-image in the programme. I have seen her elsewhere on TV and she was different. The wink at the end of her show is a give-away. It says, ‘Don’t take me seriously’. But, like much of so-called reality TV, her show seems to set people against each other, and I dislike it for that reason. The world is more than divided enough already.
I think The Weakest Link is a good image of what God does not do. If we were to be rewarded for our achievements, the return might be small indeed. In God’s sight, is there anything we can claim exclusively as our own, except our sins? God goes beyond fairness and into generosity, giving each not only what they deserve but much more.
God’s ways are not our ways: He did not produce us on a photocopier, creating a dull uniformity in the name of unity. ‘The heavens are as high above the earth as my ways are above your ways, my thoughts above your thoughts’. I’m glad of that. God gives generously, not equally, to all. If someone gave a gift of €1,000 to you, and to another €2,000, and neither of you deserved it, but were given it as an act of simple goodness, have you a right to complain because the other got more? No. Salvation is a gift, not an achievement, nor a reward for services rendered. God makes room in heaven for those who turn up at the last minute and barely wriggle under the door. ‘Why be envious because I am generous?’
As the poet, e. e. cummings, says,
‘Whoever belongs to the kingdom of God
has an eye for goodness but no ear for grumbling;
is constantly amazed and never bored;
is full of wonder and praise;
His goodness shall follow me always to the end of my days’.
For those in a hurry: ‘There is no more profound or dangerous enemy to Christianity than anything which shrinks it or makes it narrow’. (Baron Friedrich von Hügel)