Beranos: Social Outworkings of Incarnation/Imago Dei

The right of the strong is real. It’s a solid and dense matter. I agree it would be mad to believe that there is no place, precisely in a materialist society, for such solid and dense matter.The right of the weak is spirit. Without the spirit, the weak are nothing but trash, useful only for the tiny portion of debased power still left in them. Hie residual power of the weak is so denatured that it becomes perceivable only if they gather in great numbers. The treasure of the destitute is spiritual, and doubtless the reason why Christ praised the social condition of the poor as blessed is that everything that falls away from the Spirit also falls away from the poor. The poor follow the destiny of the Spirit. . . . I am a Christian because common sense and history persuade me that there will always be defeated men and that Christianity is the party of the defeated. I do not love the defeated out of some kind of morbid predilection for whatever wails and cowers. I do not want the defeated to wail or to cower. To love what wails or cowers is not at all according to my nature. Examine the history of the world up and down to your heart’s content, and you will clearly see that the wretched have never been loved for their own sake. The best of mankind suffer them and tolerate them only out of pity. Through pity they are excluded from love, because the law of love is reciprocity, and reciprocity is not possible where there is pity. . . . God keep me from once again making the defeated of this world a promise that has never been kept! I would only like to say to them that, throughout so many centuries, the Word of Christ is the only good left them. Once I’ve told them this, they can laugh in my face if they want, and I won’t get angry. “What good is a word to us?”, they might ask. “Can you eat it?” And I would reply; “Whatever the case, if this one word should be smothered, you would become nothing. . . . Around you there is a mystery, an ineffable presence, a spirit. You are sacred as a child is sacred. (Pay no mind to what I say.) Whether you know it or not, the Word of Christ envelops you because you dwell within it—you dwell within it along with your misery. . . . You cannot eat the Spirit, that much is true. But it keeps you from being eaten. Thanks to the Spirit, thanks to this Nothing, your flesh is still untouchable (no offense meant!) like pork for Jews and Moslems.”⁸¹