Army of Priests

Have you ever felt dirty for loving someone?

300+. That’s the new estimated death toll from the black Saturday bushfires in victoria. That’s 300 fathers, mothers, daughters and sons, brothers and sisters burnt to death as they tried to flee the advance march of hell. On top of this there are thousands and thousands of newly homeless families who have lost everything they own.

It makes me feel sick. I can’t stop seeing the pictures of roads filled with burnt out cars that couldn’t out run the fire. I imagine being one of the families who were never told it was coming. One moment I’m playing in the park with my fictional kids. Next minute, there’s smoke on the horizon. This doesn’t phase me until moments later flames appear… and grow, really fast. I grab the kids and head for the house, thinking I should check the news to find out what is happening. But I’m too slow. By the time I get home the street is filled with ambers. Houses are on fire. The smoke makes it impossible to breath. I grab my fictional wife and we get in my fictional 4WD. I strap my youngest kid into the child seat in the back. I drive, as fast as I can – but I can’t see, the windshield is full of ash. I open the window to stick my head out and smoke rushes into the car. The heat is unbearable.

I dodge flaming burning trees and debris from exploded houses. I make it onto a main road through the bush. I look backwards, and I see behind me the approaching wall of flame. I put my foot down, but it still gets closer. Drops of melted rubber begin to fly off my tires. My children are screaming. The fire gets closer. Damn, its fast. I look back to the road. I can’t see even a metre in front of me but still I speed. Suddenly, a log appears. I swerve. I hit a tree. The airbags go off. We’re trapped. The fire is so close….

It sounds like a nightmare, but it was a reality for so many people. Nothing can describe the devastation. I couldn’t even have imagined a fire so destructive before this weekend. The whole nation is mourning.

Adding to the general sense of shock is a horrible truth: these fires were deliberately lit. They weren’t acts of nature. They were mass-murder on a scale Australia has never seen before.

It was a 48 C (118 F) day in the middle of a drought. The heat wave was the worst in victoria’s history (already over 100 people had died from heat stroke). The government was warning everyone to stay in doors and be ready. They knew people were going to die – they never expected this. Australian eucalyptus forests are the most flammable in the world due to their natural oils. On that day they were bone dry.

Someone (or a few people rather, seeing as there are dozens of fires) decided it would be fun to burn some bush and see what happens. Did they stop to think that people would die? Were they wildly irresponsible or diabolically evil?

The nation is angry. The general consensus is that whoever is responsible better hope that the police catch them before the public does. Many people have noted that jail is too good for them and it has become a game to describe ever more appropriate and awful ways for them to die. The families of the victims are on TV giving emotional messages about how their loved ones were murdered. The hatred of an entire nation is directed towards one person (or a few).

But I don’t believe in a view of the world that divides us into “good” and “evil”. I see good and evil battling within each of us. The same evil that made them light a bush fire is the same evil brooding inside me. Yet God loves me, so I know he loves them too.

If I was the arsonist and I lit some patch of forest wanting to watch a good fire (and if you know me, you’ll know I have a bit of a pyromaniac side), and that fire was bigger than I ever anticipated (because I am young and stupid), and hundreds of people die, than I would be on the ledge of a bridge somewhere about to jump off. With every death and destroyed home the guilt on my head would become increasingly unbearable. I wouldn’t have slept these last few days and I wouldn’t be able to eat because my stomach wouldn’t handle it.

I feel like I should hate this arsonist but I can’t. I feel like I should be angry and call for his head but I can’t. I feel like solidarity with the victims requires me to despise this perpetrator, but that option is unavailable. Due to practice I can’t not love people because of what they do. I pray for terrorists and pedophiles and for this arsonist. But never before has love felt so wrong.

I want to give every last bit of help I can to the victims of this tragedy. I want to hold them and let them cry on my shoulder. I want to clear wreckage and help them rebuild. But, at the same time, I really don’t want this arsonist to kill them self (which is where I imagine things heading). I want them to know that God loves them unconditionally and that his grace is sufficient to redeem everything they have done. I want them to know that although the future will be difficult there is hope. I want them to make it.

Is it ok to love someone whilst others are suffering from their actions? Can I offer hope to the arsonist whilst praying for the victims? Or do such things only add to the grief of those that are suffering? It seems I can either love the perpetrator or the victims. I love both and it tears me apart.

We are caught in a broken world, and I don’t know what to do. But I do believe in the cross. I do believe that every evil is redeemable and that broken things can be fixed. I know God will figure it out in the end.