Father in heaven! Teach us to pray rightly so that our hearts [II 307] may open up to you in prayer and supplication and hide no furtive desire that we know is not acceptable to you, nor any secret fear that you will deny us anything that will truly be for our good, so that the laboring thoughts, the restless mind, the fearful heart may find rest in and through that alone in which and through which it can be found—by always joyfully thanking you as we gladly confess that in relation to you we are always in the wrong. Amen.
The Holy Gospel is written in the nineteenth chapter of the Gospel of St. Luke, from the forty-first verse to the end,7 and reads as follows:
And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying: Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes. For the days shall come upon you when your enemies will cast up a bank about you and surround you and hem you in on every side, and then will dash you to the ground and your children within you and will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, saying to them: It is written, “My house is a house of prayer,” but you have made it a den of robbers. And he taught daily in the temple. But the chief priests and the scribes and the principal men of the people sought to destroy him, but they did not find what they should do, for all the people clung to him and listened to him.
[II 308]The event the Spirit had revealed in visions and dreams to the prophets, what they had proclaimed in a foreboding voice to one generation after the other—the repudiation of the Chosen People, the dreadful destruction of proud Jerusalem—was coming closer and closer. Christ goes up to Jerusalem. He is no prophet who prophesies the future; what he says does not arouse anxious unrest, for what is still hidden he sees before his eyes. He does not prophesy—there is no more time for that—he weeps over Jerusalem. And yet the city still stood in all its glory, and the temple still carried its head high as always, higher than any other building in the world, and Christ himself says: Would that even today you knew what was best for your good, but he also adds: Yet it is hidden from your eyes. In God’s eternal counsel, its downfall is decided, and salvation is hidden from the eyes of its inhabitants.
Was, then, the generation living at that time more culpable than the previous one to which it owed its life; was the whole nation degenerate; was there no righteous person in Jerusalem, not a single one who could stay the wrath of God;8 was there no pious person among all those from whose eyes salvation was hidden? And if there was such a person, was there no gate open for him in the time of anxiety and affliction; when the enemies laid siege to it all around and pressed it on every side, did no angel come down and rescue him before all the gates were closed; was no sign given on his behalf? Yet its downfall was fixed. In vain did the besieged city look in its anxiety for a way out. The hostile army squeezed it in its mighty embrace, and not one escaped, and heaven remained closed, and no angel was dispatched, except the angel of death, which waved its sword over the city.
For the offense this nation had committed, this generation had to pay the penalty; for the offense this generation had committed, each member of the generation had to pay the penalty. Must the righteous, then, suffer with the unrighteous? Is this the zealousness of God—to visit the sins of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation,9 so that he does not punish the fathers but the children? What should we answer? Should we say: It will soon be two thousand years since those days; a nightmare such as that the world never saw before and will presumably never see again; we thank God that we live in peace and security, that the shriek of anxiety from those days sounds very faint to us. We will hope and trust that our days and our children’s days may proceed in [II 309] tranquillity, untouched by the storms of life! We do not feel strong enough to think about such things, but we will thank God that we are not tested in them.
Can anything more cowardly and dismal than this kind of talk be imagined? Does it explain the unexplainable to say that it has happened only once in the world? Or is this not the unexplainable—that it has happened? And does not this, that it has happened, have the power to make everything else unexplainable, even the explainable? If it happened once in the world that the human condition was essentially different from what it otherwise always is, what assurance is there that it cannot be repeated, what assurance that that was not the true and what ordinarily occurs is the untrue? Or is it a demonstration of the truth that it happens the most frequently? Do not the events that those ages witnessed actually repeat themselves more frequently? Is it not true, something we all have experienced in many ways, that the same thing that happens on a large scale is also experienced on a smaller scale? Do you think, Christ says, that those Galileans whose blood Pilate let be shed were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this? Or the eighteen whom the tower in Siloam fell upon and killed, do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? Consequently, some of those Galileans were not worse sinners than other people, those eighteen were not more guilty than everybody else who lived in Jerusalem10—and yet the innocent shared the same fate as the guilty. You may say that it was a dispensation of providence, not a punishment. But the destruction of Jerusalem was a punishment, and it fell on the innocent just as hard as on the guilty. Therefore you do not want to alarm yourself by deliberating upon such things, for you are able to understand that a person can have adversities and suffering, that such things fall like rain as much on the good as on the evil,11 but that it is supposed to be a punishment . . . . . And yet this is how Scripture presents it.
Is then the lot of the righteous on a level with the lot of the unrighteous; does then godliness have no promise for this life that is; is then every uplifting thought that once made you so rich in courage and confidence only a fancy, a jugglery that a child believes in, a youth hopes for, but in which someone a little older finds no blessing but only mockery and offense? Yet this thought revolts you; it cannot and must not gain the power to beguile you, must not be able to dull your soul. Justice you will love; justice you will practice early and late. Even [II 310] if it has no reward, you will practice it. You feel that it has an implicit demand that still must be fulfilled. You will not sink into lethargy and then at some time comprehend that justice did have promises but that you yourself had excluded yourself from them by not doing justice. You will not contend with men; you will contend with God and hold on to him; he is not going to get away from you without blessing you!12
Yet Scripture says: You are not to argue with God.13 Is not that what you are doing? Is not this once again a hopeless way of talking; is Holy Scripture, then, given to humankind only to humiliate it, to annihilate it? By no means! When it says that you are not to argue with God, it means that you must not insist on being in the right in relation to God; you may argue with him only in such a way that you learn that you are in the wrong. Indeed, that is what you yourself should want. To be forbidden to argue with God indicates your perfection and in no way says that you are an inferior being who has no significance for him. The sparrow falls to the ground—in a way it is in the right in relation to God; the lily fades—in a way it is in the right in relation to God. Only man is wrong; to him alone is reserved what is denied to everything else—to be in the wrong in relation to God.
If I should speak in a different way, I would remind you of a wisdom you certainly have frequently heard, a wisdom that knows how to explain everything easily enough without doing an injustice either to God or to human beings. A human being is a frail creature, it says; it would be unreasonable of God to require the impossible of him. One does what one can, and if one is ever somewhat negligent, God will never forget that we are weak and imperfect creatures. Shall I admire more the sublime concepts of the nature of the Godhead that this ingenuity makes manifest or the profound insight into the human heart, the probing consciousness that scrutinizes itself and now comes to the easy, cozy conclusion: One does what one can? Was it such an easy matter for you, my listener, to determine how much that is: what one can? Were you never in such danger that you almost desperately exerted yourself and yet so infinitely wished to be able to do more, and perhaps someone else looked at you with a skeptical and imploring look, whether it was not possible that you could do more? Or were you never anxious about yourself, so anxious that it seemed to you as if there were no sin so black, no selfishness so loathsome, that it could not infiltrate you and like a foreign power gain control of you? Did you not sense this anxiety? For if you [II 311] did not sense it, then do not open your mouth to answer, for then you cannot reply to what is being asked; but if you did sense it, then, my listener, I ask you: Did you find rest in those words, “One does what one can”?
Or were you never anxious about others? Did you not see them wavering in life, those you were accustomed to look up to in trust and confidence? And did you not then hear a soft voice whisper to you: If not even those people can accomplish the great things, what then is life but bad troubles, and faith but a snare that wrenches us out into the infinite, where we really are unable to live—far better, then, to forget, to abandon every requirement; did you not hear this voice? For if you did not hear it, then do not open your mouth to answer, for you cannot reply to what is being asked about; but if you did hear it, my listener, I ask you: Was it to your comfort that you said “One does what one can”? Was not the real reason for your unrest that you did not know for sure how much one can do, that it seems to you to be so infinitely much at one moment, and at the next moment so very little? Was not your anxiety so painful because you could not penetrate your consciousness, because the more earnestly, the more fervently you wished to act, the more dreadful became the duplexity in which you found yourself: that you might not have done what you could, or that you might actually have done what you could but no one came to your assistance?
So every more earnest doubt, every deeper care is not calmed by the words: One does what one can. If a person is sometimes in the right, sometimes in the wrong, to some degree in the right, to some degree in the wrong, who, then, is the one who makes that decision except the person himself, but in the decision may he not again be to some degree in the right and to some degree in the wrong? Or is he a different person when he judges his act than when he acts? Is doubt to rule, then, continually to discover new difficulties, and is care to accompany the anguished soul and drum past experiences into it? Or would we prefer continually to be in the right in the way irrational creatures are? Then we have only the choice between being nothing in relation to God or having to begin all over again every moment in eternal torment, yet without being able to begin, for if we are to be able to decide definitely whether we are in the right at the present moment, then this question must be decided definitely with regard to the previous moment, and so on further and further back.
Doubt is again set in motion, care again aroused; let us try [II 312] to calm it by deliberating on:
THE UPBUILDING THAT LIES IN THE THOUGHT THAT IN RELATION TO GOD WE ARE ALWAYS IN THE WRONG.
To be in the wrong—can any more painful feeling than this be imagined? And do we not see that people would rather suffer everything than admit that they are in the wrong? To be sure, we do not sanction such stubbornness, either in ourselves or in others. We think the wiser and better way to act is to admit that we are in the wrong if we actually are in the wrong; we then say that the pain that accompanies the admission will be like a bitter medicine that will heal, but we do not conceal that it is a pain to be in the wrong, a pain to admit it. We suffer the pain because we know that it is to our good; we trust that sometime we shall succeed in making a more energetic resistance and may reach the point of really being in the wrong only in very rare instances. This point of view is very natural and very obvious to everyone. Thus there is something upbuilding in being in the wrong, provided that we, in admitting it, build ourselves up by the prospect that it will more and more rarely be the case. And yet we did not want to calm doubt by this point of view but rather by reflecting on the upbuilding in the thought that we are always in the wrong. But if that first point of view, which provided the hope that in time one would never be in the wrong, is upbuilding, how then can the opposite point of view also be upbuilding—the view that wants to teach us that we always, in the future as well as in the past, are in the wrong?
Your life brings you into a multiplicity of relationships with other people. Some of them love justice and righteousness; others do not seem to want to practice them—they do you a wrong. Your soul is not hardened to the suffering they inflict upon you in this way, but you search and examine yourself; you convince yourself that you are in the right, and you rest calm and strong in this conviction. However much they outrage me, you say, they still will not be able to deprive me of this peace—that I know I am in the right and that I suffer wrong. In this view there is a satisfaction, a joy, that presumably every one of us has tasted, and when you continue to suffer wrong, you are built up by the thought that you are in the right. This point of view is so natural, so understandable, so frequently tested in life, and yet it is not with this that we want to calm doubt and to heal care but by deliberating upon the upbuilding that lies in the thought that we are always in the wrong. Can the opposite point of view, then, have the same effect?
Your life brings you into a multiplicity of relationships with [II 313] other people. To some you are drawn by a more fervent love than to others. Now, if such a person who is the object of your love were to do you a wrong, is it not true that it would pain you, that you would scrupulously examine everything but that you then would say: I know for sure that I am in the right; this thought will calm me? Ah, if you loved him, then it would not calm you; you would investigate everything. You would be unable to perceive anything else except that he is in the wrong, and yet this certainty would trouble you. You would wish that you might be in the wrong; you would try to find something that could speak in his defense, and if you did not find it, you would find rest only in the thought that you were in the wrong. Or if you were assigned the responsibility for such a person’s welfare, you would do everything that was in your power, and when the other person nevertheless paid no attention to it and only caused you trouble, is it not true that you would make an accounting and say: I know I have done right by him?—Oh, no! If you loved him, this thought would only alarm you; you would reach for every probability, and if you found none, you would tear up the accounting in order to help you forget it, and you would strive to build yourself up with the thought that you were in the wrong.
It is painful, then, to be in the wrong and all the more painful the more often one is in the wrong; it is upbuilding to be in the wrong, and all the more upbuilding the more often one is in the wrong. This is indeed a contradiction! How can this be explained except by saying that in the one case you are forced to acknowledge what in the second case you wish to acknowledge? But is not the acknowledgment nevertheless the same; does one’s wishing or not wishing have any influence on it? How can this be explained except by saying that in the one case you loved, in the other you did not—in other words, in the one case you were in an infinite relationship with a person, in the other case in a finite relationship? Therefore, wishing to be in the wrong is an expression of an infinite relationship, and wanting to be in the right, or finding it painful to be in the wrong, is an expression of a finite relationship! Hence it is upbuilding always to be in the wrong—because only the infinite builds up; the finite does not!
Now, if it were a person whom you loved, even if your love managed piously to deceive your thinking and yourself, you would still be in a continual contradiction, because you would know you were right but you wished and wished to believe that you were in the wrong. If, however, it was God you loved, could there then be any question of such a contradiction, could you then be conscious of anything else than what [II 314] you wished to believe? Would not he who is in heaven be greater than you who live on earth; would not his wealth be more superabundant than your measure, his wisdom more profound than your cleverness, his holiness greater than your righteousness? Must you not of necessity acknowledge this—but if you must acknowledge it, then there is no contradiction between your knowledge and your wish.
And yet, if you must of necessity acknowledge it, then there is indeed nothing upbuilding in the thought that you are always in the wrong, for it was stated that the reason it can be painful in the one situation to be in the wrong, in the other upbuilding, is that in the one case a person is forced to acknowledge what in the other case he wishes to acknowledge. Thus it is true that in your relationship with God you would be freed from the contradiction, but you would have lost the upbuilding; and yet it was precisely upon this that we wanted to deliberate: The upbuilding in our always being in the wrong in relation to God.
Might it actually be this way? Why did you wish to be in the wrong in relation to a person? Because you loved. Why did you find it upbuilding? Because you loved. The more you loved, the less time you had to deliberate upon whether or not you were in the right; your love had only one desire, that you might continually be in the wrong. So also in your relationship with God. You loved God, and therefore your soul could find rest and joy only in this, that you might always be in the wrong. You did not arrive at this acknowledgment out of mental toil; you were not forced, for when you are in love you are in freedom. When thought convinced you that this was correct, that it could not be any other way than that you might always be in the wrong or God might always be in the right, then the acknowledgment followed. And you did not arrive at the certainty that you were in the wrong from the acknowledgment that God was in the right, but from love’s sole and supreme wish, that you might always be in the wrong, you arrived at the acknowledgment that God is always in the right. But this wish is love’s wish and consequently a matter of freedom, and you were by no means forced to acknowledge that you were always in the wrong. Thus it was not through deliberation that you became certain that you were always in the wrong, but the certainty was due to your being built up by it.
It is, then, an upbuilding thought that in relation to God we are always in the wrong. If this were not the case, if this conviction did not have its source in your total being, that is, from the love within you, then your view would have had a different cast. You would have acknowledged that God is always in the right; this you would be forced to acknowledge as a result of being forced to acknowledge that you are always in the [II 315] wrong. The latter is already more difficult to do, because you can indeed be forced to acknowledge that God is always in the right, but to apply that to yourself, to incorporate this acknowledgment in your whole being—this you cannot actually be forced to do. You acknowledge, then, that God is always in the right, and as a consequence of that you are always in the wrong, but this acknowledgment did not build you up. There is nothing upbuilding in acknowledging that God is always in the right, and consequently there is nothing upbuilding in any thought that necessarily follows from it. When you acknowledge that God is always in the right, you stand outside God, and likewise when, as a conclusion from that, you acknowledge that you are always in the wrong. But when you do not claim and are not convinced by virtue of any previous acknowledgment that you are always in the wrong, then you are hidden in God. This is your adoration, your devotion, your piety.
You loved a person, you wished that you might always be in the wrong in relation to him—but, alas, he was faithless to you, and however reluctant that it should be so, however much it pained you, you proved to be in the right in relation to him, and wrong in loving him so deeply. And yet your soul demanded you to love that way; only in that could you find rest and peace and happiness. Then your soul turned away from the finite to the infinite; there it found its object; there your love became happy. I will love God, you said; he gives everything to the one who loves. He fulfills my highest, my only wish—that in relation to him I must always be in the wrong. Never will any alarming doubt ever tear me away from him; never will the thought terrify me that I could prove to be in the right in relation to him—in relation to God I am always in the wrong.
Or is it not so, was not this your only wish, your highest, and did not a terrible anxiety seize you when the thought could momentarily arise in your soul that you could be in the right, that God’s governance was not wisdom but your plans were, that God’s thoughts were not righteousness but your deeds were, that God’s heart was not love but your feelings were? And was it not your bliss that you could never love as you were loved? Therefore this, that in relation to God you are always in the wrong, is not a truth you must acknowledge, not a consolation that alleviates your pain, not a compensation for something better, but it is a joy in which you win a victory over yourself and over the world, your delight, your song of praise, your adoration, a demonstration that your love is happy, as only that love can be with which one loves God.
Therefore this thought, that in relation to God we are always in the wrong, is an upbuilding thought; it is upbuilding that we are in the wrong, upbuilding that we are always in the wrong. It manifests its upbuilding power in a twofold way, [II 316] partly by putting an end to doubt and calming the cares of doubt, partly by animating to action.
Do you still remember, my listener, a wisdom that was described earlier? It seemed so faithful and reliable. It explained everything so easily; it was willing to rescue every person throughout life, undismayed by the storms of doubt. “One does what one can,” it shouted to the bewildered. And indeed it cannot be denied that it helps if only one does that. It had nothing more to say; it disappeared like a dream, or it became a monotonous repetition in the doubter’s ear. Then when he wanted to use it, it turned out that he could not use it, that it entangled him in a snare of difficulties. He could not find time to deliberate upon what he could do, for at the same time he was supposed to be doing what he could do. Or if he found time to deliberate, then the examination gave him a more or a less, an approximation, but never anything exhaustive. How could a person ever gauge his relationship with God by a more or a less, or by a specification of approximation? Thus he ascertained that this wisdom was a treacherous friend who under the guise of helping him entangled him in doubt, worried him into an unremitting cycle of confusion. What had been obscure to him previously but had not troubled him did not become any clearer now, but his mind became anguished and careworn in doubt. Only in an infinite relationship with God could the doubt be calmed; only in an infinitely free relationship with God could his cares be turned to joy. He is in an infinite relationship with God when he acknowledges that God is always right; he is in an infinitely free relationship with God when he acknowledges that he is always wrong.
Then an end is put to doubt, for the movement of doubt consisted precisely in this: that at one moment he was supposed to be in the right, the next moment in the wrong, to a degree in the right, to a degree in the wrong, and this was supposed to mark his relationship with God; but such a relationship with God is no relationship, and this was the sustenance of doubt. In his relationship with another person, it certainly was possible that he could be partly in the wrong, partly in the right, to a degree in the wrong, to a degree in the right, because he himself and every human being is finite, and their relationship is a finite relationship that consists in a more or less. Therefore as long as doubt would make the infinite relationship finite, and as long as wisdom would fill up the infinite relationship with the finite—just so long he would remain in doubt. Thus every time doubt wants to trouble him about the particular, tell him that he is suffering too much or is being tested beyond his powers, he forgets the finite in the infinite, [II 317] that he is always in the wrong. Every time the cares of doubt want to make him sad, he lifts himself above the finite into the infinite, because this thought, that he is always in the wrong, is the wings upon which he soars over the finite. This is the longing with which he seeks God; this is the love in which he finds God.
In relation to God we are always in the wrong. But is not this thought anesthetizing; however upbuilding it may be, is it not dangerous for a person? Does it not lull him into a sleep in which he dreams of a relationship with God that nevertheless is no actual relationship; does it not vitiate the power of the will and the strength of the intention? Not at all! Or the man who wished to be always in the wrong in relation to another man—was he apathetic and idle, did he not do all he could to be in the right and yet wished only to be in the wrong? And then should not the thought that in relation to God we are always in the wrong be inspiring, for what else does it express but that God’s love is always greater than our love? Does not this thought make him happy to act, for when he doubts he has no energy to act; does it not make his spirit glow,14 for when he reckons finitely, the fire of the spirit is extinguished? If your one and only wish was denied to you, my listener, you are still happy; you do not say: God is always in the right—for there is no joy in that; you say: In relation to God I am always in the wrong. If you yourself were the one who had to deny yourself your highest wish, you are still happy; you do not say: God is always in the right, for there is no rejoicing in that; you say: In relation to God I am always in the wrong. If your wish were what others and you yourself in a certain sense must call your duty, if you not only had to deny your wish but in a way betray your duty, if you lost not only your joy but even your honor, you are still happy—in relation to God, you say: I am always in the wrong. If you knocked but it was not opened,15 if you searched but did not find, if you worked but received nothing, if you planted and watered but saw no blessing,16 if heaven was shut and the testimony failed to come, you are still happy in your work; if the punishment that the iniquity of the fathers had called down came upon you, you are still happy—because in relation to God we are always in the wrong.
In relation to God we are always in the wrong—this thought puts an end to doubt and calms the cares; it animates and inspires to action.
Your thought has now followed the progress of this exposition, perhaps hurrying ahead when it took you on familiar paths, perhaps slowly, reluctantly, when the path was unfamiliar to you, but still you must admit this—that the situation [II 318] was just as has been set forth and your thought had no objection to make. One more question before we part, my listener. 17Would you wish, could you wish, that the situation were different? Could you wish that you might be in the right; could you wish that that beautiful law which for thousands of years has carried the generation through life and every member of the generation, that beautiful law, more glorious than the law which carries the stars on their paths across the arch of heaven, could you wish that that law would break, an even more terrible catastrophe than if the law of nature lost its power and everything disintegrated into dreadful chaos? Could you wish that? I have no words of wrath with which to terrify you; your wish must not be elicited by anxiety about the blasphemy in the thought of wanting to be in the right in relation to God. I merely ask you: Would you wish it to be different? Perhaps my voice does not have enough power and intensity; perhaps it cannot penetrate into your innermost thought—Oh, but ask yourself, ask yourself with the solemn uncertainty with which you would turn to someone who you knew could determine your life’s happiness with a single word, ask yourself even more earnestly—because in very truth it is a matter of salvation. Do not interrupt the flight of your soul; do not distress what is best in you; do not enfeeble your spirit with half wishes and half thoughts. Ask yourself and keep on asking until you find the answer, for one may have known something many times, acknowledged it; one may have willed something many times, attempted it—and yet, only the deep inner motion, only the heart’s indescribable emotion, only that will convince you that what you have acknowledged belongs to you, that no power can take it from you—for only the truth that builds up is truth for you.18