Graham Greene's: "The Honorary Consul"
"I believe in the evil of God", Father Rivas said, "but I believe in His goodness too. He made us in his image - that is the old legend. Eduardo, you know well how many truths in medicine lay in old legends. It was not a modern laboratory which first discovered the use of a snake's venom. And old women used the mould on over-ripe oranges long before penicillin. So I too believe in an old legend which is almost forgotten. He made us in His image - and so our evil is His evil too. How could I love God if He were not like me? Divided like me. Tempted like me. If I love a dog it is only because I can see something human in a dog. I can feel his fear and his gratitude and even his treachery. He dreams in his sleep like I do. I doubt if I could ever love a toad - though sometimes, when I have touched a toad's skin, I am reminded of the skin of an old man who has spent a rough poor life in the fields, and I wonder..."
"I find my disbelief a lot easier to understand than your kind of belief. If your God is evil..."
"...But I can see no other way to believe in God. The God I believe in must be responsible for all the evil as for all the saints. He has to be a God made in our image with a night-side as well as a day-side. When you speak of the horror, Eduardo, you are speaking of the night-side of God. I believe the time will come when the night-side will wither away, like your communist state, Aquino, and we shall only see the simple daylight of the good God. You believe in evolution, Eduardo, even though sometimes whole generations of men slip backwards to the beasts. It is a long struggle and a long suffering, evolution, and I believe God is suffering the same evolution that we are, but perhaps with more pain."
(Read comments)
|
