(Detail from Michelangelos’s Sistine Ceiling, 1509)
The fruit of the Gospel is peace. But the simple fact is that encounters between Zion and Babylon are often accompanied by friction — and that, unless and until one or the other surrenders, this is likely to continue. And Zion won’t surrender.
That said, we must do all that we can do, consistent with the principles of the Gospel and the commandments of God, to reduce friction, to proclaim peace, and to act in love.
And we have to remember that Babylon isn’t only “out there.”
I return to a favorite quotation from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s 1973 Gulag Archipelago:
If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
We must be sure, in the conflict between Babylon and Zion, and in our effort to build the Kingdom, that there’s no trace of Babylon within us.
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