Bet on the fairy tale.
Not the Hallmark version, but the hard Grimm truths that wise women told over fires for a thousand years. If you can put your money on the rich step-sisters or the Cinderella, pick Cinderella. If she does not win in this life, she will win in the life to come.
God favors the humble and gives grace to the meek. The mighty are pulled down even if they wiggle and squirm their way to deathbeds. With power on the other side they find justice. The tyrant pays and the noble poor man is comforted in Abraham’s bosom. Ask Lazarus.
Once, on a Saint Valentine’s Day, a group of friends gathered and dreamed of a college and school: classical, Hellenic, Orthodox. They had nothing, but love and the prayers of Saint Valentine. Bet on them.
A true fairy tale is not opposed to reason. Instead, the wisdom of a fairy tale comes from the accumulated experience of centuries of people. These people often are ignored by the credentialed and the powerful and so they tell their stories, fables, folklore, and capture deep wisdom. The poor are exalted, the mighty humbled. God provides for the hungry and the rich, and unrighteous are sent empty away. God works slowly, but in the light of eternity surely.
The false prophet bets on a feeling and the person presently wearing the crown of Israel and ends up siding with Ahab and lying to his doom.
The true prophet knows the deep wisdom of revelation, of the old tales, sees the patterns of history, and thinks further than a millennium ahead. The true prophet looks on the Eternal and the Eternal controls history.
History ends in justice and mercy.
This is not always manifest to us*as the powerful, the grifters, the flashy seem to win. The lesson of the fairy tale is to bet on the widow’s son, the orphan, the humble. God sides with the sharecropper, not the planter in the big house. God has a special blessing for the West Virginia worker, not the chemical plant manager who will not buy a mask to protect his men from asbestos**. Any nation, party, or people that side with the oppressor cannot win in the end.
The God of History will judge, slowly surely, grinding down the tyrants’ aspirations in eternity. God commands us to bring justice now, cooperate with His work. There would be a great temporal blessing in doing so: true victory over the world, our flesh, and devils. If we will not, God keeps working, slowly bringing all to justice while allowing each generation opportunities to cooperate with this holy work. We can ask for mercy, seek justice, and do good while we can.
There is no winning if power requires lies, oppression, or slavery. The very victory, bought at such a price, corrupts the soul of the winners. Better the path of the martyrs, who lose, only to close their eyes in death and open them in paradise. In eternity, the other side of death, the true rulers will be revealed. There we will find the woman who said:”Let it be done unto me” to God. Against her is the victor over Antony and Cleopatra, the winner at Actium, the Prince of Rome, Caesar Augustus. Having been the Mother of God, all generations have called her blessed and in eternity Augustus is forgotten and Mary exalted.
If you have to pick between Augustus and the virgin in Nazareth: pick Mary.
Haven’t you read a fairy tale?
* See Augustine in City of God.
**My Papaw.
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