God does not avenge Himself

What precedes is but a preamble destined to serve as an introduction to other ideas. I have spoken to you of preconceived ideas, but there are others besides those that come from the inclinations of the inspired one; there are those that are the consequence of an erroneous instruction, of an interpretation credited for a more or less long time, which had their reason for being in an epoch when human reason was insufficiently developed and which, having passed into the chronic state, can only be modified by heroic efforts, especially when they have on their side the authority of religious teaching and of reserved books. One of these ideas is this: God avenges Himself. That a man, wounded in his pride, in his person, or in his interests, should avenge himself, this is conceivable; although culpable, such vengeance is within the limits of human imperfections. But a father who avenges himself upon his children raises general indignation, because everyone feels that a father, charged with the task of raising his children, may correct their errors and their faults by every means within his reach, but vengeance is forbidden to him, under penalty of becoming a stranger to all the rights of paternity. Under the name of public vindication, the society that is disappearing avenged itself upon the guilty; the punishment inflicted, often cruel, was but vengeance upon the evil deeds of the perverse man; it did not concern itself at all with the rehabilitation of this man, leaving to God the care of punishing him or of pardoning him. It sufficed it to strike, by the terror it judged salutary, the future guilty ones. The society that is arising no longer thinks thus; if it does not yet act in view of the reeducation of the guilty one, at least it understands what vengeance contains of odiousness in itself; to safeguard society against the attacks of a criminal suffices it and, aided by the fear of a judicial error, before long capital punishment will disappear from your codes.

If today society judges itself too strong before a guilty one to let itself be seized by anger and to avenge itself upon him, how can you expect that God, partaking of your weaknesses, would let Himself be seized by an irascible sentiment and strike out of vengeance a sinner called to repentance? To believe in divine anger is a pride of Humanity, which imagines that it weighs sufficiently in the divine balance. If the plant in your garden does not develop to your satisfaction, will you grow angry and avenge yourself upon it? No; if you can, you will lift it up, you will support it with stakes, and, if necessary, you will transplant it, but you will not avenge yourself. So does God.

Avenge Himself, God? what blasphemy! what belittling of the divine greatness! what ignorance of the infinite distance that separates the Creator from the creature! What forgetting of His kindness and of His justice! God would come, in an existence in which there remains to you no remembrance of your past errors, to make you pay very dearly for the faults committed in an epoch effaced in your being! No, no! God does not act thus; He hinders the impulse of a fatal passion, corrects innate pride by a forced humility, rectifies the egotism of the past by the urgency of a present need, which leads one to desire the existence of a sentiment that man has neither known nor experienced. As a father, He corrects, but, also as a father, God does not avenge Himself.

Guard yourselves against those preconceived ideas of celestial vengeance, lost debris of an ancient error. Guard yourselves against those fatalistic tendencies, whose door is open to your new doctrines and which would lead you directly to oriental quietism. The share of liberty belonging to man is not already great enough to diminish it still further by erroneous beliefs; the more you feel your liberty, the greater no doubt will be your responsibility, and so much the more will the efforts of your will lead you forward, on the path of progress.

Pascal. n [1]

[v. Pascal.]