This has been a challenging week in London with the Westminster Bridge terrorist attack, an attack perpetrated by a man who we now seem to know more about than we do about members of our own family. A little late though.
It was also the week when Martin McGuiness, former IRA Commander yet peacemaker was laid to rest - a man who died as an awkward kind of hero, a key to the Peace process that he had earlier been a key figure in making necessary.
These two men who died challenge our assessment of human goodness and badness.
It is clear that those who knew Adey the youngster often (but not always) regarded him as incapable of anything like what he did on Wednesday. Somewhere he seemed to have gone bad. Yet even that doesn't quite work as the hotel he stayed in the night before the atrocity found him to be a very pleasant guest.
As a youngish man Martin McGuiness was certainly marked out by many outside his immediate community as a great deal of trouble. To what extent he was directly or indirectly involved in acts of terrorism eventually became a subject off limits. Yet most saw in his championing of the Northern Ireland Peace Process (at considerable personal risk and cost) something heroic or at least laudable.
The easy thing to say is that there is bad and good in all of us. The harder thing is how we judge it. The best thing to say is that we really can't and that the Judge of all the earth (Genesis 18:25) will need to be left to do what is right.
It is clear that those who knew Adey the youngster often (but not always) regarded him as incapable of anything like what he did on Wednesday. Somewhere he seemed to have gone bad. Yet even that doesn't quite work as the hotel he stayed in the night before the atrocity found him to be a very pleasant guest.
As a youngish man Martin McGuiness was certainly marked out by many outside his immediate community as a great deal of trouble. To what extent he was directly or indirectly involved in acts of terrorism eventually became a subject off limits. Yet most saw in his championing of the Northern Ireland Peace Process (at considerable personal risk and cost) something heroic or at least laudable.
The easy thing to say is that there is bad and good in all of us. The harder thing is how we judge it. The best thing to say is that we really can't and that the Judge of all the earth (Genesis 18:25) will need to be left to do what is right.
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