by
EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ
A group of travelers find themselves
stranded on an island in Samoa. The
schooner which is supposed to bring them to their destination has been
quarantined because one of the crew has contracted measles (a serious and often
fatal disease in that place and time).
Among the travelers are two couples (the Macphails and the Davidsons)
who have become somehow close in the course of their journey. But, the intimacy that has arisen between
them (Maugham quickly points out) is due more to propinquity rather than to any
community of taste. Indeed, no men can
be more different from each other than Dr. Macphail and Mr. Davidson. Dr. Macphail is an open-minded physician who
has a lot of empathy for other men’s peculiarities and frailties, while Mr.
Davidson is an overzealous and self-righteous missionary who cannot hide his
contempt for other men’s weaknesses and sins.
Mr. Davidson is, in fact, obsessed with fighting sin with all his might and
“saving” sinners no matter what the cost.
Also stranded on the island and billeted in the same inn as the
Machphails and the Davidsons is a prostitute named Sadie Thompson. Young and, in a coarse fashion, pretty, but
expectedly uncouth and “immoral,” she soon earns the ire of Mr. Davidson. At first, she proudly defies and challenges
Mr. Davidson’s “right” to intrude into her life. But, when Mr. Davidson utilizes his political
connections to show her how capable he is of punishing her for her defiance,
she capitulates and even acquiesces to his efforts to “convert” her from her
sinful life. The strange thing, however,
is that despite her “conversion” and the “spiritual bond” that has developed
between her and Mr. Davidson, the latter is still bent on giving her the
punishment he believes she deserves:
sending her back to San
Francisco where she has a standing arrest order for
her past crimes. In fact, Mr. Davidson
relishes, in a rather demented way, the prospect of seeing her suffer in prison. To him, such “cleansing” – no matter how
painful -- is a necessary step to her salvation. His convoluted theological rationale for such
a stance is summarized in the words he says to Dr. Macphail, in reply to the
latter’s intercession that Ms. Thompson be spared such punishment: “Ah, but don’t you see? It’s necessary. Do you think my heart doesn’t bleed for her? I love her as I love my wife and sister. All the time that she is in prison I shall
suffer all the pain that she suffers…
You don’t understand because you’re blind. She’s sinned, and she must suffer. I know what she’ll endure. She’ll be starved and tortured and
humiliated. I want her to accept the
punishment of man as a sacrifice to God.
I want her to accept it joyfully.
She has an opportunity which is offered to very few of us. God is very good and very merciful.” He continues:
“I want to put in her heart the passionate desire to be punished so that
at the end, even if I offered to let her go, she would refuse. I want her to feel that the bitter punishment
of prison is the thank-offering that she places at the feet of our Blessed
Lord, who gave his life for her.”1
No amount of pleading and weeping on the part of Ms. Thompson can make
Mr. Davidson change his mind. And as
the day of her deportation to San
Francisco nears, Mr. Davidson is filled with an inner
excitement that makes him behave almost like a man going insane.
When the day of her deportation arrives, however, Mr. Davidson’s corpse
is found lying on the beach with its throat cut. In Mr. Davidson’s right hand lies the razor
with which the deed has been done. All
indications point to the fact that Mr. Davidson has taken his own life.
Dr. Macphail cannot, at first, understand what made Mr. Davidson do it. Until he learns from Ms. Thompson that the
night before her deportation, Mr. Davidson had succumbed to his carnal desires
and taken advantage of her like all the other men she had known.
We can better understand the strange character of Mr. Davidson if we
take a closer look at his “spirituality,” i.e., the kind of relationship he had
with his God. And since one’s
relationship with God is largely determined by one’s view of God, it would be instructive for us to examine Mr.
Davidson’s peculiar view of God.
Mr. Davidson obviously looked at God as a vindictive judge who could
never be satisfied until a sinner had fully paid for his sins. It was, therefore, inconceivable
to Mr. Davidson that God could forgive a sin as deep as the one he had
committed: destroying the soul of a
person he was so close to “saving,” and ruining his own soul in the
process. He could not bring himself to
believe that God could forgive any
sin as long as there was a sincere repentance on the part of the sinner. His distorted view of God precluded such a
possibility. In the end, believing that
he was “doomed” beyond redemption, he saw no other way out besides taking his
very own life.
Incidentally, Mr. Davidson’s view of God and the despair to which such a
view drove him echo those of another man who lived almost two thousand years
ago. Judas, unable to believe that God
could forgive him no matter how humanly unforgivable his sin was, also felt
that he was beyond redemption and consequently killed himself.
The truth is: many of us will
probably do the same thing if we view God in that same manner. For, whether we like it or not, we shall all
fall into sin, in one way or another, in the course of our lives. No amount of human effort towards untainted
holiness can eradicate our human propensity to sin. To put it figuratively: no matter how hard we try to reach the
heavens, we shall always fall back to the earth -- just like the rain (hence the title of Maugham’s story). We are human beings and we will remain so as
long as we live. Our humanity and all
the weaknesses that it contains will always remain a part of us. We can only go so far when it comes to
transcending our human limitations. This
painful reality is part of what the writer Stephen Vincent Benet once called
the “sadness in being a man.”2
The good news, however, is that our God does not really expect us to fully overcome our humanity while we are
still in this world. He accepts and
loves us for what we are: human beings who can never save their own selves by
their own efforts, human beings whom He and He alone can save. Certainly, He wants us to do our best in
trying to transcend the limits of our humanity.
But if we fail – as, for sure, we often will, despite our sincere efforts
– God will, so to speak, bend over backwards as many times as necessary to
forgive us and offer us the chance to start anew.
The Bible proclaims this good news about our God in a number of gospel parables: the prodigal son, the lost sheep, the lost coin… It is also touchingly expressed in psalms like Psalm 30, verse 6: “For his anger lasts but a while, and his kindness all through life.” Our God is an infinitely merciful God. While He is also a God of justice, His mercy far outweighs His sense of justice.
Unfortunately, this good news about our God often sounds too good to be
true to many people. I remember the
worried reaction I used to receive from some parishioners whenever I proclaimed
this good news in my homilies while I was still a priest. The reaction was worse whenever I mentioned
the position of the Swiss theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasar: that God’s mercy is so unfathomable, it is
possible that even Judas had been spared the punishment of eternal fire. They would point out to me the negative
implications of such a position for our practical life. They would retort: “If God is that merciful, then what’s the use of trying so hard to live a
Christian life? I might as well live my
life as I please. After all, as long as
I repent just before I die, God will surely forgive me.” “And what about justice? If God will likewise forgive the serial
killer who murdered my father, or the young drug addict who raped my daughter,
where is His sense of fairness?” “How
will God do justice to the victims of willful mass murderers like Adolf
Hitler?”
Von Balthasar, of course, clarifies that “the defense put forward by
‘our advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous’ (1 Jn 2:1)… does not give us carte blanche for new sins;
on the contrary it presents us with the most urgent challenge to start loving,
at last.”3 Still, I must
accept that his position indeed poses a number of complications when applied to
our practical life. Even the so-called
“Final Option Theory” (which proposes that no matter how sinful our lives have
been, God will still give us the chance to make our “final option” at the end
of our lives; and it is our “final option” – either for or against God – that
will determine our ultimate fate) is not without similar complications.
But then, doesn’t the Bible itself remind us that God’s ways are not
men’s ways? Our human mind can never
fully comprehend how God can be infinitely
merciful without violating the other values that we hold dear, such as justice and fairness. It is one of those
things about God which we can never fully understand while we are still
here. And we are definitely in no
position to require God to make His actions and decisions neatly fit the
pigeonholes of our minds.
NOTES
1W. Somerset Maugham, “Rain,” in A Pocket Book of Short Stories, M.
Edmund Speare, ed. (New York: Pocket
Books, 1998), 159-160.
2Stephen Vincent Benet, “The
Devil and Daniel Webster,” in Speare, 22.
3Hans Urs Von
Balthasar, Prayer, Graham Harrison,
trans. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
1986), p. 47.
