God does not have to find me blameless before He can love me

I once asked my mother if people in Britain during the war heard about the concentration camps and the genocide the Nazis perpetrated.

"Yes" she said, "but we thought it was just propaganda invented by our own government."

Not every German was a Nazi, or committed atrocities even if we have to admit some were good at looking the other way. So if it was hard for the British during the Second World War, to imagine that these horrors really were happening, how much harder for the German people? Who is willing to accept that their countrymen, their husbands, their sons or brothers at the front are perpetrating acts that are the stuff of nightmares until confronted with hard, -almost unbearable- evidence?

And just as the whole guilt issue for Germany was far more subtle and intricate than their one-sided Post-War image, -so also with Serbia, in fact probably even more so. Without incontravertable evidence, why should any Serb assume at the outset that their countrymen have massacred civilians? This of course will be compounded by the one-sidedness of Western European news media (-obvious to a Serb, but not to an outsider-).

So what is the reality?

Reality is the way God sees things: the background causes, the individual decisions, the deliberately caused, and the unintentionally caused evils, the manipulation, the complicity and the innocence; -All!

So how does God distribute the blame?

-Justly: to each according to his own works!

I am responsible for what I perpetrate, what I condone, what I deliberately ignore and for my own wrong attitudes. The guilt is mine, whatever the circumstances giving rise to it. The wrongdoing of others does not absolve me, whatever the provocation! They will have to face what they have done, I will have to face what I have done! In this sense "each must bear their own burden".

But the good news is this: God does not love me because He finds me blameless; He Loves me even though I am not! As long as I do not hide from my complicity, God is prepared do have dealings with me, and He himself has paid the price for my wrongdoing.

There is a condition that goes with this: I cannot expect Him to forgive me, unless I accept that He will forgive others, and except I am willing to do likewise.

That is not the same as denying, ignoring, condoning or underplaying the seriousness of what may have been done against me, or pretending the pain I may have suffered was not as bad as it was, or has magically disappeared. Nor does it mean that crimes should go unpunished. Forgiveness means to be willing want God to treat my enemies with the same generosity He has treated me with, and to be prepared myself to be as generous.

"But if that is to happen, then something will have to change...?"

4th of April 1999. NATO has agreed to a pause in its bombing of Serbia over Easter. What can I do, but pray: "What about the Serbs, Lord?" And like a bombshell an answer, unexpected both in shape and message, comes to me. I sense the Lord's longing to bless that people, to heal and help them. Bombs from the sky are the last thing He wishes for. Rather, He wishes to see them turning to Himself, finding comfort and renewal.

"But if that is to happen, then something will have to change...?" Again I sense something: I see a wave of sorrowful despair sweeping over Serbians; repentance, as they find how they have been made the alibi for things they would never have wished to happen. Then the scene changed. Something best described as like sunshine coming out from behind the clouds shining over the landscape. People changed; hearts melted; a blessing passed over the land and they were transformed. And then the blessing spread outwards, reaching the countries around them.

While this was going on, our congregation was being told how God intended to bless the Norwegians, and make them a blessing to the rest of the world. --The Norwegians, a blessing! The people once feared and hated up and down Europe, now a vehicle of God's blessing?

And the Lord gives me these words:

Behold, I show you a great wonder this day:

The Norwegians, --a people once feared, hated and despised the length and breadth of Europe--

I have taken, and transformed and made into a blessing for all peoples.

And I show you another great wonder this day:

The Serbs, --a people feared, hated and despised

I will take and I will bring great sorrow over that people and they shall repent,

and then I shall raise up change and transform them

And they will become blessed

And a blessing to the nations around them!