Right to Hate

(Translation: "It is not an overstatement to say that the present South Korea was built by Japan." See full article at NYTimes.)

Psalm 137

1 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
2 There on the poplars
we hung our harps,
3 for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"
4 How can we sing the songs of the LORD
while in a foreign land?
5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill .
6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
my highest joy.
7 Remember, O LORD, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
"Tear it down," they cried,
"tear it down to its foundations!"
8 O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is he who repays you
for what you have done to us-
9 he who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.

Echoes of Manticore

"He was killed... by the inevitable fifth, who was the keeper of his conscience and the keeper of the stone." (1)

On the creaky wooden bed board in the corner of the old school house, one ceaselessly twisted and turned in the sweltering heat of the night. Drown in the gay laughters and merriments of the champagne-filled night, the other chattered and waltzed among high society sophisticates till dawn broke in the distant horizon. One screamed with horrid wolf-like howls till his withered throat suffocated himself, pulling on what was left of his scant thin white hair with crimson-colored digits, dreading the night yet fearful of the inevitable morning and what was to come. The other, dissolved into the latest big band Jazz numbers in vogue, flashed his characteristic faint comely smile, epitomizing his iron grip on the worldly world. In the midnight hours, two men once united by a fateful throw of stone, have since parted on admission and responsibility of sin, now separated by mere fifteen miles yet oceans apart. One lived, sinned then held firm, and slowly died by blades of a thousand guilt. The other lived, sinned then willfully neglected, and continued his amorality in blissful oblivion. Is conscience a sententious yet cantankerous Gaelic rumbling, perpetually pounding one's head like a hammer? Or rather the dreaded medieval Grim Reaper himself, swinging his fatal scythe of death at every delectable sin?

Dare we venture another alternative. Only those who are sinned against can rightfully exonerate, but in God is forgiveness vertical and horizontal (2). In Him, one finds absolutes and finality of sin, but also substitutionary repayment, reconciliation with man & God, and rebirth of self. Pity those who found no aribitrator to intercede; in misery Job cried out desperately for one (3). Cherish the gift of redemption before the eyes of the Rigthteous, and live the everlasting libration from bondage of absolute sin and true guilt.


1. "Fifth Business", Robertson Davies
2. Matthews 6:12
3. Job 9:33-34