I’ve long held the notion
that our actions produce good or not depending on our intention in performing
them. I’m sure I’ll get some arguments against this idea. It can easily be
imagined that people can do things with perfectly well-meaning intentions and have
their actions produce some disastrous results. Anthony DeMello’s story of the
monkey who put the fish in the tree. When asked why the monkey replied, “To
keep it from drowning.”
Von Balthasar’s discussion of
the Hebrew concept of sedek provides
a somewhat different concept, “immanent righteousness” in the order of the
world. This idea he claims was common to all the Orient. The crux of the idea
is that the deeds of man inherently have this immanent righteousness in that “they
posit a state of affairs to which the one who acts is subject … evil deeds
bring at some time or other to light the doom that lies inherent in them for
their perpetrator, and the good deeds bring to light their blessing. – And now
the part that struck me. – “The one who acts may think that his deed lies in
his own power, but in fact it is the deed that takes him into the sphere of its
power.”
Sedek, to
the Israelite mind, meant both correct behavior and the blessing inherent in
it. The whole scheme of immanent righteousness could be applied to the reality
of the Covenant and in doing so produces the history of the Deuteronomist:
Israel turns away from the Lord with disastrous effects that God permits;
Israel repents and cries to the Lord and salvation is effected.
Which of our actions has
taken hold of us? What are the blessings they have produced? What destructions
have they caused? Much food for thought.
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