NOTES for Bar 1:15-22
How much strength it takes to deal with someone who has truth on their side when all you have on yours is shame. Never mind dealing with them: even coming and asking forgiveness is hard. And how hard it is to accept forgiveness. How much one must overcome within oneself afterward in order to continue speaking with, befriending, or loving the person who has truth on their side when shame is on yours. And what if this situation is repeated day after day? The natural human response is flight. One wants to find a place where nothing recalls one’s shame at oneself, a place where one can at least avoid seeing the person one hates because they make one see oneself without adornment. One can leave a person, try to forget everything, and begin again, hoping that it will not happen anymore. But where can one go from God? For only one side of the coin bears the words, “Righteousness belongs to our God, but shame to us.” On the other side one can read no less unequivocally: “Whoever rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me.” This does not deprive us of the possibility of choosing how and with whom we will live, but it shows us very clearly what pit we will fall into if we nevertheless decide to live without God.