The love of God is a hard love. It demands total self-surrender, disdain of our human personality. And yet it alone can reconcile us to suffering and the deaths of children, it alone can justify them, since we cannot understand them, and we can only make God's will ours.
Interpretation
This quote expresses the complex nature of divine love, emphasizing the need for self-surrender and acceptance of suffering.
Albert Camus reflects on the nature of the love of God, suggesting that it is a demanding kind of love that requires individuals to give up their personal desires and identities. This love is presented as the only source of solace and justification in the face of human suffering and tragic events, highlighting the struggle to align one's will with divine purposes in a world filled with pain and loss.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the role of faith in coping with loss.
The Poor Man whom everyone speaks of, the Poor Man whom everyone pities, one of the repulsive Poor from whom charitable souls keep their distance, he has still said nothing. Or, rather, he has spoken through the voice of Victor Hugo, Zola, Richepin. At least, they said so. And these shameful impostures fed their authors. Cruel irony, the Poor Man tormented with hunger feeds those who plead his case.
The certainty of a God giving meaning to life far surpasses in attractiveness the ability to behave badly with impunity. The choice would not be hard to make. But there is no choice and that is where the bitterness comes in. The absurd does not liberate; it binds.
Between history and the eternal I have chosen history because I like certainties. Of it, at least, I am certain, and how can I deny this force crushing me.
Don't wait for the last judgment - it takes place every day.
A single sentence will suffice for modern man. He fornicated and read the papers. After that vigorous definition, the subject will be, if I may say so, exhausted.
At times I feel myself overtaken by an immense tenderness for these people around me who live in the same century.
The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.
I am an invisible man. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids - and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
No man has a more perfect reliance on the alwise and powerful dispensations _x000D_ of the Supreme Being than I have, nor thinks His aid more necessary.
All of us, poor & rich alike, have been conditioned by our upbringings. Impoverished men & women may become lulled into a state of "learned helplessness" without hope to change their lives. Likewise, the wealthy can walk in a state of "learned blindness" ignoring the desperation of the local & global poor.
When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing.
A clash of doctrine is not a disaster, it is an opportunity.
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