Hello again. And Unsusceptibility feels like returning to the 182 with a word that has been quietly waiting for us.
I think there’s something particularly strong here that I wouldn’t want the song to miss:
Jesus was not untouched by evil. He was untouched in the sense that evil could not make Him become like itself.
That’s an important distinction.
He grieved. He wept. He experienced anguish in Gethsemane. He was betrayed, abandoned, mocked, tortured. So unsusceptibility isn’t numbness or invulnerability.
It’s:
Evil reached Him.
Evil wounded Him.
Evil never recruited Him.
Whoa.
That makes your sixth line the center for me:
“Nor did the demonic politics overflow the Love You instilled.”
Because that’s how evil so often wins twice.
First, someone does evil to me.
Then that evil persuades me to become something I wasn’t before.
Bitter.
Vengeful.
Cruel.
Suspicious.
Hateful.
The victim slowly begins carrying the vocabulary of the aggressor.
Christ wouldn’t carry it.
And John 13:1—He loved them to the end—is devastating beside Gethsemane. The pressure increases all the way to the cross, yet Love remains Love.
That gives me the song:
I think the bridge contains the uncomfortable thing this septet was reaching toward:
Not merely what evil might do to me,
but what evil might convince me I am allowed to become because it did.
That’s dangerous territory.
Because “look what they did to us” has justified an astonishing amount of subsequent evil throughout human history. Suffering can become permission. Injury becomes identity. Revenge gets renamed justice. Hatred gets dressed as courage.
And your Christological answer isn’t:
Nothing bad happened to Jesus.
It’s almost the opposite.
Look what happened to Him.
And then look at what didn’t happen inside Him.
That’s Unsusceptibility.
And I especially would not make the final prayer “make me strong enough that nothing affects me.” That’s stoicism, not Gethsemane. Jesus was profoundly affected.
Your prayer is harder:
Let me be affected without being infected.
That might even be the one-line description of the whole song.
Affected, but not infected.
Wounded, but not converted to the wound’s philosophy.
And if we’re going back into the 182 after some time away, that’s quite a word to come back with.
Hello again. And Unsusceptibility feels like returning to the 182 with a word that has been quietly waiting for us.
I think there’s something particularly strong here that I wouldn’t want the song to miss:
Jesus was not untouched by evil. He was untouched in the sense that evil could not make Him become like itself.
That’s an important distinction.
He grieved. He wept. He experienced anguish in Gethsemane. He was betrayed, abandoned, mocked, tortured. So unsusceptibility isn’t numbness or invulnerability.
It’s:
Evil reached Him.
Evil wounded Him.
Evil never recruited Him.
Whoa.
That makes your sixth line the center for me:
“Nor did the demonic politics overflow the Love You instilled.”
Because that’s how evil so often wins twice.
First, someone does evil to me.
Then that evil persuades me to become something I wasn’t before.
Bitter.
Vengeful.
Cruel.
Suspicious.
Hateful.
The victim slowly begins carrying the vocabulary of the aggressor.
Christ wouldn’t carry it.
And John 13:1—He loved them to the end—is devastating beside Gethsemane. The pressure increases all the way to the cross, yet Love remains Love.
That gives me the song:
I think the bridge contains the uncomfortable thing this septet was reaching toward:
Not merely what evil might do to me,
but what evil might convince me I am allowed to become because it did.
That’s dangerous territory.
Because “look what they did to us” has justified an astonishing amount of subsequent evil throughout human history. Suffering can become permission. Injury becomes identity. Revenge gets renamed justice. Hatred gets dressed as courage.
And your Christological answer isn’t:
Nothing bad happened to Jesus.
It’s almost the opposite.
Look what happened to Him.
And then look at what didn’t happen inside Him.
That’s Unsusceptibility.
And I especially would not make the final prayer “make me strong enough that nothing affects me.” That’s stoicism, not Gethsemane. Jesus was profoundly affected.
Your prayer is harder:
Let me be affected without being infected.
That might even be the one-line description of the whole song.
Affected, but not infected.
Wounded, but not converted to the wound’s philosophy.
And if we’re going back into the 182 after some time away, that’s quite a word to come back with.