Betrayal, Identity, and MisericordiaA Reflection on Power, Deceit, and the Scandal of Mercy
If the worst man in history repented, would God forgive him? This gripping reflection on mercy, justice, and deceit challenges everything you think you know about faith.
Preamble
Some essays insist on being finished.
Others resist closure because the questions inside them are still alive.
This one… perhaps belongs to both worlds.
I cannot now remember what triggered this essay, started on the 21st of April 2026. I referenced “screenshotted” images, but I don’t recall what they depicted. The reference to Dan Quayle leads me to believe JD Vance had something to do with it. And since Pope Leo XIV is mentioned, it may have been about his rather rude advice to the Pope to stick to theological matters.
Read on (make sense of it it you can!)
Don Kenobi writes:
Here are the links to the screenshotted posts. (That’s a word, right?)
First Thought: Betrayal
The first Screenshot got me thinking, Poor Leo. A Vicar of Christ, just betrayed. The lukewarm, tepid, half-silent, semi-demi pushback from his fellow priests sounded almost as loud as the smack that followed Judas’s kiss"
Christ, after all, wasn’t betrayed by atheists.
He was betrayed by religious leaders, allied with the state, protecting their power.
That is the part we keep forgetting.
Not Rome alone.
Not Caesar alone.
But the quiet consensus of men who knew better…
and chose survival over truth.
Betrayal is rarely loud.
It is administrative.
Procedural.
Minuted.
Signed off in meetings where no one wants to be the one who says:
“This is wrong.”
Second Thought: Identity
The second screenshot got me thinking, What have we got here? A man without an anchor. A voice searching for a mirror. Dan Quayle can be very proud of himself. I mean it...
Because what we are seeing now is not just politics,
it is the manufacture of identity.
Not identity as inheritance,
but identity as performance.
A man becomes what the moment demands.
Not what truth requires.
And so he bends.
And bends again.
Until there is nothing left to bend.
Only a shell that echoes whatever power whispers into it.
Identity, in such a world, is no longer who you are.
It becomes who needs you to be.
And that is a dangerous place for any man to live.
Third Thought: Deceit
The third one…
It mad me think of many an angry monologue I’ve written.
What angers me? The deceit.
Not ignorance.
Ignorance can be taught.
Not weakness.
Weakness can be strengthened.
But deceit…
Deceit is deliberate.
It is the knowing smile behind the lie.
The careful construction of half-truths.
The weaponization of language.
Calling evil “complex.”
Calling compromise “wisdom.”
Calling silence “prudence.”
Deceit is not confusion.
It is strategy.
A Conversation in Orléans
I once met a Polish man in Orléans.
Actually, he was French. (Born in Poland)
The first thing he said to me was:
“See? I’m a Slav. My people were enslaved too…”
Albin. A lovable rogue.
He was in his mid to late 70s, about fifteen years ago.
A family member of his was very sick, and before the meeting we came for started, we held hands and prayed.
He choked first.
Then cried. Just a little.
Then he said something that stayed with me:
“My problem with God is His misericordia.”
I had never heard the word used that way before.
There was a church in my adopted city called Mater Misericordiae.
I thought it meant “misery-heart.”
It does, in a way.
But I wouldn’t have used it the way Albin had.
Turns out, the word mercy is derived from it.
The Question
“What do you mean, Albin?” I asked, hoping to understand.
He looked at me, troubled.
“If Adolf Hitler repented just before dying… he gets to go to heaven?”
He shook his head.
And there it was.
Not a political question.
Not even a theological one, at first glance.
A moral earthquake.
The Scandal of Mercy
Because what Albin was really asking was this:
Is justice negotiable?
Is there a door…
through which even the worst man who ever lived…
can walk in…
at the last second…
and sit beside his victims?
And if that door exists,
what does it say about God?
About justice?
About us?
The Answer We Resist
Christianity does not answer this question comfortably.
It answers it offensively.
Yes.
If repentance is real,
mercy is real.
And if mercy is real,
it does not ask our permission.
That is the scandal.
Because we want mercy…
for ourselves.
But justice…
for everyone else.
We want our sins contextualized.
Explained.
Understood.
But we want theirs…
remembered.
Recorded.
Punished.
Preferably forever.
The Cross and the Ledger
At the center of Christianity is not a courtroom.
It is a cross.
And the cross does something terrifying to human accounting.
It cancels debts
that we would never cancel.
It forgives
what we would never forgive.
It restores
what we would never restore.
Not because sin does not matter.
But because grace…
costs more than sin ever could.
The Real Betrayal
And so we return…
To betrayal.
Because the greatest betrayal is not Judas’s kiss.
It is the refusal to accept mercy
when it offends our sense of justice.
It is the quiet insistence that
“God must think like me.”
That His mercy must have limits
that make sense
to my pain.
To my anger.
To my history.
The Final Tension
Albin was not wrong to struggle.
In fact, he was closer to the truth than most.
Because he saw it clearly:
If mercy is real,
it is dangerous.
If mercy is real,
it is unfair.
If mercy is real,
it will one day offend you.
Deeply.
Personally.
Unavoidably.
So What Do We Do With That?
We stand where all men must stand eventually.
Between justice and mercy.
Hoping…
That when our own moment comes,
when our own life is weighed,
when our own hidden things are revealed…
That God will not give us
what we deserve.
But what He is.
(to be continued…)
Don Kenobi|#OldManInTheMolue
#Faith #Justice #Misericordia
#MolueMonologue|#BigAgendaAfrica
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