What is considered Abraham Lincoln’s finest piece of oratory is inscribed on the south wall of the interior of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington: the Second Inaugural Address. On the opposite wall is the Gettysburg Address.

In the Second Inaugural Lincoln makes some amazing statements about the Civil War then coming to an end:

The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses! For it must needs be that offenses come. But woe to that man by whom the offense cometh!” If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offenses which, in the Providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him?  Fondly do we hope – fervently do we pray – that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether”.

Is war, then a scourge for our sins? Was Hitler a punishment of Germans, Stalin of Russians, Mussolini of Italians? Roosevelt and Hitler were contemporaries, both elected by their people. Did each people get what they deserved?

The Irish and the Polish are not the only people with a wretched history. They merited it? Were the people of Tibet deserving of their country being destroyed by the Chinese?

It would seem complex questions are not satisfied with simplistic answers. We believe in a God of history, the Lord of time, in Divine Providence. But when it comes to specifics we do not have enough data to formulate an answer.

Lincoln could perhaps not say what he said today. Any more than the evangelists were able to say that September 11th and the fall of the World Trade Center was the result of our sins.

The most we can say is that sin has its own sequel. And all the evil we know stems from sin. But we cannot apply the rule in specifics. The rain falls on good and evil alike. So does the hail. And so do bombs.

A good life does not necessarily follow a moral one. Nor a bad one an immoral one.The matter is deep and more complex.

One could say Catholics deserve what they get in their priests. But the statement is gratuitous. The first twelve picked by Jesus give a good lesson.

They were chosen by the Son of God. One of them a disreputable man named Matthew. It would seem more than appearances is involved. We really do not know very much about the deeps of life. That you and I are here, were called here, asks more questions than it answers.

But the response to this is clear enough. And Lincoln gives it:

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.