Are You the Good Thief or the Bad Thief?

 

'Stories of life and passion of Christ,' Gaudenzio Ferrari, 1513,
from a fresco in Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Varallo Sesia, Italy.

Who can escape the experience of the cross in their life? The richest man to the poorest, the celebrity to the average-Joe, the old to the young. Pains in mind and body, aches and heartbreak, let-downs and cutting words, stubbed toes and severe illnesses, grief and sorrow. Some get dealt harder sufferings in life, others less, but no one can escape the cross.

In this fallen world, life then is a pilgrimage from Jerusalem to Calvary. A process of moving away from comfortable ideals and preferred experiences, to some other state far from romantically rosy. It’s the way marked out for us from the beginning—from cosy womb to cold tomb. From idealised plans to reality. A reality that is sometimes severely harsh. The words of Jesus to Peter are applicable to us all in some way or other, whether read literally or figuratively:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go.” (Jn 21:18)

It is easy to forget that this is basically what life is—a trek along the way of the cross to Calvary. We distract ourselves with little oases along the way, brief pauses and day-breaks, trying our hardest to pretend the cross isn’t there in our lives. We cover its splintery beams over with satin cloths. All under the impression that a meaningful and happy life is one which glosses over suffering, represses the rough jagged cross and calls it a sweet tangerine tree.

We also tend to refuse to look up at the eternal horizon that waits us past Calvary’s daunting peak where our death rests certain, preferring to pretend that day will never come as we look only to where our feet are planted in the present. A fine thing, but not when we forget the destination, nor ready ourselves for when we get there.

Thus when the weight of the cross seems to crash down upon us—and it invariably will, and more than once—forcing us to accept its reality and to trudge through life weighed down by its testing immensity, how do we cope? How will we cope? It’s not a matter to judge others on, but a considerations for ourselves. Will we cope alone? Will we cope with the help of others? What if others aren't enough? Maybe we will not cope, but Jesus will somehow get us through, as softer, kinder people at the other end who can help others in the future.

The way of the cross is inevitable, every human being must walk it. As born sinners, fallible from the get go, there are two ways we can walk through life, either as a bad thief apart from Christ, or a good thief in Christ. Thief is an appropriate symbol of our sinfulness—we steal glory from God and steal love that belongs to our neighbours and keep it to ourselves. Yet are we bad thieves, hardened sinners bent on living life on our own terms, or good thieves, redeemed sinners, trying our best to follow our God-given conscience?

Recall that Jesus was crucified with a condemned criminal on either side of him. The traditionally labelled ‘bad thief’ mocked Jesus and refused to repent, while the ‘good thief’ rebuked his fellow, exclaiming,

“Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” (Lk 23:40-42)

What was it that marked out the good thief from the bad, that led to such a difference in attitude and perspective? Externally the experience of both men was the same. They were shoved along the way of the cross, jostled out of Jerusalem, slammed onto the crucifix, nailed and left hanging in agony.

If we look at the bad thief and examine his words, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” (Lk 23:39) we see that he resented and hated his cross. He did not accept nor embrace the reality to which he was pinned to. As a result, the bad thief is angry at life, disturbed and restless, unable to come to gracious terms with his death and so he curses God and mocks Jesus, He who said, “I am… the Life.” The bad thief cannot see any redeeming light to his cross, convicted of his own rights he cannot and will not accept his powerlessness in the situation and so he refuses to let Jesus into his heart. The bad thief thus condemns himself to suffer the cross and eventual death apart from Jesus. He agonises and dies without the benefit of divine love and grace to transform his pain into meaning ripe for eternal life.

This is how we can act in life—as bad thieves. Refusing to accept on some level, any level, the reality of suffering in our life and our creaturely powerlessness to ‘save ourselves’. When the suffering is great we do not have the luxury of being able to hide from the hard reality of our pain. Some people know this terribly so. In either case, in pride, and understandably so on a human level given the profundity of certain crosses, we refuse to let God into our heart, cursing the situation and cursing the God who didn’t spare us from it. Yet Jesus didn’t crucify the bad thief, and nor does God cause us to suffer. Suffering is a part of post-Eden life. Who can adequately explain why so many bad and terrible things happen? We cannot. We only know that God is Love, and God only permits so many terrible things because He foreknows in His all-seeingness, beholding every possibility, and the interconnection between every choice and human existence and act, that in a world where the cross of everyone was obliterated except Christ's, hardly anyone, at least far fewer would come to be saved, and that in the chain of events, by the power of Christ, one person's cross can become another person's salvation.

It took being nailed to the cross for the 'good' thief to finally repent and thus be saved.

This is where we marvel at the power of grace, the gift of faith, and the unique spirit of strength and courage which is imparted by Jesus to the good thief. Here is a man who has suffered in the same way as the bad thief. He too is about to die. Yet instead of cursing life, the world, and joining in with the mighty throng who look at the cross as an emblem of shame and aversion, something to be thrown away, this criminal looks at Jesus nailed to the cross, and sees an innocent man suffering, a man filled with a love he’d never witnessed. On the cross of Jesus, from the perspective of his own cross, he beholds a love eager to forgive enemies, gentle and strong, silent and radiant—so powerful that he recognises the man crucified beside him as no mere man, but the Almighty God.

The good thief rebukes the mocking thief, accepts the suffering he is undergoing as a reality that has befallen him because of sin, and opens his heart to Jesus, desperate and confident in His forgiveness. At that point Jesus while remaining on the cross, enters the heart of the good thief, and the good thief no longer suffers on his own, but with Jesus, in Jesus, through Jesus. It is only fitting that the good thief, after letting Jesus into his sinful home, made pure by grace, asks in turn for Jesus to let him into His eternal home in heaven. Jesus is in incredible pain but is thrilled at this victory of love over a soul. The good thief let Him into his heart, and so Jesus replies, “Of course I will let you enter into my abode with me, for you let me enter yours, truly, ‘today you will be with me in paradise.’” (Lk 23:43).

What an example to follow. What a testimony to the strange and terrible beauty of suffering—which comes no matter what we do—when united with Jesus, given to Jesus, transformed in Jesus. The bad thief curses from his pain, the good thief blesses. The bad thief from the angle of his cross looks down on Jesus and resents Him for not delivering him from this suffering. The good thief looks up at Jesus from his own cross and falls in love with the One who suffers in love for him. The bad thief suffers the same physical pains as the good thief, but look at the difference between them based on their relationship with Jesus.

No matter what the nature of our cross or crosses are in life, whether a direct result of sins we have committed, or the loss of a loved one, or simply the hand that mother nature dealt us, or another tragic, even horrific event beyond our control—we walk the path of Calvary in this life, either as a bad thief or a good thief, without Jesus or with Jesus.

It is true, even non-believers can live and die as good thieves—suffering, but not bitter on the world or their situation, but tender and loving, and having the possibility of eternal salvation. It is a harder, less sure, inferior way and rarer occurrence, because nothing can compare to the explicit aid of Jesus accessed through faith, but there are examples. Such persons have implicitly accepted Jesus and the mystery of the cross in their lives through humble acceptance of their creaturely finitude and surrender to the goodness that hangs within their conscience—it’s a silhouette of the Good Lord.

Yet happy are we who truly believe in Jesus. In ourselves, we're no better than those who don't believe, in fact, often we're worse! But we have it better, we have the explicit help of grace that can help us transcend our natural default.

It doesn’t matter who, what or why we suffer, even if it’s the most heinous evil—once such suffering has come, it has come, nothing can take it away. It's a trite and condescending thing to speak otherwise. No, not even time will heal many wounds. Some wounds we will carry throughout life. We can only decide to keep it to ourselves, spitting at it and resenting our situation, becoming envious, resentful of others around us, letting our ‘nailed hands’ suffer on their own apart from divine aid; or we can decide to share our sufferings with Jesus, seeing His crucified form present within our situation and letting our ‘nailed hands’ join and meet with His. This will make us good thieves who live life like everyone else—with sufferings, but not suffering in vain and without meaning and hope, but suffering in love with purpose and the consolation of eternal bliss on our minds, where we shall meet God, and all those in heaven, face to face.

In our daily trials and the agonies of life, we can either curse or bless, be cursed or be blessed. Cursing God for not helping us—pushing Him away when it is He who suffers in us, with us, beside us; and condemning ourselves to a hell of pointless pain. Or blessing God by confessing His goodness and asking Him to remember us, to be with us, to help us in our pains. We will be delivered from writhing on the cross of life that promises no resurrection, and shall be admitted to suffer with and in Christ on His Cross that guarantees resurrection unto bliss.

We may waver between the two roles, sometimes playing the bad thief, other times the good, that's understandable given our human weakness and the weight of so many crosses, but in continual repentance and a heart that earnestly seeks to embrace the outstretched wounded hand of God’s Will in the trials of our life, we shall be walking the path of the good thief, even if in the meantime we struggle to stop grumbles escaping our lips. Once the jagged cross of Christ is kissed, venerated with the lips of the soul—a will that says, “Yes, I will pick up my daily cross and follow you”— it says in return to the soul of every good thief: “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

If such a soul is us, and by God’s grace may it be, then we shall have to wait for heaven when we die, following our final agonies. Then and only then will the veil to bliss be torn. However, “today” is today—through faith, by grace, we can somehow live out paradise here below even as the crucified Lord, by virtue of His divine nature, beheld the beatific vision while He was dying on the cross.

To live out our paradise in advance is to drag the joy of the Father’s love for us in His Son, poured out as Holy Spirit, into the wounds of our pains below. Such wounds, touched by the Cross—bridge to the Trinitarian mystery—are touched with divine love and will seem hardly any different while we trudge through life down here, but when we enter heaven—praised be God, let it be—such wounds, kissed by the likeness of Christ’s, shall form the ecstasies of the angels and shall be an accidental cause of greater joy on our part forevermore.

So yes, in faith, is not our Lord saying, “Tomorrow you will be with me in paradise, because today you already are.”