on Jesus

Right.  So I was working the late shift some nights ago and I got a forwarded email that was in effect chain letter.  You've probably gotten something similar in the past.  It enumerates people like John Lennon, Marilyn Monroe, etc. who, by their words, offended God in some way and died horrible deaths afterwards.  The intention was to show a causality between their words and their respective manners of death.  And true to any chain letter, it includes a mantra-like declaration on one's devotion to Jesus, and asks one to forward it to 10 or more people in a few minutes in order to experience a "miracle" the next day.  Since I had some time in my hands, I thought it proper to send out my reply.  This I'm about to share now:

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This is an interesting forwarded message. 

 

I won't dispute the facts stated.  However, I don't believe there is a connection between (1) the lack of belief of those mentioned celebrities and (2) the bad things that happened to them.  There are many cases wherein far more terrible things have happened to virtuous people who never uttered anything against God.

 

No offense to Berns (who forwarded this to me), but to my mind, forwarded messages like these give one a slightly erroneous view of God.  It furthermore gives the impression that causing miracles to happen is as easy as forwarding a religious message through email.  It's far more sensible to think that bad things happen to all people, virtuous or not (which is, in fact, the case.)  It is not God who causes these things to happen to people who attempt to offend Him.  These are caused by (1) bad decisions of people themselves; (2) the inherent imperfection of the physical world; and/or (3) a combination of both.  It is for this reason that history is rife with examples of good things happening to bad people, and bad things happening to good people.

 

If one were really concerned about making people conscious about Jesus (which seems to be the intention of the creator of the forwarded message), one should first be aware that one of the things Jesus did was to clarify that the bad things people experience do not come from God.  During His time, His fellow Jews believed that every single misfortune experienced by people are God's punishment for some wrong done either by the person himself or his ancestors.  Jesus set out to demonstrate that this pervading belief is but a flawed understanding of the nature of the one true God, and the place of the physical world in God's plan of salvation.  It is worth mentioning that what happened to Jesus is a lot worse than what happened to John Lennon, Marilyn Monroe, Tancredo Neves, and all other people mentioned in the forwarded message.  None of these people were betrayed by friends, tortured, and crucified like Jesus, yet Jesus never sinned against God or man.

 

In fact, Jesus is God Himself - the Word made flesh.  We always hear about Jesus saving us by dying on the cross, but we never stop to think exactly how He saved us by doing that.  Here's how: when God entered human history as Jesus, He showed that suffering - whether self-inflicted or caused by others - is a constant in the physical world.  And no one - rich or poor, sinner or sinless - can escape it.  But He showed us more than that.  He showed that the power of God's love for humanity transcends the limits of the physical world.  The story of Jesus' life, death and resurrection is a story of triumph over pain, suffering, and even death.  It demonstrated the complete mastery of God over the physical world, not only by suspending physical laws (by means of miracles), but also by showing us that even without miracles, even with the worst that the physical world inflicts on us, humanity - flesh and spirit - can rise above all that and stay true to God's love. 

 

The notion that bad things happen only to bad people is rather outdated by over 2,000 years.  Bad things happen to everyone.  They are not effects of God's displeasure, nor should they be the cause of us being estranged from God.  They simply exist as a given.

 

I do hope that what I've shared makes sense to you all.  If you wish, you can forward this to others.  No miracle will happen, though.  But you will perhaps help others attain a more sensible view of Christianity.