It seems to me that a lot
of religion is based on fear. This is
often fear of not being saved; fear of hellfire; fear that somehow we have not
met God’s expectations. In terms of
God’s expectations, our fear is absolutely justified. God created this world to be a place of peace
as we can see in the story of the Garden of Eden. It didn’t take us very long to mess it all up
and turn to selfishness and power seeking as our driving force. That is what God is dealing with from the
moment that Adam and Eve leave the garden.
The wonderful thing, though is the way that God set about
redeeming this fallen creation by using fallen people to do what needed to be
done. Certainly we can have no
admiration for Jacob, who was an exquisite con man who duped his brother and
his father out of everything that they had; and certainly Moses, who killed the
Egyptian guard is no model of righteousness, and the Hebrew people building the
golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai while Moses was receiving the Law from
God are not to be held up as paragons of virtue.
But God never left it there. On and on goes creation, striving to be
re-created in the image of God. Finally,
when the Law and the Prophets don’t work very well, God gives us his only Son,
Jesus as the model of virtue that he has in mind for all of humanity. Jesus calls twelve disciples, none of them
really good people, and sets forth to show the world how compassion, mercy and
above all Love can make a difference in this world.
It certainly doesn’t work out well for Jesus. He was rejected and killed by the society
that he lived in and by those whom he was trying to help; and the disciples
didn’t fare any better. All of them
except John died at the hands of others.
But the beauty of Christianity is that it continued to give help to
those in the world who were in desperate need and it continues to do that
today. It doesn’t do it easily. Still there are many who reject what it
teaches and certainly God is still striving to recreate humanity is the image
that was his plan from the beginning.
But on we go.
Twice in the 14th chapter of John’s Gospel,
Jesus says to his disciples: Set your troubled hearts at rest. Trust in God, trust also in me. He
says this in the middle of enormous stress.
The crucifixion is not far off, and he knows it. But Jesus also wants us to know that the
problems of this life are not the end.
There is a Kingdom of God waiting for all of us, and it is that Kingdom
that those disciples were trying to create on earth.
It still isn’t created.
Most of the conflicts that are ongoing have some kind of a tribal or
religious element connected with them.
The Shia/Sunni conflict in Iraq and Syria, and the constant war between
Israel and the Palestinians are all based on differences in religious
understanding that translates into a quest for ultimate power. It seems unlikely to me that this is ever
going to change. The differences are
simply too ingrained for us to do much about them.
But Christianity is about more than that. It is about the way that we treat each other
and this is where compassion, mercy and Love can make a significant
difference. God loves us. That is the
message that our religion needs to tell the world. It is essential that we set our troubled
hearts at rest and know the peace that passes understanding that stems from
God’s unqualified love for each of us.
As God loved those fault-filled people whom he used to spread his
message in the world, so God loves each of us.
That love cannot be eclipsed by anything that we do or don’t do. The refining fire of that Love will purify
all of us when we stand before our Maker.
That is the only certainty that we need.
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