Easter: Christ Jesus died for the sins of the world, for my sins, and this message is a gift to all who believe it. Through faith in Him, who suffered the punishment for sins, who broke the causal chain of death, we have eternal life.
Such is the Christian message.
I read time and again in my bible about how God is near to the brokenhearted, to the ones who suffer, the ones who are sick, weary and crushed. I read how His anger is expressed over injustice, and how He cares for the victims. He has righteous anger. One day we will all need to answer before Him. There is a judgement day. There is a day of reckoning. And we all will be judged. The judgment will be in the hands of the risen Christ, and whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.
Such is the Christian message.
Some Christian leaders may have a theology which puzzles them when calamities come, and such calamities are indiscriminating – they hit the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. Perhaps they have theology that says that all good things, all wealth and prosperity is given the ones who honor God. So, when we meet calamity: how can this be? There must be something wrong on the human end, for anything else is unthinkable. There is something wrong with the faith, the fervor, the dedication, the …?
Good things do follow the ones who trust in the Lord: peace, joy, endurance, love, grace…and more. When hard days come, when sickness take our strength, when accidents happen to us, then we still know that we are not alone, that God will be with us, and we have hope. For even death can not separate us from Him.
Or perhaps there is a theology of God’s sovereignty which plays out in such a way that anything that happens, perhaps particularly things we cannot control, must be an act of God. If not, where does it come from? Sometimes we make rational patterns in theology, so flavoured with the scientific mind of the enlightenment that we struggle to explain God. Of course, He is not contained in our rationality. He is beyond that. Is He sovereign? I believe so, but he is not the originator of evil nor suffering. He does not act arbitrarily; but He reveals himself in the history of the bible, through people, in His word, through His Spirit, in his creation, and in this He is not limited. I am sorry for the ones who struggle to defend God. They have rather little faith in Him; for He is fully able to defend himself.
Let no one bring a theology that brings the salvation of Christ to naught. It is not the wrath of God that brings calamity. In the present case, it is a virus.
Let no one bring a theology of a pathetic God who needs systematic, scientific, limited human minds to explain Him. God allows the sun to rise over the righteous and the unrighteous, and in this fallen world, there is calamity, suffering, death. In his own time, He will set the record straight; in His own time, he will judge the world.
Let us all be ready when that day comes.
Christ is the way, the truth and the life. Whoever believes in Him, shall not perish, but have everlasting life.
Such is the Christian message.
