Karma part 2
Karma 2 for paper Rev. Terry Goerz, Redeemer Lutheran Church
Continuing with the topic of Karma from my last column. I explained the origin of this word. Buddhists believe in reincarnation, that after you die you come back as someone or something else. If you have lived a good life you come back has a higher being, if you have lived a bad life you come back as a lesser being. Buddhism teaches that all actions have consequences which they call karma. The consequences of acts or karma undertaken in this and earlier lifetimes will be felt in a next one. In this process of being reincarnated over and over, it is a Buddhist’s aim to escape from this cycle of rebirth via good karma and to enter Nirvana, a state of being of happiness and bliss roughly equivalent to heaven.
Jesus comes upon a man who was born blind and miraculously heals him. The disciples ask “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” John 9: 2 It was really a karma question. What action resulted in the consequence of this man being born blind? For Jews anything bad happening in their lives was a result of sin, their sin or the sin of their parents. In Jewish theology they had to suffer for their sins in this world in order to atone for their sins through the humiliation, poverty, and suffering that God sends them. Bad things happened because God punished sin in this world, for their own good. If anything bad happened to you it was an indication that you were not in God’s good books. You were out of favor with God. If a woman was barren, without children, God was punishing her. There had to be unatoned sin in her life. So bad karma was an accepted fact in Jewish thinking. You suffered the consequences for your actions, and your children also could suffer even to the third and fourth generation. “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.” Exodus 34: 6b, 7
So in the disciple’s minds they are convinced that this man or his parents had to have sinned in order for such a calamity to come upon him, to be born blind. What does Jesus answer? ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”’ John 9: 3 So Jesus makes it plain that sin was not the cause of the man being born blind, but rather that the work of God may be displayed in his life. Well what is the work of God that was displayed in his life? We may be tempted to say that the miraculous recovery of sight of the blind man was the work of God that was displayed. And yes that was a mighty work of God, but there was a much greater work of God displayed in this account. Jesus came into the world to save the world. In this account the blind man comes to believe in Jesus as the Son of God, or the Messiah.
We can see the development of the healed blind man’s faith. First he calls the person who healed him “the man they call Jesus”. He knows who Jesus is, but you cannot see a relationship in these words. When the Pharisees ask him who he thinks Jesus is he says “he is a prophet”. So now he is not just another man, he is a prophet, a man with a special relationship with God. Later in the questioning when the Pharisees claim they do not know where Jesus is from we see his faith growing more. “The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly man who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing. John 9: 30 – 33 ”
In just this statement Jesus cannot be a sinner because God listens to him, Jesus is a godly man who does God’s will, Jesus has to be from God, or he could do nothing. Statement after statement the previously blind man’s faith is growing. Then Jesus finds him and asks him if he believes in the Son of Man. The man does not know who the Son of Man is, but asks Jesus to tell him so he can believe in him. Jesus tells the previously blind man that he is the Son of Man. Once the blind man understands that it is the Son of Man, that is the Messiah, who has healed him he declares “’Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.’ John 9: 38 Jesus is now Lord to this man. The Holy Spirit was at work in the man during this entire episode causing the man’s faith to grow and grow until he believes and then he worships Jesus. What a transformation. And a much more outstanding miracle than the healing of the blindness, a healing with eternal consequences.
So bad karma had nothing to do with the man’s blindness, and we should note that good karma had nothing to do with his salvation. We should all be most thankful that we also do not have to rely on good karma or good works to earn our place in heaven, but rather can rely on the grace of God gifted to us in Jesus Christ. He lived that perfect life, bad karma free, that we are expected to live, but cannot. He willingly took our bad karma to the cross and paid the price in full for it, redeeming us from all our sin. He rose again from the dead to assure us that the gift of eternal life in Him was assured. Not good karma, but the free gift of faith through grace is our ticket to eternal life, to the true Nirvana!!
Blessings