“Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, saying, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him. I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”" When we are surrounded by difficulties, we often struggle with placing blame for our calamities at the feet of some karmic consequence, or the negative response of sowing the bad seeds of bad intentions. Often we blame our sinful condition, or our heritage for our bad luck in life. Jesus appears to negate the belief that everything negative we experience is somehow tied to something wrong within us.
Over a milennia after the Book of Job was written, and the disciples still hadn’t learned it’s lessons of not automatically placing blame upon the victims of calamity.
I spoke with an old friend. Well, we actually came to the conclusion that I considered him in more friendly terms that he thought of me during this conversation. Although we had not spoken in a long, long time, and he was speaking with me for the first time since hearing of the death of Bev's mom, and an impending kidney transplant for our only son, and our excommuncation, he preceded to speak mostly about the troubles we had with the denomination, and tell stories of how God uses the people who abuse us to show us lessons about how we are just like the abusers we face. God brings these things upon us to teach us these lessons and bring us to repentance.
I could not help but think that this was so much like the false assumptions of Job's friends, and Jesus' disciples. The teaching that says we bring all our own calamities upon ourselves, or that we God uses people who are dishonest to show us that we are dishonest, and those who are abusive to show us that we are abusive seems to be a popular variation of an old heresy - so methinks.
What do you think?
Of course, I am being contrasted with one of the Halloween sign wielding, bullhorn preachers from Repent America, but it still is a little a strange to be placed in the heretic category by people who do not know what I believe, or whose doctrine is further from historic orthodoxy than my own.
I guess I'll finish reading Spencer's book, and see how to get to heaven. All tnhis because I have friends who are Witches.
