Faith, Love, and Justice

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Faith and Love, although deeply related, are not quite identically the same thing. The world tests both, every day.

Faith is the absolute certainty that an invisible Power exists and is a part of our lives, and cares for us. This "faith" can actually be simply the product of close and careful observation.

For there are so very many things that occur that we do not, and cannot, influence or control. We must have a kind of "faith" that the sun will rise tomorrow, and there is absolutely nothing that we can do either to prevent this, or to make it happen. We must have a similar faith that the sun, water, and soil will create fruits and vegetables. Then, we must have faith that this miracle-- the creation of delicious foods from water, dirt, and sunlight, will create blood, bones, teeth, eyes, and skin from tomatoes and watermelons.

We must also have faith that our bodies will take in oxygen, and use it in a thousand ways to support our biochemistry. We must have faith that thousands of biochemical processes will occur in our bodies.

To show just how complex these processes are, scientists estimate that to describe all the processes occurring in your body in one single second would require forty-seven large volumes of fine print!

Everyone has these kinds of faith-- even a person who claims that she is a total atheist, and has no faith in anything.

But when it comes to Christian faith, we must add another factor. We, as Christians, must develop a very special faith. This is faith in Love.

In a world that can be, and often is, quite horrible, we must believe that Love (God) is in charge of absolutely everything. We must believe, to put it colloquially, that "He's got the whole world in His hands."

This is the Christian, and general mystical, belief in God as Love. In a world whose major purpose is the outworking of negative karma, there is so much suffering. The Buddha said, for example, that "life is suffering," and we have all suffered in this world-- some more, some less.

The question is this: How can we live in such a nightmarish world, and still believe that Love is in charge and control of the whole show?

The only answer lies in karma. I have quite carefully studied, over the past forty years, every Christian "explanation," and many varieties of Christian faith. (I have attended the churches of forty-seven Christian sects and denominations.) I have also read widely in Christian literature.

One amazing fact that I discovered, which will be denied out of ignorance by many Christians, was that, until the second century after Jesus, reincarnation was a staple of Christian belief. Before the great Corruption of the fourth century, almost every Christian in the world accepted reincarnation as fact.

There is a lot of "blah-blah" about "the will of God," but that phrase means nothing if you cannot explain why the "will of God" includes so much horror and agony for living creatures.

Karma says that nothing happens at random. If we suffer, we are helping, at a soul-level of deep mind, to create that suffering. It is bringing justice to the cosmos; it is also teaching all to love-- often, by showing the "hell" of its absence.

This is a universe of harmony. God or Love never creates suffering, but God allows it to create growth and progress in all of God's children. Earth is such a painful mess because it is a planet full of "kindergarteners" or "pre-schoolers" spiritually. Among many human beings, there is zero interest in spirituality (Love), and so, the cycles of karma continue, for only Love can ever erase or neutralize karma.

This letter, then, is the result of over four decades of looking for an answer that makes sense. Honestly, if I can ever find a better answer than karma, I will drop and throw away karma, and embrace the new answer!

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