At times, people have asked me, “Why would anyone found a religion on someone’s especially gruesome murder? If Jesus were really God’s Son, why would God force Him to face and suffer such a painful, ignominious death – especially if He always had the power to avoid it?” This reality was dire enough to cause Jesus’ followers to despair for the long hours that stretched between His crucifixion and His resurrection. If you don’t believe in the resurrection, it’s hard to see why His crucifixion serves any purpose.
It makes sense to say that our present problems, in our society as well as our personal lives, represent the logical harvest of our forebears’ and our own sins. It’s much harder to figure how, sometimes, acts that were clearly evil have nonetheless yielded good fruit. Yet, when we review the stories of our lives and others, we know this to be true anecdotally. How can we understand this mystery?
Poet Kahlil Gibran wrote in The Prophet, “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” The key word here is “can.” Out of a well of miseries and pain, insight, compassion, and healing can spring forth. But something has to happen that enables us to frame the tragedy in a positive way.
Christians call this “something” redemption. God can actually take bad and turn it into good. It’s where we get the odd name for Jesus’ crucifixion day – “Good Friday.” Paul summed it up in Romans 8:28 – “In all things God works for the good of those who love him.”
God is the key ingredient here. Only the Lord can perform the critical “sin-proofing” that allows our ravaged insides to transform into vessels capable of containing goodness and joy.
It’s neither an easy nor swift process. And God often acts very surreptitiously. The recipients of redemption may not always know that it is the Lord, but when you see good coming out of evil, you know God has been there.
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