Sunday, January 11, 2009

Jesus - God's Love

God's Justice is unconditional love - and Jesus is the expression of that love. Jesus being God's own son had no purpose of being born as a human if he did not want to save the mankind. Jesus is not a concept of what God is or who God should be. Jesus was a man in flesh and blood. Unlike the Gods from epics or myths, Jesus was historic reality. Buddha was another person who shook the world with his radical principles. What was special about the teachings of the both these persons? They advocated renunciation of worldly desires and unconditional love. They did not categorise people into ones that are to be loved and hated. Jesus said - "Hate the sin, but not the sinner". Both of them advocated non-violence, calmness and equanimity.
Buddha never claimed to be God himself. He taught concepts and principles about God and how to try and attain him. Buddhism was in many ways an egaliatarian form of Hindu philosophy that was explained in the common man's language. But Jesus claimed that he was God's own son and that he came as a sacrifice for the sins of mankind. If God has sacrificed his own son for sinners like us, then he truly has unconditional love.And if anyone in the world is to be saved it has to be through God's love and God's love alone.
The trouble with Jesus, for anyone who sets out in search of truth is that he forces you to either accept him as God or reject him as God. But then majority of the people in this world do not make that choice. It is only a minority who experience his love that accept him as God. There is another minority who are agnostic and deny Jesus as God. Bible calls those people who deny Jesus as Anti-Christ, Fair enough - but this is not a call for ostracizing them though. But the vast majority falls in the in-between category - this includes majority of the christians too. One reason could be that not many go in search of the truth. To put it statistically, distribution of humans falls into a normal curve. At one extreme there is one minority whose hearts are so hardened from the outset that they deny the presence of God. At the other extreme are the people who search for truth and go the extra mile to experience God's love. In between the majority of the people accomodate themselves.