mvishnu@csg.waterloo.edu (Meenan Vishnu) (11/20/90)
Dear soc.religion.christian netters. I belong to the Hindu faith and for a long time one question has puzzled me. I asked a lot of my Christian friends this question but I was not satisfied with the answers I got. May be one of the netters can help me. Please explain clearly so that a simple minded person can understand. QUESTION: How does a Christian explain the differences that we observe between human beings. Are these difference arbitrary and random or is/are there any cause(s) for it? Please include discussion of differences between children who possibly could not have done any evil. This and other questions are explained in eastern religions using the Theory of Karma. How does western religions which does not believe in the theory of Karma explain it ? I would really appreciate your effort and time to explain me. Please e-mail the answers to me at <mvishnu@csg.uwaterloo.ca> I hardly read news. Thank You Vishnu [There are really two related questions, and it's hard to be sure which you mean. (You may well mean both.) One is the question of why some people are saved and some are not. The other is the more general question of why some people have much easier lives than others. However these questions are closely related. I think it's fair to say that all Christians believe that God is responsible for the world and everything that goes on within it. Where there are differences among Christians is how much allowance to make for human freedom. Let's start with the issue of why some people are saved and others are not: There are two "pure" answers, and some views that fall in the middle. One pure answer is "predestination". This says that God is responsible for everything that happens, and this includes who is saved and who is not. Since I'm giving an overview of the issues, I won't discuss this in detail. Clearly the challenge for this viewpoint is preserving the concept of responsible human decisions. Those who believe in predestination believe that it is possible for God ultimately to determine who is going to be saved, but to maintain responsibility on a human level. The other pure answer is that people are responsible for deciding to accept salvation or not. While God offers us help, we are free to accept or reject this help. God could of course determine the outcome, but has chosen to make room for human freedom by specifically arranging to avoid determining the outcome. Christians generally do not believe in karma, at least not as influences from previous incarnations of the same individual, since Christianity generally rejects reincarnation. However in some ways Original Sin acts as an equivalent. This is a defect that is transmitted from generation to generation. There is a certain amount of disagreement on this topic, with people taking more and less literal views of how it came about: Does Original Sin really depend upon a literal Adam and Eve eating from a literal apple, and transmitting the guilt of that act to everyone? or is it simply symbolic of the fact that everyone needs God's grace, and without it we are helpless to do anything truly good. But one way or another all Christians believe that people are marred by sin, and that without God's help they are hopeless. Furthermore, generally I think it is understood that this is something that comes along with being born, though it is not intrinsic to God's original ideal of what a human should be, and does not apply to Christ. While you can think of Original Sin (or for those who are uncomfortable with that term -- the need for God's grace) as in some ways the equivalent of karma, I believe Christians deal with it somewhat differently. Rather than slowly "working it off" though a number of lives, Christians believe that Christ's death and resurrection break the hold of sin on us. All at once. It takes a lifetime for the consequences of this to be shown in the way we live, but at least in principle, the moment someone is saved karma/sin no longer has an unbreakable hold on them. Depending upon how one deals with predestination, there are differing views of whether this salvation is entirely the work of God's grace, or whether there must be some human response in order for him to proceed. But I think all would agree that God demolishes our equivalent of karma. This is one of the reasons that we don't need reincarnation: salvation doesn't need more than one life. For a Christian, reincarnation wouldn't be an opportunity to get just a bit higher, but rather another chance to be saved. Neither of our major viewpoints finds this a particularly useful idea. Those who believe in predestination don't need it because if God decides who he is going to give grace to (and who he is not), he doesn't need a second try. Those who believe in free will don't want reincarnation because it seems to decrease the seriousness of the decision. They emphasize the decision for (or against) Christ as one with eternal consequences. If you get to go around again, the seriousness seems decreased. (Of course the main reason is that Jesus' statements in the Bible seem to contradict it.) This presents us with a difficulty, because people clearly do not all start from the same place. Thus there's a certain appearance of unfairness that Hinduism doesn't have. For Hinduism, people start from different positions because those are the ones they have earned from previous lives (if I understand correctly). We don't have that excuse. For those who believe in predestination this isn't an issue. God has decided for his own reasons who he is going to save. He will arrange it that they have whatever background they need. Those who believe this believe that God's judgements are ultimately just, but they do not claim to explain how he decides. They do believe that it's not based on human criteria, i.e. that he doesn't favor the rich and famous. For those who believe that the choice is ours, things are more complex. However it's not as bad as it looks. There is no necessary connection between wealth, or health, etc., and religious enlightenment. So the fact that people start out unequal in material things doesn't have so much significance for their ultimate decision. These differences are only for this life. The easiest version of this to explain is that God manages to find a way to present himself to everyone, and thus that everyone has a real chance to be saved. The other major issue that your question raises is the more general one of why some people have easier lives than others. The most difficult form of the question is the problem of suffering: why do some suffer? I've never seen a complete Christian answer to this. But there are some pieces that I think represent typical Christian views: 1) People do not suffer simply as a punishment for their sins. Ultimately I think Christians view suffering as a consequence of sin, but the consequences do not automatically fall on the person who sins. Sin deranges all of the universe, including human relationships and even nature. The Psalms are full of agonizing over the fact that the evil seem to triumph and the good suffer. If I understand you, this is a direct contradiction to the concept of karma. Or perhaps it is applying something like karma to the race as a whole. 2) Suffering is an opportunity for spiritual growth and for helping others. This does not justify it, nor does it necessarily say that God specifically makes people suffer in order for them to grow. 3) While suffering is not part of God's ideal for us, he responds not by removing it but by helping us get through it and use it for our benefit. I don't think anybody knows why, but it is consistent with the basic Christian idea that God deals with sin not by wiping it out but by joining us in the sinful world and bearing the brunt of it himself. In generally I would agree that the fact that some people suffer and others do not is unjust. But I would attribute this injustice to human sin, and to the fact that the consequences of sin do not always fall directly on the sinner, but create imbalances in the world as a whole. --clh]