Only the Cross can dissolve

a nation’s karma

(Written to a student after the 2004 General Elections in Sri Lanka)

You are absolutely right. God's will is always the perfection of his people. But has Sri Lanka opted to come within His will? I think not.

My whole point is that, whether in the lives of individuals or in the lives of nations, the law of "as you sow you shall reap", or the law of karma, will operate unless broken at the Cross.

The principles of the primacy of consciousness, and of cause and effect, are also at the heart of the Biblical vision which may be summarised briefly thus:

As a man thinks so will it be unto him. Whatever he sows he shall reap. The bread he casts upon the waters is the bread that returns to him. The iniquity of the fathers shall be visited upon their children unto the fourth generation. What he does unto others will be done unto him. Therefore, he should do unto others what he would have them do unto him. Upon him that sows discord, shall calamity come suddenly and he shall be destroyed beyond remedy. Judge not lest ye be judged. What you give is what you receive, pressed down and overflowing. He that lives by the sword shall perish by the sword. Therefore, be ye transformed through the renewal of your mind.

That, in essence, is the law of karma.

As you can see, most of this is from the Old Testament. Everyone who has not moved out from the Old Testament consciousness continues to remain under the law of Moses or the “law of sin and death” – as it is expressed in the New Testament. Isn't it clear that Sri Lanka keeps sowing and reaping under the law (karma)?

Consequently, the karmic poison (or sin, and all the effects of sin) that has been accumulating within Sri Lanka's collective consciousness over several decades, constitutes the nation's inner reality today and it is this toxic reservoir that keeps spilling over as the nation's collective experience periodically, wreaking devastation and misery among its people with increasing intensity.

I am not a pessimistic at all, but only a realist, as taught by the Lord Jesus Christ. All the political and economic reforms in Sri Lanka, all the conflict resolution work and even the Peace Process, are all under the law and are bound to fail as indeed all peace efforts in the Middle East have failed. No place on earth is still firmly wedged under the law as Israel is. Don't forget that both Judaism and Islam, being both Semitic and unable to go beyond the Ten Commandments, are under the same law. Hence the devastation that continues in the Middle East.

All the praying that is going on in Sri Lanka, (as well as all over the world) at an individual level and in churches tends to be under the law. That is why they are not heard. God hears only prayers that come up to Him through His Son, the crucified and risen Lord: “Nobody comes to the Father except through the Son."

For individuals as well as for nations there is no way out of the mess except through the Cross of Jesus and that simple lesson often tends to be lost even among those who call themselves Christians.