IT WASN’T GOD’S WILL THAT JESUS DIED

The Heresy Police, I am certain, will be after me, but here goes: It was not God’s will that Jesus be crucified or killed in any other manner. It is never God’s will that bad things happen to good people, even bad things happen to bad people. In the latter case it is also because no one is bad in God’s eyes. We are all good because we are all children of God and God does not create anything that is not in and of itself inherently good.

That is not to say that we good people, one and all, don’t do some very bad things which can cause some very bad things to happen to others and to ourselves. It is never God’s will that we do such to others or to ourselves. When we do, God laments as much as we do and as do those whom we have hurt by our selfish actions.

But what about Jesus? Don’t the Gospels say that while Jesus was in agony in the garden just before he was arrested and taken off to be crucified that Jesus asked God to do something so that he did not have to undergo what he was about to undergo, but in the next breath say, “your will be done?” Yes, but, again, I don’t believe Jesus said that even though the Gospel writers say he said it.

So why do I say it? For two reasons. First, no one heard what Jesus said. Those closest to him – Peter, James and John – were sound asleep. The others were nowhere near to hear anything he said. Second, and most importantly, that’s what we always say when bad things happen to good people: “It was God’s will.”

Tell the parents of David who died of brain cancer shorty after graduating from high school that that was God’s will. Tell the parents of Nancy, home for Christmas during her freshman year of college who did not wake up because she died of an unknown but congenital heart defect that that was God’s will. Tell the parents of Katie who was killed by a wild animal while the family was on vacation in Africa that her death was God’s will. Tell the parents in Parkland, Orlando, etc., etc., etc., that the killing was God’s will.

It wasn’t, and neither was Jesus death on the cross. Jesus knew, as did Martin Luther King, Jr, as did Gandhi, as did all the prophets before them, that someone sooner or later would kill them. Jesus certainly knew that once the people proclaimed him to be a king as they did on what we call Palm Sunday, his days were numbered. The powers in charge would have to stop this nonsense at once, and they did.

Again, sometimes we know why bad things happen to good people and bad people: we people do some very bad things that hurt ourselves and others. But sometimes, like with David and Nancy and Katie, we do not. What we do know is that it was not God’s will but that God will give us, as God gave to Jesus, as God gave to David’s and Nancy’s and Katie’s parents the grace and strength to move on, never understanding why what happened happened, but somehow in some way to find resurrection and life.