God is – Good

Christ Pantocrator icon at Daphne, Greece. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen



The media often bring before us a world that is far from perfect or even good. Recently, British MPs used state coffers as their personal piggy banks. In Myanmar or Burma the military junta rules the country with an iron grip. Zimbabwean strongman Robert Mugabe keeps on destroying what is left of the livelihood of his impoverished countrymen. In Iran, the regime mishandles opposition supporters and shoots to death a teen-aged girl watching a protest march.

In the midst of all this the Bible speaks about a God who is Good. The apostle Paul wrote a letter to Titus in which he said, “When the kindness and love of God our Saviour appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.” (Tit. 3:4-5).

We have made the world a mess. God did not command Mugabe to impoverish his country or the Burmese military junta to transform their state into a large concentration camp. He did not inspire Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s anti-Semitism, either.

Evil is a consequence of the Fall described in Genesis. Sin spoilt a world that originally was very good.

Sin does not mean that all people are as bad as they can be but that no one has ever succeeded in being completely good –except a carpenter from Nazareth who had to pay a high price for his goodness.

But this carpenter from Nazareth was no ordinary man. ”No one ever spoke the way this man does” (John 7:46), the Jewish temple police said of him.

Jesus of Nazareth was also the Jesus of eternity who entered history as the manifestation of God’s love. He still works through those who have accepted Him into their lives.

Still Too Much Hatred Around – on Holocaust Memorial Day

When all German Jews were hated: A Star of David at the Judisches Museum in Westphalia, Dorsten, Germany. Image courtesy of Daniel Ullrich, Wikipedia.



Joel Kontinen

Sixty-four years after the end of the holocaust in which six million Jews were killed in Hitler’s Final Solution, anti-Semitism has by no means abated.

Yesterday, on the eve of the Holocaust Memorial Day in Israel, president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran took a swipe at Israel at the UN Anti-racism conference.

The timing could not have been more inappropriate. Just as Israel lighted candles in memory of the millions killed at the hands of the Nazis, Mr. Ahmadinejad, always the holocaust-denialist, said the nation of Israel was racist.

The latter-day Haman would want us to forget history. But the holocaust is something we should never, ever forget.