Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: oracle@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Brian T. Coughlin) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Jesus' resurrection Message-ID: Date: 29 Oct 90 07:01:49 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH Lines: 36 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Re: Tracy L. Brooks In article virtech!tracy@uunet.uu.net (Tracy L. Brooks) writes: >I'm just writing to ask if anyone has read the jokes in >rec.humor about the easter kit or sacreligious jokes? >I can't believe people can be that way. Making jokes about >the Lord! I've gotten flamed a lot of times but I don't care. >They definitely will experience the wrath of God!!! Dear Tracy, (*smile*) You can COUNT on the fact that I sympathize with your feelings on this... but please don't let your anger carry you to wishing ill of others. People are fallible, and people can sometimes be incomprehensibly cruel, in our eyes... but people also change. Many would have been the times that God would have been justified in focusing His "wrath" on US, too... but, as Christians, we believe that God forgives even those sins that humans find impossible to forgive. That's why we aren't convinced that we're going to "burn", or any other such thing. But, in good conscience, we have to hope the same for those people who offend us, too. You (and I) have a PERFECT right to be angry whenever God is slandered. Don't ever feel that anger in defense of the God that we love is unjustified. But anger has its time, and that time must eventually end. St. Paul once wrote, "If you are angry, let it be without sin ... the sun must not go down on your wrath," and I believe that that's true. There is a NECESSARY time for anger, whenever we've been hurt; but we have to hope (and to pray) that our anger won't hurt anyone, and that it will eventually fade. Love and forgiveness have their times, too... eternal ones.