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The problem of Christ's sacrifice on the cross has been plaguing me since childhood, because I had a Christian upbringing. This article basically deals with one possible explanation for what His sacrifice means to me. As such, this article isn't so much of a theological analysis, rather, a personal attempt at understanding what the sacrifice may mean in a wider sense. Where appropriate, I will quote from the NIV Bible, to make certain things clear.
First, we define the "problem":
1) "Why do bad things happen to good people?"
This is the question we will try to address, (including events which are caused by errant choices or conscious evil-doing, such as murdering or abuse and then having cause effect reversals). For example, "why do tsunamis kill innocent people", "why people get diseased" and "why good and noble people suffer", are all variations of 1).
According to scripture, every man is born in sin, since by inheritance we are all children of Adam. [Romans 5:12 "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned"] Therefore, the Christian view is that none deserves a perfectly good fate.
In a sense, Paul's "classic" Christian view, is not very fair. What do I or you care if some very distant relative chose to disobey God? The question thus changes to "why do I have to suffer, via an injustice that happened thousands of years ago"?
The above in my mind, can have only two reasonable "explanations". Let's present the first premise:
2) Genetic code transmits (some/all?) combined traits from parents to children.
The validity of 2) for the genotype/phenotype has been established scientifically. For personality traits, things are not so clear. For example, although physical traits such as a long nose or a ridged chin can be verified through biology by tracing the appropriate genes, personality traits are a function of many different factors, perhaps including genes, but also, definitely the way a child has been conditioned and brought up. As such, biological inheritance cannot account by itself, as the ONLY explanation for our misfortune (as in 1) in the predicament of the "original sin", except tangentially, via the introduction of death in our species.
I will not address the question of death, except to mention that according to scripture, it gained entrance into human life (genes?) via the original sin. (as in Romans 5:12)
What I am interested in is 1) in its general form, which is quite distinct from death. Death is one thing, unfair bad fortune, another.
Since biological inheritance cannot account sufficiently for bad fortune and unfair events in life, something else must be at play. Something "external", for lack of better wording. One possible scenario for such an "external" influential factor, might be, mistakes, errors and aberrant behavior applied to a child's upbringing. If one couple sometime in past time abuse their offspring, the child will be damaged psychologically. This "acquired" damage, from that point on, may propagate forward indefinitely to many new generations, consciously or subconsciously. For example, if a child is abused psychologically or molested, there is a good chance it will become aberrant (in whatever way) later in life. This is not exactly "established" scientifically, but I believe it because of two reasons: Because psychology says so and mainly because of my own experience. I was psychologically abused as a child and I can clearly detect that in all likelihood I would psychologically abuse a child if I had one.
Such repeated abusive cycles don't always happen consciously. Raising a child is difficult business and oftentimes the stress involved is so great that it triggers hidden psychoses which when surface, affect the new child, and so on and so forth. To conclude:
3) Abusive behavior in children tends to propagate to new generations.
Such propagated abusive behavior, often affects a human to such an extent subconsciously, where he/she often makes wrong choices in life as an adult, causing effects which are not really wanted. A problematic adult who has been abused as a child, may have problems keeping a steady job, which can cause an avalanche of further problems, before the adult starts complaining that "his/her" luck in life is really bad.
Again, 3) may explain what I call "local" applications of 1), but still fails to explain larger scenarios, such as why do people suffer from natural disasters, for example. In these cases, I suspect there exists some still "higher" reason in the hierarchy of events that must account for such a misfortune. Something that gives God the "right" to act and wipe out people en-masse.
There aren't many choices here. There's only one "explanation" which can be offered in this case: Karma[1]. As funny as it sounds coming from a "rational" mind, it is the only possible explanation which can account for mass disasters. Any other global cause is not only insufficient, but leaves one the distinct impression that "Life" as a system, is utterly unfair. Here, the reader may choose to stop: If you believe that Life is "unfair" and this satisfies your quest for truth, there's no sense in reading further. It simply doesn't satisfy ME, as an explanation, because it implies a certain evil randomness in the way Life deals its poker hands to us. I see reason and causality everywhere I look in Life, so such an apparent "randomness" in life's justice on a grander scale, fails to satisfy my intellectual curiosity.
Having read thus far, it means this explanation of "apparent randomness" does not satisfy you, either. Let's therefore summarize:
4) Karma may be the only possible explanation for global and local bad fortune.
A clarification: By "Karma" I mean the sum total of one's "goodness", relative to the perfection of Christ, as a prototype human.
4) Is non-trivial to discuss, logically. For example, many new questions are raised: How does Karma operate? Do we all have bad Karma? Can it be cleared? Can there be any outside "help" in reducing bad Karma? Is your good/bad Karma less or more than a given person's? And various other tangential questions which I cannot possibly address in here, because they diverge to different areas. For the sake of this presentation, let us minimize the application of 4) by agreeing that somehow most of us, have acquired lots of bad Karma.
The first "dose" of bad Karma, has to have come from the original sin, otherwise Karma makes no sense again, since itself has to have come from somewhere. Note that this in no way implies any sort of reincarnation of the soul. We will assume here that the soul has been born in the presence of God, incarnates once, then dies. What happens after death, I am not concerned with, but I will try to tangentially address later in this article. Let's summarize:
5) Because of original sin, all new humans start with a dose of bad Karma. [Romans 5:12: "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned"].
HOW much bad Karma each one of us starts with, is a difficult question to answer: There certainly exist differences: A child which is born and grows in Nigeria, to starving parents, and who lacks most of life's fundamental satisfactions, appears to have been born with more bad Karma than me, who I am now writing this comfortably at home/school. The princes of England, who have been born into a life of money, fame, education and riches, appear to have been born with less bad Karma than me. Reasons unknown.
But I digressed. Instead of quantitatively looking at how much bad/good Karma we have been born with, let's look at what we do with it in our lives. I can say with certainty, for example, that my bad Karma "increased" from age 7 to age 40. I can recount my misfortunes and in each case, judge by the severity of what has befallen me every time. There has been times where I've had good Karma "added" (or equivalently bad Karma "cleared") and I can recount those as well. Because I was psychologically abused as a child, 3) came into play, as a result of which I have made many mistakes which SEEM to have increased my bad Karma. Therefore, judging from my example, the system of Karma appears to be operating as follows:
6) Most of us start with an initial amount of bad Karma A. The application of 3) defines a complex interactive/dynamical system which initially feeds on A and then differentiates itself again based on 3) and on additional factors, such as inclination, education, nobility, strength, inherent goodness, stamina in distress, etc. It resembles a dynamical system, which starts with an initial value and then "outputs" the final amounts of Karma during one's lifetime.
As this system feeds on A, and as we can all agree that Life, in general is quite difficult, we can also agree that the system 6) is highly complex, since we continuously "interact" with other people. There are major works in religion and philosophy, which if you wish, give us "general" instructions on how to behave if there is to be real progress for us, as humans. However, the initial amount of bad Karma A, we are born with, is also used to factionalize us, as we are born in different parts of society. These different parts of society teach different theories about how bad Karma can be reduced, so we end up fighting each other and increasing bad Karma.
All in all, it appears to be a mess, and from looking at the way we operate as humans and at the progress of society, it appears as though system 6) has the tendency to bring a soul into oblivion. Everyday we are forced by society's rules to adhere to choices which seemingly propagate our own good, but in the end always increase our bad Karma. As a result, it appears as though bad Karma tends to increase. [Matthew 13:12: "Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him."]. This seemingly cryptic passage, is made clear later in the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14-28.
Can there be any solution to this problem? If bad Karma increases and if we've had it since the beginning, it appears to me that humanity is inevitably headed for doom. Oblivion here means very bad conditions for the living, never mind what happens after death. Can we ever "escape" the vicious circle of the ever increasing bad Karma?
Here's where I believe Christ's sacrifice plays a crucial role: According to scripture, Christ died to take away our sins. But how, if in anyway, does this sacrifice affect our lives? Our bad Karma gives reason to divine retribution to be applied to us. As a result, we suffer, sometimes endlessly and/or needlessly. "Sin" here can be taken as a synonym for "bad Karma".
That's exactly where Christ's sacrifice applies. Christ is able to "lift" our bad Karma, via His sacrifice: [Hebrews 10:10: "And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all" and in Hebrews 10:17-18: "Then he adds: 'Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.' 18: And where these have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sin."].
The exact mechanism by which this was(is?) done, is almost a complete mystery. But I will try to analyze what I understand Jesus' sacrifice achieved, in hopes of giving the reader a fresh look of it.
The only hope humans have for a better life, is if their total bad Karma was somehow lifted away from them, so each one of us can start from a clean slate and avoid further punishments from divine providence, which, to me at least, seem to be concordant with a person's bad Karma. In order for someone to be able to do that, one has to literally "buy" the person's bad Karma, by giving something in exchange for the transaction. According to scripture, Christ gave his life as a ransom so that we can be saved. [Matthew 20:28: "just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many", Mark 10:45: "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many"]. This is a formal "transaction" which operates mainly on the basis of THE SELF, once this knowledge has entered one's mind. If therefore a person believes in Christ, his bad Karma has already been bought by Him, since Jesus has offered Himself as a sacrifice to the altar of vengeance of God the Father for that person's transgressions and sum total of bad Karma. [Matthew 11:28: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest"].
This transaction, is valid individually (to me because I now know about it) and collectively, because it applies similarly to each one of us, assuming all of us are similar and knowledgeable of God's Word and we are believers of it. [John 3:17: "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him" and 1 Timothy 2:6: "who gave himself as a ransom FOR ALL men;the testimony given in its proper time."].
It's as if each of us is a parallel universe: We are distinct, but when we interact, our universes merge. To my mind, if someone was able to offer his life as a ransom for the entire human race, His life must be worth more than the sum-total of the bad Karma of the entire humanity. If this is the case, either someone must have travelled back in time and selected a subgroup of people to be saved (whose bad Karma has been bought) based on some external criterion which only He knew about or someone else (God The Father perhaps) had decided, very long time ago, whose life will be saved, again based on some similar criterion. [John 6:39: "And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up the last day" and 44: "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up the last day".]
Then, as Christ's Life was worth more than the sum-total of our bad Karma, there's room for many (potentially all) people's bad Karma to be bought. We conclude:
7) If one believes in Christ's sacrifice, then one has a chance to have his bad Karma lifted from him, entirely. [John 6:51: "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I GIVE for the life of the world"].
The mechanism by which this happens is now clear: God as a divine retributor and judge, has no reason to cause further misfortune to a believer who accepts this transaction, because Christ has been punished already for that person's "sins", therefore God temporarily suspends judgment/punishment for that person. [John 8:50: "I am not seeking glory for myself; but there is one who seeks it, and he is the judge" and John 5:22 "Moreover the Father judges no one but has entrusted all judgment to the Son", John 9:39: ""For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind"" and John 8:36: "So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed"].
This would be perfect, except that most of people who start with a sizable amount of bad Karma A and have it cleared, tend to forget and again get trapped in the web of illusion that's caused by the being responsible for divine retribution and justice, because they gradually again move away from their objective, causing again increases of bad Karma, according to system 6).
It is imperative therefore that someone keeps "reminding" people about this sacrifice, because otherwise they will again move away from its meaning. This is why Christ told the disciples to keep and repeat a symbolic form of the sacrifice, so as to have a basis upon which this "reminder" can be repeated until the end. [Luke 22:19: ""This is my body given to you; do this in remembrance of me"].
It appears as though each and every act of ours, bares global significance to the accumulation of bad/good Karma and because we are a social species, it is hard to avoid human interaction. [Romans 7:7: "What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, 'Do not covet.'", also in Exodus 20:17; Deut. 5:21] Therefore, even if Christ buys off one person's Karma once, that's no guarantee that that person will continue to be bad Karma free for a long time, unless he/she adheres perfectly to the Word of God. But that's impossible. [Matthew 19:26: " Jesus looked at them and said, 'With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.'" and in Mark 10:27: " Jesus looked at them and said, 'With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.'"]. We are humans and we continuously err, thus always have a tendency to accumulate bad Karma further with our subsequent actions, which start immediately after the act of "divine forgiveness". Thus the need for continuous good deeds and continuous "remembering" of the meaning of Christ's sacrifice.
It is worthy to note here that even though it appears as though every single act of ours contributes to good/bad Karma, we cannot fully know the consequences of our actions unless we are aware of the sacrifice's meaning. [Ecclesiastes 11:5: " As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed [Or know how life (or the spirit ) enters the body being formed ] in a mother's womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things."] Here, again, system 6) comes into play, and once one moves away from the meaning, one becomes oblivious to the actual consequences of one's actions. It appears to be imperative then, that we REMAIN aware of the meaning of the sacrifice for as long as we can. This minimizes the chances of system 6) running in an unstable manner, and increasing bad Karma without us being aware of it. [1 Thessalonians 1:3: "We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ" and 1 Chronicles 16:15: " He remembers his covenant forever, the word he commanded, for a thousand generations,"]
The end result to me is a direct function of how much bad Karma a person has at the moment of his/her "judgment" by God the Father. If God the Father determines that the person can have another chance to understand Christ's sacrifice, He lets them be. If not, the consequences can be grave. [Luke 13:27: "But he will reply, 'I don't know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!"] Final judgment may happen every day, depending on circumstances, as we are all prone to disease and death. [2 Timothy 4:1 "In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom,"]. The interesting thing is that it appears as though non-final "judgment" happens every day during our lives' course, too. That's in my opinion what the consequence of bad Karma is. Literally "bad judgment".
Death comes in a moment's notice, and when it comes, God better find your bad Karma slate clean. Otherwise, according to scripture, one ends up in a very disagreeable environment, where there maybe no escape for practical reasons. There is a good chance that if God finds a person's bad Karma in excess at the time of their death, He may eject them back here or elsewhere to give them another chance to understand. [Luke 12:40: "You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him", Luke 12:42 "Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowances at the proper time?", Matthew 24:36: "No one knows about the day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, (nor the Son), but only the Father"]
If, as a species we had different instructions on how to better our behavior and life, we could apply those. However, in my opinion we have failed to recognize the most obvious way to betterment: Via Christ's sacrifice. All other methods inevitably and eventually lead to the final realization of our bad state, and are essentially wasted time and effort. [Ecclesiastes 2:17: " [Toil Is Meaningless] So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind."]
Moral conduct does not appear to be enough, because assuming a constant value of bad Karma, it can only go away asymptotically after a very long time, and after the person keeps doing good deeds forever and no more bad deeds. [John 13:12 ""Do you understand what I have done for you?" he asked them. 13: "You call me 'Teacher' and 'Lord', and rightly so, for this is what I am. 14: Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet you also should wash one another's feet"."] This is again impossible, because as I said the system of bad Karma is unstable: Little amounts of bad Karma tend to increase. We are human, not saints or angels.
I don't know why we are loaded with the initial amount of bad Karma A at birth. Perhaps, after we were born as souls we made a grave mistake somewhere else or it may be that original sin has loaded all of us with A as a side effect of our transgression, which has been subsequently carried via the generations through our genes. [Romans 5:12] The gravity of such a mistake may have been used by God as an indicator of how much bad Karma we start with. [John 3:13: "No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven-the Son of Man" and John 3:27: "A man can receive only what is given him from heaven"].
But I again digressed. What's important is that there is now a means to start afresh. This so far means that BELIEVING that Christ's sacrifice was a sufficient ransom for our bad Karma, gives one a chance to have Christ "exhaust" one's bad Karma in a way which only He knows.
In a sense, system 6) resembles a situation where someone owes a debt, in other words, owes someone a large sum of money. Here, "owes" can be taken as an analogy for one having in one's possession a "negative" amount of money. System 6) tends to make this amount more "negative", in other words, tends to make the debt greater. The objective of "betterment" therefore, would be analogous to that person reversing the situation and becoming a "rich" person, in other words, having as much money in his possession as possible. We all know how hard the situation with regular money is. Very few have the ability to reverse their "worth" and acquire large sums of money and/or become actually rich, through some sort of business enterprize. Most of us struggle just to keep in our possession a bare positive minimum for our survival. If the difficulty of becoming rich with actual money is so blatantly obvious to all of us, how much more difficult the situation with system 6) must be.
If indeed Christ was able to potentially buy the entire humanity, it is easily believable that He was resurrected by God after death. The magnitude of the meaning of that sacrifice, is equal in magnitude to the ability a being can have to transcend death, if not greater. Resurrection (to my mind at least), would seem trivial to someone who solved the incredible riddle of bad Karma this way.
It can easily follow now that whoever did this, must have known everything, past and present. (Romans 2:16: "This will take place on the day when God will judge men's secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares. " and Revelation 21:6: " He said to me: 'It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.'"). Reason being that if His life was worth more in absolute value than the bad Karma of the entire humanity, He, must certainly have been aware from since forever of everyone's lives, down to the minutest detail. Otherwise how could He have known how much ransom He had to give God the Father? Either that, or this ransom was greater in value by definition than any life's bad Karma ever in existence. But then, who could such a being be, whose life is worth so much apart from some sort of God, after which everything else again follows easily. [Luke 8:25, Mark 4:41: "Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him."]
The official position of most Christian doctrines is that we live only one life and there's no reincarnation. If this is the case, our one life is utterly insufficient in terms of time for a complete exhaust of our bad Karma. This raises an interesting question: What happened to the people who lived before Christ's time? In order to close the cycle of salvation, some means has to have been given to them to achieve divine forgiveness. We just don't know. Perhaps an external criterion, similar to the one used by God the Father before incarnation may have been used for those people. [John 10:16: "I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd."]
I really cannot fathom such details. What's important is the NOW and at least as far as I am concerned, I have been born 2,000 years AFTER Christ, which is in and of itself, a blessing. Imagine having been born 6,000 years ago, without a chance to know the meaning of Christ's sacrifice.
If I am allowed to sidetrack a bit more, an interesting question now pops up: What happens to the bad Karma which gets bought by Christ? We cannot know the answer for sure. Christ, as the mediator between man and God, may ask God the Father to redistribute it according to deeds, He may ask the Father to erase it altogether or to assign it to the unworthy (again, Matthew 13:12). Note that the situation is again completely analogous to the money example: A person's debt CANNOT be independently cleared, unless the one who the money is being owed to, decides to "clear" the debt. Once the person being owed to clears the debt, the person who had the debt is free again to start a new enterprize to gain money, without having the burden of the previous debt in his/her mind. This analogy cannot be made more obvious than the Parables in Luke 7:41-43 and Matthew 18:23-35 and 25:14-30.
I suspect that since scripture mentions that Satan has fallen to Earth after the sacrifice and since he was responsible for the original sin of humankind, he may be the final recipient of a believer's bad Karma, since he has fallen to Earth. [Isaiah 14:12: "How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!"] If this is the case, Satan must walk the Earth continuously, until he exhausts the bad Karma of all the chosen in the name of Christ [Job 1:7: "The LORD said to Satan, 'Where have you come from?' Satan answered the LORD , 'From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it.']. But it's impossible for Satan to exhaust all this bad Karma, therefore he is not in a good mood, to say the least.
This really validates what the scriptures say about Satan being really angry with this new predicament. Seeing his total loss and being burdened with tons of bad luck and bad Karma, his anger may be directed towards the believers of Christ [Revelation 12:12: "But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short."]. Of course doing so, increases his already too much bad Karma, so he is in a deadlock. Therefore one has to always be on guard, lest one forgets the meaning of Christ's sacrifice and ends up increasing one's bad Karma via 6), which is the safest way to feel Satan's wrath: To move away from the meaning of the sacrifice and end up in company with Satan. Things then, could not be worse, for he always was a hateful murderer. [John 8:44: "You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him"].
While one is alive, there's always another chance to understand Christ's sacrifice. Once one dies, the situation at least for those of us who have been taught the Word of God, appears to be irrevocable. God has a natural dislike for sin and anything non pure [Psalm 18:30: " As for God, his way is perfect; the word of the LORD is flawless."], so He immediately ejects from His presence and vicinity whatever tries to approach that He finds disagreeable.[Luke 13:27: " But he will reply, 'I don't know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!' "]. "Ejects" here may mean many different things: It may mean, reincarnation back on Earth, additional troubles and diseases in a new life, and/or in general overall distress in this life.
Therefore it appears wise to at least try to understand Christ's sacrifice. Is it necessary to understand Christ's sacrifice on the cross in order to have one's bad Karma lifted? I believe that belief in the Word of God is all that required [John 20:29: " Then Jesus told him, 'Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.'"], although it is very difficult to ascertain and keep a faith forever, without some sort of supportive proof. At least it was for me, prior to venturing into other areas. Unfortunately, the system we live in (as in 6), often arranges for us to go into useless excursions. That's where the trouble starts: If you have been taught the Word, it is instructive to recall your life. You will find that most of the trouble starts as soon as "doubt" starts coming in.
Although fully understanding Christ's sacrifice in terms of Karma is in this case a personal thing, those of us who have had glimpses of such truths, have an obligation to inform as many people as possible about it, but oftentimes we ourselves have accumulated so much bad Karma wondering about, that our life has become very difficult.
If everything we do counts as positive or negative, we have to do something to ease the burden of not knowing and being led astray by our very actions. It appears as though whatever it was we did while in the garden of Eden, blinded us voluntarily. It blinded us with respect to the true ruler of the universe. I cannot fathom the reasons why humans chose to be voluntarily blinded, away from the Truth, which was obvious in the garden. Perhaps so we could gain "knowledge"? WHAT knowledge? Nothing matters away from Christ. All is vanity and nonsense, unless there is a cornerstone upon which to orient oneself. [Ecclesiastes 1:2: ""Meaningless! Meaningless!", says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless." and John 6:68: "Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life"].
We have voluntarily blinded ourselves away from our orienting cornerstone and true purpose. It was as if we DESIRED to be made "free" of our purpose, which is utter nonsense in my mind. Why would one want to be blinded from the Truth? I really have no idea, unless we desired to be gods in a domain of ours, away from the true God. [John 1:4: "In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5: The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it" and John 8:12: "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life"]
In any case, what was done, was done. We now have a chance to one day return back home, with the conviction that God the Father will not eject us outside His domain, because, as Christ states [John 16:27: "the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God."], and this has been made possible by Christ's sacrifice, hopefully easing in the way our naturally born bad Karma or at least not increasing it further.