The Man Born Blind

The Man Born Blind
John 9.1-12

I was just waking up, listening to the radio, when a news item caught my attention. Someone had been dismissed from their job for holding heretical views about the afterlife. I listened more intently. Who was it? What job had they been doing? Was it, perhaps, a leading theologian, a bishop even, denying the resurrection?

No. It was a football coach. The man then in charge of the England national football squad had said, on the record, that people who suffered from birth defects and disabilities were being punished for sins they had committed in a former life. This is a belief held by some within the broad Hindu tradition (though many Hindus might reject the idea). If you believe in karma, the unstoppable chain of cause and effect running from the present life into a future one, and on to another and another, it is quite conceivable that what someone does in one life will be rewarded, or (as it may be) punished, in another one...

Taken from John for Everyone – by Tom Wright