Isaiah 6 closes with a curious analogy. After the Hebrews have been subjected to a brutal process of being repeatedly cut down, only a stump will remain, and "The holy seed is its stump." According to this ancient Hebrew religious text, God's plan was to destroy God's people for their rebellion and immorality, but out of all of that destruction God was going to bring forth new life out of the apparently dead stump.
Read from an early 21st century perspective, this ancient text reflects two important spiritual realities built into us and our world by God. The first is the reality of karma, that is "what goes around comes around." According to the ancient Hebrew myth of the Garden, humanity chose death, and it has been paying the price for that choice ever since. The myth reflects reality. The things we do have consequences for us and for those around us. Individually and collectively we are able to build a more or a less peaceful world by our own peace-making or trouble-making actions. Beat a child and both parent and child pay the price. Hug a child in pain and both the hugger and the hugged reap the benefit. Yes, the innocent suffer, but it is because other human beings make them suffer and suffer themselves (in one way or another) as a consequence. It sounds unjust until one considers that the system ultimately self-selects for justice and peace. Evil choices lead to evil consequences for the chooser. The Arab Spring is only the latest massive human movement clawing its way through the reality of karma toward something better.
According to the ancient Hebrew texts of the Old Testament, the nation and its leaders in their rebellion against God chose injustice and oppression, and they reaped the consequences. Sow death and you get it. This law permeates and defines human reality no more or less than does gravity. Like gravity, it hurts and limits us—and we can't live without it.
Also built into us is the second reality: resurrection. It is a common human experience: we fall and fail, and when the dust settles and we pick up our life again we discover that the "death" of the failure has opened doors to something better than before. It is in resurrection that we experience the grace of God. It is in the rhythms of dying to new life that we feel the work of the Spirit.
And, again, we don't have a clue why things are this way. Anyone who tells you they know God's plan is fooling themselves. What I do believe personally is that God has built a future into us, which in biblical terms we call the Kingdom of God. We are evolving spiritually as much as we are biologically, but to what ultimate end is not clear at all. What is clear is that a Hebrew prophet living 2,800 years ago dimly perceived what we dimly perceive: we reap what we sow, and God the Holy Spirit is constantly at work bringing a new, unexpected thing out of the sowing and reaping—something that transcends and reshapes the fundamental truth of karma. Go figure.
