Have you heard about the man in India marrying a dog? Sounds pretty crazy, right? Sounds like something you’d never do, right? That’s what I thought until Thursday morning. (And no, I didn’t find myself asking Lassie to marry me.) You see, that guy believes that his actions can atone for the mistakes he’s made in his life. And what he did to those dogs was pretty bad. So a bad sin requires a major correction, right?
When I first read about this story I thought about it from a Hindu perspective. I figured if you believe people are reincarnated into all manner of things (including dogs), and you did something horrific to that dog, then that doesn’t bode well for you. As they say, Karma’s a bitch. Ok, I don’t know if anyone says that. But maybe the should.
That was the framework I was using until I read Bob Hyatt’s blog. His take fundamentally shifted how I look at this (and other) problems. Hyatt said, “We find endless creative ways to atone for our own sins.” How true. So many of us, myself included, are trapped into this mentality that we need to earn our way into salvation. That somehow what we do impacts how much God loves us. And that can drive us to do strange things.
For this man it meant he needed to find a way to make up for his mistakes. And because he did something radical to the dogs, he believed a radical step was needed to fix the problem. The irony here is that in a way he’s right. A radical step is needed to atone for sin. It’s just that Jesus was that radical step. He took the hit for all of us. He died so we don’t have to.
Nothing we can ever do will atone for a sin we make. There are no “do overs.” There is only grace and forgiveness. Thank God (literally!) for that.
