Luke 13.4 talks of a building in Jerusalem falling in and killing eighteen people who were inside it. People asked Jesus if those who had been killed were worse sinners than the rest of the people living in Jerusalem.

When my wife, Vivienne, was six years old, she was run over on a pedestrian crossing by a car and nearly killed. She remembers asking her parents what she had done wrong that God was punishing her.

I believe the basic default mode of humanity is legalism. We live life believing if we do good, good will happen; if we do bad, bad happens. Some people would call that karma. The goal of all religion is to somehow satisfy this law of karma by our own works, by philosophy or by sacrifice.

Jesus emphatically stated "no way" (Luke 13.5) to such a view of life. But then He goes on to challenge all around them that they need to repent or they too will die in the same condition.

Before suggesting an understanding of Jesus' words, I want to give my understanding of a Buddhist view of suffering. The Buddha taught that suffering is caused by desire. Desire is caused by illusion. If we abandon the illusion that our selves are important, then we can escape the desire to clutch at life and therefore will not suffer when calamity happens to us or loved ones. This indifference has been attacked for lack of compassion. In reality, compassion and mercy are central to Buddhist life because of the abandonment of self-interest. The purpose of this passage is not to put down the very moral, selfless lives many Buddhists live. I just want to offer a quite different approach based on the sacrifice of Jesus.

Jesus' teaching is quite different. This world is fallen and we cannot escape the effects of our separation from God by thinking that neither ourselves, nor the world, nor God exists. When we see others suffering from tragedy, we must face the reality that none of us are immune or protected from such events.

What does Jesus mean when he calls people to repent in this passage? I believe it is a recognition that none of us can measure up and we need to find some other means of reconciliation before the inevitable happens and we meet our maker. It is repentance from the legalism of believing our good works somehow protect us. This conversation carries on directly from the teaching immediately before (Luke 12: 54-59), where Jesus warns us to be aware of the times and to settle now with our God.

How about compassion? Christian compassion comes from the recognition that we are all in the same boat. God's incredible love and forgiveness of us through Jesus allows us to live a life of freedom from condemnation. Our compassion does not come from superior spiritual revelation like the Buddhists but from repentant confrontation with our own humanity and the mercy of God.

So how can a follower of Jesus react to tragedy? Not with judgement or detachment but with tears and with hope. Tears because of our equal inability to cope with such things. Hope because the things that are eternal do not depend on our ability. That's not a platitude. In the words of D.T. Niles (who lived his life in the Christian-Buddhist context of Sri Lanka), it is simply, one beggar telling another where to find food.

Mark and Viv Holt work in Thailand for tranzsend.