A Suffering God Pt. 2

In the previous entry I discussed the reality of God suffering with his people. Having talked with a few individuals about this, I’ve come to recognize a concern, if not a problem, some people have with identifying God as a Being who suffers. This issue concerns God’s Sovereignty. In our minds it seems illogical for a God who maintains control over all things to be susceptible to suffering. Why would a Being with ultimate power and authority ever be subjected to suffering? This threatens some people’s understanding of the sovereignty of God.

This response may be simplistic but I do not mean for it to be so. Why could God not be Sovereign and still will suffering upon God’s self? Again, this sounds illogical and also masochistic. But what does it mean for God to will Himself to suffer? We must begin with what we know about God.

God is a God of revelation. Why does God seek to reveal God’s self? God is the greatest good, and included in that goodness is the desire to share goodness within community. Being sufficient in the Trinity, God nevertheless desired or willed to share God’s goodness with humanity. With this in mind, God created all material reality and revealed God’s goodness through the prophets, Holy Scripture, and ultimately through the Incarnation. Now those who argue that the suffering of God does not follow with the theology of God’s Sovereignty have a very difficult time in explaining the Passion of our Lord. If God’s Sovereignty simply served to protect God from any and all suffering, then why did God not simply ‘snap his fingers’ and fix the soteriological mess within which humanity finds itself? God willed the life, death, and resurrection of Himself in the fullness of Jesus Christ the God-Man. So before we even discuss the implications of a God who suffers alongside humanity, there is the problem of a Sovereign God who utilized suffering as one of the greatest acts of love ever known throughout human history. God suffered on a Cross because God willed Himself to suffer on a Cross, for the sake of His glory and the redemption of the world through our Lord Jesus Christ. This is Gospel.

So what do we say now in the post-crucifixion world? God continues to be a God of revelation. How do we see God today? We see God the same way as before, namely in the prophets, Scriptures, and the Incarnation. But now we have the Holy Spirit, operating in and through and under the work of the Church and her saints. In this truth we notice something else. In love towards one another, in and through the suffering of this world, God reveals God’s self in the work of God’s saints. Loving the sick, caring for the helpless, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the lonely, and every other act of love engaged with the world is Incarnational ministry. Immanuel, God with Us, is still the greatest of things. If God is with us then God suffers with us. The Father is not removed from the nature of His children, and God’s omniscience demands that God know all things, especially the painful, excruciating atrocities of human suffering. God knows us in all our suffering; God knows us intimately. Therefore, God knows our suffering. In this truth, God’s Sovereignty means that God chooses to suffer for love’s sake and for the sake of God’s name. God loves us. Let us then love one another.

A Suffering God

This is a topic we cannot escape but often ignore. It is the topic of suffering. This morning I spent an hour and a half with a chaplain at Duke Hospital and went on rounds with him during that time. In our visits we talked to one patient for fifteen to twenty minutes. This person was not only physically ill, but they had also gone through a lot of pain and loss in their immediate family. That being said, this person demonstrated an unrelenting faith in the goodness of God and that all things would eventually work out for their good. It was like watching Romans 8:28 take form before me. In facing suffering, especially in the suffering of the faithful, how does the Church continue to dialog with a hurting world and attempt to remind them of God’s goodness? What can be said when storms destroy cities, tsunamis wash away coastlines and homes, earthquakes swallow up neighborhoods where children play and live, illnesses take young and old alike, and suffering continues to plague all of our existence, regardless of religious affiliation? There is no answer to this question; a rationale can be constructed and proposed to explain away the problem of a sovereign God and a crippled world, but this rationale can not offer solace to a mother who has lost a child to cancer or a husband whose wife has been lost in a car accident. For the suffering there is no immediate answer. But there is one ultimate truth which continues to offer hope.

Immanuel, God With Us. “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me” (Matt 25:35-36). What does it mean to love God in the form of other humans? What does the Incarnation mean for God and mean for us as Christians? Do we believe the Holy Spirit is with us? Do we believe Christ is Incarnate God? When I visited that patient this morning and they told me their story, when I held their hand while the Chaplain prayed over the three of us, did I believe I was visiting Jesus Christ in the hospital, in the form of a sick, elderly individual? Do we dare to believe in such a thing?

If anything can offer solace to a world such as ours, it is the suffering of our God. A God who loves us so much that the greatest expression of that love was in the Self-Sacrifice of God’s own Son and God’s self in the crucifixion; the Gospel is God sacrificing Himself to Himself in the likeness of human flesh, all for the love of the world and the glory of God’s name. So when we suffer, we cannot forget that God suffers with us. God does not possess a distant knowledge of suffering nor did God the Father require God the Son to somehow explain to Him what suffering was. The Father knows all things, including the suffering of Creation. The Holy Spirit binds the Father and Son into the reality of humanity, allowing for the Incarnation to be perpetually present in and throughout our actions.

“Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit….God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him”
(I John 4:11-16).

God the Bible or God the Word?

Over the last three months I’ve encountered some incredible things. New friends, new ideas, and new understandings all wrapped up in a new environment in a new state with a new home and my new bride have spurred on some interesting developments in this new life. I hesitate to say this because I know next week will only bring a new emotion or new experience, but the most significant encounter I’ve had over the last three months has been my approach to the Scriptures.

My understanding of Scripture has drastically changed over the last 3 months. For most of my life, the reading I now bring to Scripture was known as a ‘liberal’ way to view the text. But I do not want to get caught up in that word. The terms ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ are simply words used to categorize people and label them, thinking we can understand them and thus judge/approve of them accordingly. I despise these words and only use them out of necessity. Besides, they are inadequate. For example, despite my ‘liberal’ reading of the text, I still consider myself a morally ‘conservative’ person. ‘How does that make sense?’ some might ask. That is the point; it doesn’t work because these words ultimately fail to provide any type of understanding or clarity.

Before coming to Duke I assumed a lot about my beliefs. By assumed I mean there were certain elements of Scripture and theology that I distantly knew about and for which I had opinions, but never once tried to understand or clarify. In some cases, I did not know why I believed what I believed. I simply believed. In some scenarios there is nothing wrong with this. I believe in many things which I cannot explain or clarify, like the Trinity or how the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ were necessary. These are mysteries. So in some situations, faith is all you have and all you need. Where this ceases to be OK is when one approaches certain issues in Scripture.

These issues are not unfamiliar to many in the scholarly world. They are points of tension and conflict between evangelical conservatives and Protestant liberals. These two groups barely exist as unified groups, but they very often say and write things concerning the other while rarely talking with each other. The left decries the fundamentalists (another inadequate term) while the right sets up bastions of apologetics against the liberal hordes. And nothing changes. What both groups refuse to see is that both sides are part of the Church. There is no correct side. From both groups have come encouragement as well as pain, liberation as well as imprisonment to lifestyles and ideas, harsh as well as loving words for the Church, and far too many words of misunderstanding and judgment.

Since coming to Duke, however, I’ve had some of the most passionate encounters with the Holy Bible that I have ever had. I’ve seen and learned things I’d never heard of before. And above all, I feel as if I’ve fallen in love with God all over again. There are weaknesses in how both conservatives and liberals read their Bibles. If one strays too far to the left, the Bible simply becomes a book of human texts, lacking authority and intentionality. Too far to the right and one’s faith rests in a book rather than in God. Textual contradictions and problematic historical data shake a faith founded on straw and toothpicks, and if one of those toothpicks falls then one’s world can shatter. Regardless, the Bible exists as the written Word of God, to serve as a revelation to the Incarnation of God, the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. This is our God. May the Father keep us from making an idol of His revelation.

Love Your Enemies...

I just finished Brother to a Dragonfly, an autobiographical novel by Will Campbell. Set in the South, the author tells the story of his own ordination into the Church only several years prior to the Civil Rights movement of the 60’s. While he worked towards integration, Campbell became an unpopular figure to individuals set on preserving segregation. During this time a deputy sheriff gunned down one of Campbell’s close friends and fellow ministers while he sat drinking a soda with two Blacks in a grocery store. The deputy was acquitted. In the midst of all his sorrow and wrath, Campbell had a revelatory moment.

Another friend of Campbell’s, named P.D., did not go to church but prided himself on being a pagan. P.D. separated himself from a Church he personally believed was in no way different from the rest of the world. He had a good argument on that point. In one of their conversations, P.D. confronted Campbell and commanded him to share the Gospel with him in ten words or less. Flustered and agitated, Campbell barked out, ‘All of us are bastards, but God loves us anyway.’ That simple statement came back to Campbell when Thomas Coleman gunned down his friend. From that simple Gospel statement, Campbell realized he could not say who was a greater ‘bastard.’ Was anyone less deserving of death or judgment? At that moment Campbell realized there was no ‘Enemy,’ that the KKK and every other pro-segregation individual shared an infinitely important commonality with every ‘radical liberal’ and pro-integration activist; they were all human.

If we really believe in a Gospel that changes people, in a God that shapes us, molds us, and transforms us while directly opposing our sinful nature, then how could any one individual be less deserving of grace? By definition, grace is never merited. There is no righteousness in humanity that deserves the love of God. Whether minister or murderer, pacifist or war-monger, lover or rapist, philanthropist or thief, all are guilty before a perfect God. By vilifying the evil in the world, by isolating the ‘perverts’ and labeling the serial killers and sociopaths, we somehow convince ourselves that we’re better off in the long run. We may have problems, but they aren’t like those problems. We are all generally good people and decent folk. We compare ourselves to those worse off, expecting God to somehow function off comparative salvation, as if humanity will be placed on a spectrum and a certain percentage located on the ‘righteous end’ will get Paradise as a reward.

But what does Scripture teach us? “There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). In this there can only be one response. We must love one another; we must forgive one another. This is no easy task; in fact it’s damn near impossible. But in that pain of love and forgiveness, in living out the Gospel like Campbell did with the blood of his friend fresh on his mind, we can be ever mindful of the blood of God shed on a Cross while we sat guilty and alone in the dark.

Homosexuality (Continued from Below)

(Continued)
Here is the tension. If one wishes to argue the Gospel as being an experience of change, then it follows that the previous state of those who were changed could not have been acceptable to the Church or to God. Repentance is necessary; it is not an act of piety. By piety I mean the ongoing attitudes and actions of those committed to the Christian faith. Therefore, repentance of one’s sins is required to enter into a life of piety; it is not an action of one already pious. The point is this. We must all initially change before we can continue to change. Repentance precedes sanctification.

From this starting point we can begin to address the issue of homosexuality. Before the Church decides on whether or not homosexuality is a sin, it must first decide how to act in either case. If it is a sin, then Jesus left no other example for the Church but to love the sinner. This, however, does not apply to those within the Church. According to Paul in I Corinthians 5, individuals openly practicing sexual immorality are to be removed from fellowship with the Church. Paul is clear that the Church is to always have fellowship with the world, for how else can the world be redeemed but by the example of the Church? But when those in the Church adopt the lifestyles of the world, they are to be removed from the Church. But wait.

Homosexuality can in no way be isolated as the only sin condemnable by the Church. What of greed, materialism, adultery, lust, pornography, disobedience to parents, the breaking of Sabbath, or any other sin the Church has either condemned, ignored, or debated in the last twenty centuries? Why is the practice of homosexuality on a pedestal? Is the practice of homosexuality the speck in our brother’s eye that distracts us from the log in our own? This only complicates how the Church should address the issue of homosexuality in the Church.

On the other end of the spectrum, if the Church does not judge the practice of homosexuality to be a sin, how could any other action be considered a sin? Scripture is clear on the issue, and the only defense against this is to question the authority or context of Scripture itself. To argue that Scripture does not condemn the practice of homosexuality would almost seem to argue that Scripture does not condemn any sin at all. If the Church accepts homosexuals without question, then how could the Church act in any other way in regards to adulterers, murderers, rapists, liars, thieves, or any other individuals whose actions the Church would readily condemn?

Personally, I feel as if the Church’s attempt to accept homosexuals has pushed the Church into a corner. Reaching out and accepting homosexuals into churches is not enough for many people; these would argue that in order to accept homosexual people, all language suggesting this lifestyle to be a sin must be utterly abolished. In the midst of all this debate we forget one key concern. What is the truth? Practicing homosexuality is either a sin or it is not. The beliefs of any number of people will not change what is. If God disapproves of homosexuality, then all those who encourage this lifestyle do not act in love towards homosexuals; they are merely sugarcoating a very uncomfortable truth. If God does approve of homosexuality, however, then many people are promoting condemnation in the midst of their own sin.

Homosexuality

The topic of homosexuality continues to be a hot topic here at Duke Divinity School. I attended a forum last week where this issue received attention from a group of Duke Professors and local pastors. The particular focus of this group addressed the need to reach out and include homosexuals into the Church. A friend of mine who I met at college recently told me that he was gay. With this in mind, I’ve become more concerned with how to welcome homosexuals into any Church community. But there exists a spectrum on which this issue is debated, and people are gathering at the poles.

For the forum I attended, to include homosexuals meant to accept them unconditionally, without any attempt to engage the sinfulness (which was not discussed) of practicing homosexuality. One of the pastors backed this up with the statement that “Jesus never rejected anyone.” Now I understand this idea and from where it comes, and this statement is true to a particular degree. The idea of a ‘come as you are’ Messiah, however, does not provide a sufficient appreciation for the holistic approach to Scripture, or even to just the Gospels. At the other end of the spectrum people reject the notion of homosexuals being ‘openly’ accepted into the Church in any fashion. I say openly because this issue has more than likely existed for quite some time in the Church in a subdued, ‘still in the closet’ fashion; it is only now becoming a more revealed concern.

Can the Church lovingly welcome people into its physical body without approving the lifestyle? Is accepting without approving really just another type of tolerant intolerance? For those who wish to reject homosexuals based upon their sin, are they willing to contend that their own sin does not also merit God’s rejection? What is to be said of the hierarchy of sin, and how much of our view of homosexuality is a cultural one rather than one based on Scripture and the tradition of the Church?

In order to accurately discuss this issue we must develop a very clear understanding of the Gospel. This cannot be done quickly and deserves more time than I am able to provide, but here are a few thoughts. According to the NIV, Jesus’ first words that he preached to others were, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near’ (Matt 4:17). These words more closely fit the sermons of street preachers and prophets than an accepting Jesus who has no expectation of change or righteousness in those who come to him. The next words Jesus speaks are to Peter and Andrew; he tells them to, ‘Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men’ (Matt 4:19). In order to follow Jesus, both brothers are forced to change. They are no longer fishermen. Change seems to be expected in order to follow the Christ. After gathering his group of disciples, Jesus delivers his famous ‘Sermon on the Mount,’ where most of his comments offer criticism to the current religiosity pervading Jewish culture. This left Jewish authorities and the Pharisees in a difficult position, for according to Jesus, no one could possibly be righteous. He had set the standard too high, as if the Law was not already difficult enough to follow.

From these very brief and insufficient points, one can begin to see that Christ is not a vessel of acceptance but of forgiveness. The Gospels promote this idea as well. The woman at the well, the adulteress about to be stoned, the demon possessed man, everyone Jesus heals, and numerous other events indicate how Jesus is a God who changes people. (Thoughts continued.)

Politics

It’s November 4th and I have failed to even mention the election or politics before now. For the last three months especially I have been daily bombarded with news clips, sound bytes, campaign promises, propaganda, and a literal mound of political jargon. There is much talk about this campaign being different, about it being ground breaking. But once we get past the jargon and political clout, racial significance and romanticized ideals, it’s still the same. The theme of this election has been Hope and Change. The pastor at the church I visited last week made an excellent point; has there ever been an election that did not promise change? Can anyone remember a Presidential election where the candidate promised to keep things the same? Granted, I’ve only been alive for a handful, but I do not remember that being the case. Now it could be assumed I am referencing only Obama’s campaign, but McCain also wishes to distance himself from the presidency before him.

So once again we have the stratification of the nation. Obama is made out to be a ‘false prophet and terrorist sympathizer,’ and McCain is made out to be a rich elitist who has no idea how to fix the economy. On the converse side, Obama is the savior of a nation and a people, while McCain is the war veteran who will protect the American way. So where is the truth? For Christians, truth must always come before stereotypes, wishful thinking, and just the ease of labeling the Other as a villain while idolizing what we believe to be right. For Christians, what should be our response?

As I write this, two fellow Divinity School classmates are sitting behind me. They have been talking loudly and blasting the ‘far right’ and Republicans. I have heard this same matter of talk used for Obama as well. Now I am going to propose a new idea of how to handle this election. Why is it that we feel the need to elevate a human onto a pedestal every four years? Whether Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, or unaffiliated, we all lift up our own candidate while we vilify the other. The sad and disturbing truth, the only absolute for every, single candidate, is that they will let us down. They will disappoint. They will fail. They will not fulfill their promises. The world will not change. As Christians, we must recognize that America will either rise or fall and it will have nothing to do with who is President. God is Sovereign. Obama is not sovereign; McCain is not sovereign. Now very few people would ever use this language to describe their candidate, but it comes across in how we think, speak, and act every single day.

Jesus’ political policy was not right or left. Jesus would be neither Democrat nor Republican. If the role of Christ in his first coming was to establish a right-minded political system, then he would have. As it was, he lived within one of the finest tuned political machines of known history; the Romans had few equals. So instead of vilifying the other, Jesus calls us to love the other. Instead of labeling and hating and stereotyping, Jesus dares us to get out of our comfort zones, off our soap boxes, and to engage the other. We engage by talking, but also by listening. We need to listen to one another, understand one another, maybe even disagree with one another, but always love one another. This changes worlds and nations, not politicians. The leaders of today will be dust tomorrow. The pillars of the state will crumble over the years, and the generations after us will wander these shores and say, “This was once America.”

And God will continue to say, “I Am that I Am.”

Know No Suffering

I have recently completed the first half of Peter Storey’s book, With God in the Crucible. Peter Storey is the former president of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa and of the South African Council of Churches (SACC); he provided a powerful voice against the apartheid regime in South Africa for over three decades. The subtitle for Storey’s book is Preaching Costly Discipleship. His work hearkens to the previous works of individuals such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Reading about his immense suffering, I have come to question what it means for the Church to exist in such a tranquil state here in North America. I have no idea what it is like to suffer for the sake of Christ, at least to the degree Storey graphically intimates for his readers.

On a similar note, in my Christian Ministry class last Thursday two people stood up and discussed the state of the Christian Church in Rwanda and Zimbabwe. They humbly rebuked the Western notion that wealth equals God’s special blessing on a people. In the US so many churches concern themselves with foreign missions in an effort to take God to these foreign lands. My two friends reminded me that God was there before the missionaries came. Oftentimes, God even seems to be more present in these lands. There is a disparity between how we view God’s goodness here in the States and how God’s goodness is viewed in war-torn Rwanda. Even though I personally reject the ever more popular ‘Health & Wealth’ gospels, I often catch myself speaking of God’s blessing when it especially pertains to my own benefit. The global community of the Church must work in dialog and not in monologue. The Church in American may bring the money, but it seems the Church in Africa could show us a faith ‘forged in the furnace of suffering.’ We go to church with smiling faces because we’ve been convinced that God is in the business of making us happy, and if we are not happy then we must not be pleasing to God. Rwandans go to Church praying and weeping for the strength to forgive the murderers of their friends and neighbors. There is a reality of faith in suffering which simply does not exist in a life of plenty and comfort. In North America, how in the world do we understand these words of our Lord?
“But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets” (Luke 6:24-26).

Peter Storey pens the story of his people, of a mixed people. The story is in his sermons, given for the love of his people. With a culture that is every more global we can no longer ignore the pains of this world. Starvation, slavery, illness, poverty, racism, murder, war, toils, and strife are rampant on the Earth. In our effort to respond to this pain, however, we must be careful not to ‘go to the nations’ and forget our own. Having been on several mission trips I found it easier to minister there than at home. My excursions into the world will not save me from refusing to minister at home. The sick are here, the poor are here, the discriminated and hated are here, the lost are here, the fullness of Christ in the least of these is here in the United States.

Triune God, let not our comfort mold our faith, but let our faith disband our comfort.

A God-Centered God

In a recent discussion with a friend of mine, we very briefly disagreed over God’s ultimate desire. He suggested that God’s greatest desire is to be relational with God’s people. I countered and suggested that God’s greatest desire is to bring glory to God’s self. Now this language is already problematic. Can God desire? When we speak of desire, we tend to imply need, or the longing to attain something previously unattained. So with this understanding, God could not desire because God does not need, nor does God lack anything from a previous time or moment. There is no Time for God and there is nothing that God does not already possess. When we speak of desiring, I suppose we mean the purpose of existence, or natural expression of one’s self.

For God, therefore, what is the purpose of God’s existence? What is the natural expression of God’s self upon all of reality, sensible and insensible? To clarify this we must understand who God is. What is God’s nature? For only in understanding God’s nature can we express that nature’s expression upon reality. As a result we must be careful in what we use to understand God. One individual may equate God with a negative experience involving a former pastor or minister. One may understand God through health and wealth, viewing the blessings of their life as being from God. With all these various experiences, one must be careful in what they deduct concerning who God is. For this reason, Scripture remains the most important source of revealed information involving God.

From Scripture we know that God is many things. God is relational, but God is also the greatest good. God does not desire relationship with us because we have anything to bring to God. If God is the greatest good, then God loves perfectly. If God loves perfectly, then God’s love for us will lead God to reveal to us the greatest good. God’s love will result in God revealing God’s self to us. In addition to this, because God is the greatest good then God will also love that which is good. With nothing greater to love than God, God loves God’s self. If we say that God loves the good, then God must first love God’s own good nature. So the question remains. If God is the greatest good, then would the greatest good love what is most good or what is not mostly good, namely humanity? This is common sense. The good would love the good. Humanity is not more good than God. Therefore, God will always love God’s goodness before God loves us.

But…because Christ died for humanity, the elect before God assume the aspect of Christ, thus becoming the greatest good in the form of Jesus, the Word of God. God’s love for us issues from a love for God’s own self in the form of Jesus. I realize this is a very God-centered soteriology, but I cannot see how it could be any other way. The universe is not concerned with us. We are not its center. We are merely a pin-prick on the scale of infinite magnitude; I believe this to be for a reason. We are not the ones who matter, as much as we like to think the opposite. From birth to death, the ages of humanity are like dust before an eternal God.

Praise be to the Father for allowing us to matter. Praise be to the Son for making us lovable in the eyes of the Father. Praise be to the Holy Spirit for sanctifying our souls and communicating the perfect relationship between Father and Son. Praise be to the Trinity for loving the greatest good, and allowing us be loved as a result.