The Suffering of God
May 20, 2010
I previously discussed (at length!) through the words of Annie Dillard that suffering and evil are more of a problem for atheism than they are for Christianity. In other words, in the atheist view, suffering must be natural and normal, not something against which we fight or over which we mourn or from which we seek help. Nature itself is violent, a place where the strong eat the weak. If there is no God, then we should expect the same violence to be normative for our lives. Rather than fighting injustice, atheists should embrace it, not as injustice but as life itself. Having said that, I will offer a few glimpses of the Christian view of suffering and evil over the next few entries.
The first window I would open here is to see that not stopping suffering is a question of which God Himself has faced the pain. In Luke 23.35-38, the Bible records something amazing to me. Notice what the crowd cries out to Jesus, “He saved others; let him save Himself, if He is the Christ of God, His chosen one. If you are the king of the Jews, then save yourself!” They are calling on him, not to stop the suffering of the world but to stop His own suffering. They are mocking the God who has ‘chosen’ Him for not stopping the blood-letting. Does God have the power to stop it? Of course, remember his statement in Matthew 26.53, “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” In other words, more than 60,000 angels with flaming swords would be at His bleeding side in a moment if He called them. Now put yourself in the Father’s place, watching your Son be tortured, hearing Him scream out, seeing the mocking, watching Him rise to gasp for air only to slide back down again breathless, hearing Him be rejected, and observing His death, all while you had the power to send more than 12 legions of angels to His side.
You better believe if that were my son, I would move heaven and earth to be there; I would be an unstoppable force to armies, soldiers, bystanders, and weapons. And yet God watched on; Jesus died on. Many rail against a God who “refuses” to stop the suffering of earthly innocents, but God Himself has faced the reality of not stopping His own suffering infinitely more powerfully than we ever will b/c He not only allows suffering to continue in our world but He allowed it for His own Son. We face the pain of powerless suffering, where we have little control over the situation, but God faced the pain of powerful suffering, that is, suffering with the full power to end it and yet letting it continue in horror. There would have to be an amazing reason to do something like that, and there is. He did that for the infinitely valuable result of the salvation of you, me, and all of creation. Christianity is the only religion that gives us a God who is not removed from suffering but comes and Himself takes on the suffering that should have been mine and should have been yours. He does not require your blood but provides His own. John Stott says that he personally could not believe in God if not for the cross where the One who is all powerful humbles Himself and suffers a type of punishment that you and I will never experience. So, we don’t know for sure what the reason for suffering is but we know what it isn’t, what it can’t be. It can’t be b/c He doesn’t love us; it can’t be b/c He doesn’t care; it can’t be b/c He’s aloof. God loves us and hates suffering so much that He was willing to come down and get involved in it personally.
