God and suffering

We have come to that time in our fourth year of EfM where we are considering God and suffering. The initial point of departure in the lesson is that the human condition is basically wretched and the question of the lesson is, how does a loving God fit into that reality. Good grief, as dear Charley Brown often said.

We Christians are so caught up in the cross, in the horror of one man's death, that we seem not able to look at the grace of his life. Not willing, also, to look at the grace that has flowed from him and through so many over the last couple of Millenia.

There is no doubting that in life many horrible, sad and damaging events happen to us individually, and also to us as part of the collective that is humankind. These things impact and then affect a significant portion of our psyche and cause a conditioning of our worldview, and so, by extension, develop within us either a reflex to compassion and service born out of grace or a deadening cynicism that draws us inward to an illusion of security and away from the call to form community with all.

To my mind, Jesus saw clearly the evil resident in the latter approach and saw also the liberation, liberation from fear, liberation from despair and liberation from isolation that could be available to those prepared to channel grace, expressed as compassion and service, and allow it to flow out to others.

Suffering is not a theological problem, how we respond to it is. The grandest and the least of all creatures who inhabit this world die in what amounts to, in the long passage of time, just a few short years. How those creatures die does not change the reality that they do die. Nor does the degree of suffering that accompanies their journey from birth to death change the reality of their few short years.

I don't think that one has to believe in the stories that Jesus sits on a throne at the right hand of his father in order to understand that through his death he transcended death. How did he do that? In his death, as in his life, he gave so completely of himself, he loved so wastefully that the penalty imposed upon his material body could not suppress the message of acceptance, of forgiveness, of the universality of grace that defined his existence.

Here today, in every corner of this wonderful world, Jesus lives. He lives in the hearts and the actions of Christians and of non-Christians. He lives in smiles and in gentle touches, in expressions of love freely given and freely accepted and in that innate understanding which most of us possess that our lives, no matter how small they may seem in their details are heroic in their scope.

Having experienced a bit of it myself and witnessed much in others I know that suffering is often present in our lives. I do not believe it is a reflection of some test that God is trying us with. I do not believe that it is punishment for being, "fallen." I do not believe that, in and of itself, it is a particularly important part of our journey. I do believe that how we respond to suffering, especially suffering in others, is at the heart of our Christian experience and at the heart of our salvation.

I truly believe that if Jesus knew of the perversion of his message that is encompassed in the current belief that if you accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Saviour you will inherit an everlasting life in the Kingdom of Heaven he would be moved to tears of grief at how lost we are.

Jesus, in the gospels is repeatedly moved to action by the force of his Father expressing through him. We so often deny that same force as it seeks to express through us. It seems passing strange that we declare ourselves Christians through our judgements in favour of ourselves or against others, rather than through our actions towards others.

Some of my dearest and, at the same time the most helpful guides on my faith journey, Roger Cooper, rector, Melody Goguen, EfM mentor, Michael Ingham, bishop, spend their lives doing the work of God rather than vainly asserting their ownership of Him or His ownership of them. All of them are aware of suffering, all of them are moved to action by the spirit working in them to respond to suffering and all of them are blessed by the blessing that works through them for others.

Education for Ministry is a wonderful program and has been a blessing to me as I have grown in Christ, but on suffering and God the curricula seems to pretty much see only the forest while not noticing the trees.