Book Format
The postings on this website are done in a blogging format, which means the most recent posts go to the top, and the oldest posts go to the bottom. Because of the nature of topic, some postings will rely on the groundwork laid in a previous posting. It may therefore be helpful to have a format for reading the posts in a more natural order – or at least an order that might be used to write a book. This page is a republishing of the blog but with entries in a more readable order that makes sense logically (or should we say chronologically). Perhaps some day this page will turn into a published book…
This blog’s “theology of suffering” finds it’s source in the juxtaposition of two key revelations from the Holy Scriptures known as the Tanakh (which includes the Torah, used by the Jews) and the Bible (used by Christians). Both scriptures recount in the book of Genesis (which they share) the story of creation in which everything created was proclaimed “good” except for one factor that was lacking: it was not good for mankind to be alone. Aloneness, therefore, was a primary need built into mankind at the very beginning of creation. The next key revelation comes one book later, in the book of Exodus, when God is asked for the very first time to show himself (and herself – God likely encompasses both genders, but for the sake of readability, we will use the masculine gender) for who he is. The way God answers this questions will become his calling card that is used throughout the rest of the Torah and the Old Testament of the Bible. “I am Compassionate and Gracious….” is God’s answer to the question of who he is. The first word that God chooses to describe himself is Compassion, which means to Suffer With. This is a most unexpected descriptor for a being as powerful as one who could conjure up an entire universe. It is not a coincidence that God’s description of his essence (compassion and graciousness…) has a direct bearing on the primary need that was built into the mankind, the pinnacle of his creation. Suffering just happens to be the most ruthless and efficient tool that exposes a person’s aloneness.
If mankind’s in-built need is to address his aloneness, and suffering is the one circumstance that will strip away everything else to expose man’s aloneness, then God’s primary characteristic of being the Suffering-With God not only describes how God intends to meet mankind’s aloneness by suffering with them, but also hints at the depths and cost that God is willing to pay to do so. It is not a coincidence that the only aspect of Love that God could not demonstrate within the perfection of heaven was compassion. This particular aspect or quality of love needed suffering to exist before it could be demonstrated. God needed to create a realm in which their creation suffered, so that he could join in that suffering to demonstrate the extent of his Love. In this sense, compassion is an extreme demonstration of love.
The same could be construed with regards to Creativity. It is one thing to create something beautiful out of nothing. It is another thing entirely to create something beautiful out of something ugly, broken, or disfigured. In fact, one might argue that it requires more creativity to fashion beauty out of brokenness than out of nothing. The natural world around us has ample demonstrations of the kind of beauty that God can create out of nothing. A trip to the Sierra Nevada Mountains or to the coastline along California’s Pacific Coast Highway (Highway 1) 
can provide countless examples of that. But there is another quality of beauty embodied in human stories of redemption and compassion which rival and surpass the beauty of the natural world. Mother Theresa’s and Julie McGown’s work among the destitute and dying (the Living Room in Kipkaren, Kenya) are examples of such redemption, and are testaments to how God can create beauty out of brokenness. Just as compassion takes love to a whole new deeper level, redemption takes creativity to a new and deeper level as well. What if God did not stop creating after the six days described in Genesis? What if his creative skill is being demonstrated through finding new ways to bring beauty out of pain, brokenness, and tragedy today?
If this were true, then the God of the Bible has revealed to us two existential needs: to demonstrate his Love (through compassion) and to demonstrate his Creativity (through redemption). This blog will explore in much more detail evidence throughout the rest of the Torah/Tanakh and the Bible which supports this assertion.
The Judeo-Christian holy scriptures (Torah/Tanakh for the Jewish, and the book of Genesis in the Bible for the Christian) are derived from the same texts and recount a narrative of creation with the famous phrase, “In the beginning…” In those brief three words, we are introduced to the concept of time which has a very peculiar quality in that it is the one dimension in which one can travel in one direction only. (Our universe also has length, width, and depth, along which we can freely move forward and backwards – in space) Once there is a start, everything else within this universe can only travel in one direction – forward. This strange limitation is a pre-requisite for a history to be recorded and a story to be told. Once something comes to pass and is recorded, the story can’t change (which would not be true if one could travel backwards in time and thus alter the story).
This also hints that the Creator who made this universe, has chosen to enter into the constraints of His/Her creation, thereby choosing to limit themselves while operating within that realm. While creating time out of nothing, or perhaps out of a reality bigger than time, the Creator has fashioned a stage with which to record a story about the Creator and Their interaction with that creation. This is the first time we begin to comprehend that the Creator has chosen to limit themselves, and it is not the last.
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth….” “…and it was good.”
In fact, in the Judeo-Christian story of creation, everything created was deemed “good” at the point of its creation. Light and dark, land from the waters, heavenly bodies, plants, animals, humans – all were good. In the six days of creation, there were six statements of “and it was good.” But then, a jarring statement interrupts all this goodness and sticks out like a sore thumb.
“It was not good for man to be alone.”
This was the ONLY time in the seven days of creation that anything was deemed not good. This revelation is significant because it lays the groundwork for understanding the ultimate need that the Creator has built into His creation (and into mankind, in particular) It is this very primordial need that the rest of the story of the Tanakh and the Holy Bible try to address, and it becomes the axis around which everything else turns as we learn more about the Creator and humanity.
If this is true, mankind’s greatest need is not to avoid or minimize suffering, it is to address Aloneness. Everything else is subordinate to dealing with that which was not good since the beginning of creation.
The story of creation in the Bible and the Torah was full of positive pronouncements. After each day of creation, when God considered what He had done, it was proclaimed “good”:
- “God saw that the light was good” (Genesis 1:4) Day 1.
- Dry ground was separated from the sky and the seas and it was good (1:10) Day 2.
- Creation of vegetation – “And God saw it was good.” (1:12) Day 3.
- Sun for day, moon for night – “And God saw that it was good.” (1:18) Day 4.
- Animals, fish, birds… – “And God saw that it was good.” (1:21) Day 5.
- God made man and woman in his own image… “and it was very good.” (1:31) Day 6.
One could easily come to the conclusion that all of creation was perfect and that there were no needs by design. One might even venture to think that man’s needs were only introduced into this world through the later scourge of sin, and that before this “fall” from a perfect state, everything was all good. But that would be missing a very critical part of the story. In fact, it is perhaps the most important descriptor about the natural state of man as God created him (and her) and it sets the stage for the rest of the story recorded in the Bible. If we miss this critical piece, it would be easy to become mistaken about what our greatest needs are as humans. We might even come to think that our greatest need is to minimize our suffering and to avoid the effects of evil.
The foundational statement comes after God puts man in the Garden of Eden, the very place many hold as the ideal of “perfection”.
The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” (Genesis 2:18)
After a parade of proclamations of “goodness”, this one statement of “not good” stands out like a beacon. Indeed it’s strength and importance are amplified because of the contrast between what was pronounced good (6 times) and what was not good (a single solitary statement). The story of creation and the rest of the Bible really centers about the one need that God has built into man (and woman) from the start. Mankind’s ultimate need is to address his (and her) Aloneness. Everything else is subordinate to this one need, and, as we shall eventually see, this figures prominently into the answer for why God could allow suffering.
If we recognize that man’s paramount need is to not be alone, it changes how we view the rest of the events in the story of creation and of the Bible. It also changes how we analyze the relationship between man and God, as well as between man and fellow man. Our fundamental basis for theology shifts from seeking to obtain perfection (the absence of sin – and ultimately evil), to maintaining connection with whom who would keep us from being alone.
We get a hint of this in the very first question ever asked in the story of creation, and thus, in the Bible: “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:8). The first need described in the Bible is one of aloneness. The first question in the Bible places that need front and center and brings attention to the fact that the most important question to ask is not “Why”, but “Where?”. For God to ask Adam and Eve “where” they were underscores the fact that the created has left the proximity of the Creator and is presently alone. In hiding from the Creator, man (and woman) has exacerbated the problem that he was designed with – that it was “not good” for mankind to be alone.
What about Eve? Wasn’t she a sufficient solution for Adam’s aloneness? Didn’t God create her specifically to fix his problem of aloneness? It turns out that Adam was more than willing to “throw her under the bus” and ascribe blame for his own indiscretions to his human companion and thereby broke down the bonds of trust that would be necessary for them to meet each other’s needs.
So mankind was made with one deficiency – aloneness. There were two ways to address that aloneness, by being in communion with the Creator, and by being in communion with his human “helpmate.” The story of creation describes how man fails to maintain those both of those relationships in favor of finding independence and self justification. The rest of the Bible is a treatise on how the Creator will still find a way to meet that paramount need to address the aloneness that was designed into mankind at the point of his (and her) creation.
The creation story culminates in the interaction between the Creator and the pinnacle of God’s creation, humankind. This is represented in the story by Adam, and by extension, Eve. (I use Their to describe the Creator, because the text in Genesis states that the Creator proclaimed, “Let Us make man in Our image, in Our likeness….” Genesis 1:26)
The Pinnacle has a need from the start – man is incomplete himself, so the glaring question that must be addressed about Adam is, how should that which is not good (that man is alone) in an otherwise good creation be satisfied?
The Genesis narrative describes attempts made to address man’s problem of alone-ness. A search was conducted for a help-mate to satisfy that need for companionship, and it was quickly determined that anything created up until that point, including animals was insufficient to meet that primordial need for companionship. If One by himself was a problem, perhaps Two would be sufficient to ameliorate aloneness…?
The Creator fashions an “other” from the man: perhaps it takes another of the same kind to satisfy alone-ness? A clone identical to the first man apparently would not suffice (a man plus a man), so a counterpart was created – of the same kind, but intrinsically different, yet dependent upon each other for continued propagation. Would two pieces from the same puzzle be enough to satiate the need? (A man plus a woman?)
It takes a garden and some trees to find out the answer to that question.
Much has been written about the events that transpired in the Garden of Eden. Many would say that at this point, before any fruit in the garden were harmed, perfection prevailed. It was the theft and ingestion of some forbidden fruit that led to the the shattering of the ultimate ideal, they would say. Taken to its logical conclusion, such a viewpoint would espouse that mankind should seek to return to that perfect state in Eden – man and woman, happily ever after in the garden, content to abstain from the forbidden fruit. Perfection would be defined by the absence of disobedience (the absence of “sin”, in some circles). If this were true, mankind’s potential would be fulfilled by somehow attaining perfection, whether by self effort, or by transference from another source. Indeed, there are some who believe that the goal of “salvation” is to reach perfection – and that if one can’t reach perfection (the absence of infractions against a cosmic law) by one’s own effort, then one must depend on another, even Jesus, to provide that perfection. But this line of thinking fixes the goal of humanity’s existence to be attaining “perfection”, the absence of “sin”.
Did the Creator expect Adam and Eve to forever obey the prohibition and avoid the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Was the Creator surprised that the prohibition was ignored and that God’s perfect plan was forever ruined by the theft and eating of some fruit? Was God’s plan A interrupted by an unforeseen circumstance (theft of fruit), and that God had to resort to a plan B to carry out his intentions? Did the Creator intend for Adam and Eve to never taste the knowledge of good and evil in the first place?
If so, why did the Creator invent that particular tree? Couldn’t the garden of Eden have been created without a Tree of the knowledge of good and evil to begin with? That would have guaranteed that Adam and Eve could have remained “perfect” and unblemished by disobedience. They could have lived through eternity oblivious to evil (and also to good) – but would have been safely tucked away in their cocoon of Eden. If it was God’s intention for them to be perfect, it would have been trivial to ensure that by not even creating a forbidden fruit.
The fact that God would go to the trouble to create a tree, even a forbidden one, indicates that there is more to the tree’s purpose than being a target of abstinence.
Lama Sabachthani – From Why to Where
Before we dive deeper into the tree in the Garden of Eden, I want to take a quick glimpse at another significant tree described in the Bible. The scandalous event of the New Testament portion of the Bible is undoubtedly the killing of one part of the Triune God which happens on a cross. This man made “tree” was the torturer and executioner’s tool of choice used by the most powerful state in the world at the time (the Roman Empire).
There is a curious cry by Jesus Christ just moments before he died during his execution on the cross. It is a clue to the darkest suffering, the deepest terror that he endured while he was alive on this earth. While the physical pain must have been tremendous (and certainly illustrated in its most gory detail by a recent motion picture depiction) – crucifixion was tantamount to state sanctioned torture and Jesus would ultimately die by asphyxiation while suspended by nails in the wrists and feet, our attention is drawn to a different concern. At this point in time right before his physical death, Jesus is preoccupied by his sense of abandonment. He cries out “Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani”, which means, “O my God, why have you abandoned me?”
If we take Jesus’ cry at face value (“Why have you abandoned me?”), it implies that he felt abandoned by his heavenly Father during his death on the cross. Some theologians have explained this by saying that at the point on the cross when Jesus took on the guilt of the world’s transgressions, the heavenly father could not be sullied by the imperfection and thus turned his face from his own son leaving him to die alone on the cross. In this line of reasoning, dying alone is the just punishment for missing the mark of perfect intentions and perfect behavior. This death penalty was meted out against Jesus who was substituted for every other person in the world who deserves to die as a result of Adam and Eve’s transgressions in the garden of Eden (the partaking of forbidden fruit) and the inheritance of their guilt and proclivity for disobedience. Because Jesus never exhibited imperfect intentions nor imperfect behavior, his payment of the death penalty could be applied to everyone else in the world who did deserve that penalty. One conclusion that this line of thinking could lead to is that God is supremely interested in perfection, and that Jesus’ death was just a mechanism for transferring perfection back into an imperfect world. It is as if God made a perfect world, (plan “A”), man messed it up in the garden of Eden, and God had to come up with plan “B” to fix it by sending his son as a cosmic payment [to whom?] to cover over the unsightly mess of imperfection. I believe there is a much more compelling story than God’s attempts to maintain perfection in the universe, and it centers around the concept of aloneness – the aloneness that Adam (and Eve) were created with, and the same aloneness that Jesus felt on the cross as he died.
Jesus’ cry of abandonment was not a single isolated statement, but rather, the opening line to an age old Psalm of lament, Psalm 22. Psalm 22 opens with a three stark questions of “Why?”: Why has God has abandoned, why is he so far from saving, and why does God not answer? A careful look at these three why questions, however reveals that they are really questions about proximity. Where is God in the midst of the suffering? (abandonment implies that God is not near). Is he too far away to save one from the suffering? Is he too far away to hear the cries and groans and answer them? (Surely if God were close by, he would answer the cries and save one from the suffering)
These “where” questions are followed by an admonishment and reminder to trust in God. The first supplication in Psalm 22 is for God not to be far away (verse 11) which is repeated again in verse 19. It is followed by an entreaty for God to come quickly, and then to be delivered from the sword, rescued, and saved. The Psalmist wants the concern about (God’s proximity) to be addressed before anything else.
It is not a coincidence that the very need that Jesus expressed at the point of his death was the same need that was alluded to in the Creation story – “it was not good for man to be alone.” These two illustrations of aloneness – Adam (and Eve’s) at the point creation and Jesus’ feeling alone at the point of his crucifixion and death bind the two together under the same need and demonstrate that God, in the person of Jesus, has himself experienced the sense of alone-ness we humans all struggle with, and can therefore relate to our suffering out of his personal experience.
Psalm 22 highlights the tension between feeling abandoned (and alone) with an admonishment to keep trusting in the God who delivers those who trust in him. The resolution of this tension is revealed in verse 24:
For he has not despised or disdained (ignored) the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.
This is a reminder that God is very near to those suffering and is attentive to their cries is not far away as first considered.
While the Psalmist requests for his life to be spared of the sword, to be rescued and saved, Jesus’ deliverance does not come before his death, but after it when God raises him from the dead.
What is most remarkable is that the triune God of the universe chose to limit his power to such an extent that the Son “part” of the Trinity required a power outside of himself in order to be raised back to life. A definition of death is the point where one’s capacity to maintain one’s own life and and one’s own existence ceases. The Son’s willingness to die forced him into an utterly dependent state as well as an utterly alone state when he became the sin of the world. This is the scandal of the New Testament, that the God of the universe would give up self sufficiency and become dependent on another.
Jesus became the example of entrusting one’s self to the heavenly Father. Indeed, the Greek word for faith, pisteuo, means “to entrust.”
This act of entrusting is central to the Christian faith, and becomes the mechanism of salvation – both for Jesus and for all who would become his followers. The degree to which one entrusts things of value to the Creator is the degree to which one is saved. Until one releases control – or the need for control – over something of value, and transfers it to another, no faith has been exercised.
Taking a step back, we see that the most important question is not Why, but Where [is God]. And the answer is that God is in fact near, and that our only recourse is to entrust ourselves to him.
Forbidden Fruit and Capital Punishment
Jesus’ death on the cross as the payment for the sins of the world leads us to the story of the first sin, the “original sin” in the garden of Eden. The scriptures describe how Jesus’ “obedience to death on the cross brought righteousness to many which counteracts the condemnation that came to mankind through Adam’s trespass in the garden.” (Romans 5:15-19). Why was Adam’s eating of the forbidden fruit worthy of death? Isn’t capital punishment a bit severe for petty theft? What was the significance of ingesting the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil?
“you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” Genesis 2:17
Why then, would God prohibit Adam and Eve from partaking of such fruit?
There are actually two ways of looking at the prohibition that God laid out – one focusing on an object, the other is focusing on an action. If the prohibition was chiefly concerned about an object, it would clearly be the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But if God did not want Adam (and Eve) to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, why did God create the tree and the fruit in the first place? Couldn’t God have just omitted creating the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil and spare Adam and Eve of the possibility of transgression? We know that everything God created, including all the plants and vegetation was good. So why would eating that which was created good, be all that bad? Without an understanding of good and evil, how could anyone fathom God’s goodness? It would seem that wisdom would be something God would want to share with the very creatures who could appreciate the qualities of his goodness.
When we focus exclusively on the fruit (the commodity), it is easy to miss other more important dynamics which can lead us to fall prey to the same error that befell Adam and Eve. A critical underlying question is, did God originally intend for Adam and Eve to gain wisdom (the knowledge of good and evil)? And if so, how were they supposed to obtain it?
Things begin to make a little more sense if the intent of the prohibition was not an object, but an action. Ingesting food is the way we internalize an external source of power and make it a part of ourselves. What if the real focus of the prohibition was against eating the fruit, not just having possession of the fruit. If there were a different mechanism for obtaining wisdom than through eating, then perhaps it was the act of eating, or metaphorically ingesting as the means to obtain the prized commodity of knowing good and evil that was the problem. Eating fruit can be done by one’s self, in solitude, and certainly in this case was done apart from God’s presence. What if there were a different mechanism that God intended to use for passing on to Adam and Eve the knowledge of good and evil? What if wisdom were intended to be transmitted through daily walks and conversations in the garden, fully within God’s presence. If this were true, then the emphasis of forbidden could apply to the eating in solitude, apart from God, rather than on obtaining the fruit itself.
If this were true, ingesting fruit would symbolize man’s attempt to obtain a valued commodity apart from its creator. Could it be that the “original sin” at its heart was really Adam (and Eve’s) choice for independence from God instead of dependence, trust, and communion with him? In fact, every sin can trace it’s roots to this dynamic – an attempt to improve one’s lot apart from God – and often at the expense of those around us. This striving for independence goes beyond the striving for emotional independence we often see in children, “Leave me a lone, I can do it myself, I can do it myself…” and into a spiritual independence where we think we (mankind) can be the ones to define the parameters of what constitutes right-ness (or good-ness) and therefore work our way into achieving that righteous state by our own efforts. Indeed every single religion in the world that prescribes a path of specific behaviors to reach to heaven, nirvana, or some form of “enlightenment” falls into the same fallacy of the “original sin” – that it can be up to man’s effort to define and also reach rightness.
The reason why this is deadly was hinted at in the story of creation, when after a string of proclamations that what God had created was good (including the fruit trees in the garden of Eden), the scriptures said “it was not good for man to be alone.”
If God created man (and woman) with an innate problem to address of aloneness, any time man(kind) chooses to be independent of God, it would exacerbate that aloneness. In fact, it is such a serious problem, God equates the move toward self sufficiency and away from dependence on him as death.
The very first question asked in the entire Bible, is “where?”, “Where are you hiding, Adam and Eve ?”and it also is the most important question in the Bible – even more important than “Why?”. This question of “where” also becomes the ultimate question that man will ask of God when man encounters suffering and evil. “Where is God in the midst of suffering and injustice?” and it becomes even more poignant in light of the fact that much of the suffering and injustice of the world comes about due to someone’s choice toward self sufficiency and independence from the Creator. Whenever our focus shifts from the Creator toward self sufficiency and grasping at that which was created, mankind inevitably begins to harm one another and even the environment.
This started in the Garden of Eden, when Eve blamed the serpent instead of owning up to her disobedience, and Adam blamed Eve instead of confessing his own culpability, which destroyed any semblance of trust they could have for each other and proved that the two of them were not sufficient for addressing each other’s aloneness problem.
In this light, the Biblical concept of sin might be viewed not as a deviation from a perfect standard of behavior, (theft of forbidden fruit) but as a move toward self sufficiency and independence from God often at the expense of our fellow man and our environment. Sin and righteousness should not be viewed transactionally (imperfections that accumulate and which must be purged or covered over to restore perfection), but relationally, where one is either moving toward God in dependence and trust or away from him towards self sufficiency and independence. The difference may be easier to understand if we see sin not as a noun – a quantity that exists outside of us that we try to avoid accumulating, but as an preposition – a descriptor of how our actions and appetites are placing us in closer proximity to and dependence on God, or farther away from him toward independence.
Consequently, the result of death from eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil (and by extension, every other sin) is not so much a punishment for infraction, but a consequence of choosing independence from the source of life. If it is God who gives us life and sustains us, our choices towards independence from him will leave us with nothing but increasing aloneness and ultimately death.
This also could illuminate what happened on the cross when Jesus died and took on the sins of the world. If sin is defined as independence from God, then Jesus became the Aloneness that everyone deserved as the natural consequence of their choices towards independence from God. It also explains why, in that moment of Aloneness on the cross, Jesus cried, “Oh my God, why have you abandoned me?” For the first time, one member of the triune Godhead was split off from the other two. And died.
Why did a part of God have to die?
The Bible teaches that Jesus died for the forgiveness of our sins. How did Jesus’ death on the cross translate into God’s forgiveness? Forgiveness is one of those religious terms often used as a core tenet of Christian belief that ironically many find hard to articulate exactly what it means and why it is important other than because “God said so” and more worrisomely, that God won’t forgive us if we don’t forgive others. (Faith is another such term, and so are Grace and Mercy, but we will deal with those in future posts).
What does it mean to forgive someone? How can it possibly be “okay” for some injury or injustice to have taken place? Christians are commanded by God to forgive their debtors, as God has forgiven them. But it’s not sufficient to say the words, “I forgive you” as if it were some mystical incantation that magically bestows a state of forgiveness upon another. Merely forcing one’s self to say the words certainly does nothing to remove the deep well of venom that one might feel entirely justified for wishing upon a transgressor. When the pain of injury becomes personal, when the damage extends beyond a moment into a chronic condition, when the aftershock of injustice spreads beyond one’s self and invades the lives of our loved ones, what does it mean to forgive, and how is such forgiveness possible?
Forgiveness is a uniquely Christian imperative that does not appear in other religions in such a foundational role. It is also perhaps the most difficult practice of any spiritual behavior to master, and ultimately, it is the one task that is impossible without external help.
But first, it will help to qualify just what forgiveness means, and to understand how it is possible.
When one initially thinks about forgiveness, one is drawn to the act that caused injury or perpetrated injustice. It would be tempting to think that forgiveness has something to do with that moment in time – or some way to view that incident (by ignoring it?) or perhaps withholding judgement for that incident. The problem with this approach is that it does nothing to assuage the inner compulsion we feel for the need to exact punishment and vent our rage upon the one(s) who have caused us pain.
To understand forgiveness, we need to realize that the injury or injustice does not merely affect us at one point of time, but continues to affect us from that time forward. There is the pain of the initial injury, but also an ongoing loss as a result of that injury. Forgiveness then, is all about accepting the consequences of an injury and loss, and those consequences can even be hidden at first and take time to materialize, and in some cases, may grow deeper and wider as time goes on. Forgiveness, then, is not focused so much on the act of the transgression, but on the ongoing effects of the transgression – and it is an acknowledgement and an acceptance that those painful effects may continue forward into the future. In fact, forgiveness is a choice to accept any and all on-going effects of the injury. Forgiveness is certainly not a one time act (such as a magical incantation or proclamation), but an ongoing perspective and attitude with which to view one’s circumstances.
What could drive a sane, sentient, feeling person to accept the on-going consequences of injury and loss? One’s own guilt for some other trespass? A sense of quid-pro quo as payment in advance in order to receive forgiveness from God? Those seem to be pretty oppressive reasons and heap negative upon negative in a comparative contest of who is more deserving of punishment. Under that calculus, one might forgive others only when they felt even more grateful that they had already been forgiven of a more serious trespass. While that is certainly one valid reason to feel compelled to forgive, there is an even more universal one.
Universal forgiveness is possible when the story is larger than the incident between a transgressor and a victim. Universal forgiveness is possible when the story is one where a third entity is deeply and intricately intertwined within the fabric of the situation, and indeed experiences the injuries and injustices as much, if not more than the primary victim. Universal forgiveness is ONLY possible when the narrative of the story expands to include not just the incident of the past, and the pain of the present, but also the hope and the expectation of beauty arising out of tragedy. Universal forgiveness is possible when the victim joins in partnership with the third party in the hope and expectation that the third party is actively engaged in finding some way to craft a work of beauty out of trauma. Could it be possible that God did not stop creating after the sixth day of creation, but has now shifted the exercise of his creativity from making something out of nothing to transforming brokenness into stories of beauty? Universal forgiveness is possible when the victim is willing to become part of the raw material the third party uses to create a picture of redemption. Universal forgiveness is possible when the victim experiences compassion while they wait for the revelation of that creativity.
We can only forgive if we believe that God continues to Create and transform even within our troubled circumstances AND that He is With Us in our suffering as we wait for His creativity to be revealed. When we forgive, we do not hope for a particular outcome, we buy God time and give Him permission to exercise His creativity in a way that we may not be able to predict in order to fashion something of beauty out of our tragedy. The core of forgiveness, then, shifts our focus and attention away from the transgressor and their injurious act(s) to God’s creativity and compassion.
What makes forgiveness hard is that we are forced to give up our sense of independence, self determination and expectation of fulfillment which we had before the injury. By nature we wish to be self sufficient – to establish our future security by our hard work or clever machinations. Indeed, that mentality formed the root of the original sin described in the Bible at the garden of Eden. Adam and Eve partook of the “forbidden” fruit as an act of independence, thinking that they could secure for themselves a desired commodity apart from the Creator. When someone causes us injury and/or loss, we lose a bit of that ability to secure our own future – and the greater the injury, the greater the loss of control we feel (and the greater animosity we harbor against the transgressor who forced us into this needy circumstance). The only way for us to find satisfaction after such a disruption is to entrust our wellbeing or enjoyment to an external benefactor which by nature is unpredictable. If the “original” sin can be boiled down to our own choice for independence and self sufficiency and whose antidote is that we once again entrust ourselves to a benevolent God, an injury or injustice that requires us to forgive places us into that exact same posture of needing to entrust ourselves to a benevolent God. The injury, loss, or injustice yanks the certainty or likelihood of satisfaction out of our hands and forces us to confront the inevitability that the only way we will hope to find satisfaction is through an agent outside of our control. We find forgiveness difficult because the solution to injury and injustice is the same as the solution to our own sinfulness. We hate being forced to depend on an outside entity to make us whole. We detest having to trust God when we are not convinced of His creativity and compassion. The stronger we believe that God is indeed Compassionate (loving) and Creative, the easier it is for us to forgive and to wait for the revelation of His Creativity.
If we find it hard to forgive, the solution is not to try harder. The solution is to find a way to remind us or convince ourselves that God’s creativity is big enough and unlimited enough to turn EVEN THIS tragedy into a beautiful story, and to ask for eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to sense and recognize His loving compassion throughout our time of waiting for His creativity to be revealed.
WHAT: Forgiveness means accepting the extended consequences of an injury and loss.
HOW: Entrusting the fulfillment of a prior sense of sufficiency (self sufficiency) to an external source (ultimately, a benevolent God).
WHY: We believe that God is compelled by his nature of compassion and creativity to craft beauty out of tragedy
WHEN: (When will God exercise the transformation and redemption of tragedy into beauty?) Sometime in the future – hopefully before we die, but not necessarily so. (Psalm 27:13-14)
How did God forgive us of our sins by sending Jesus to die on the cross?
If forgiveness means accepting the extended consequences of an injury or loss, how did Jesus’ death on the cross consummate God’s forgiveness for mankind’s transgressions (also known as “sin”)?
Transgressions generate consequences along two dimensions. One is related to the effects of the transgression on another person (a victim), we can call this the horizontal dimension, and the other dimension is related to the effects of the transgression on one’s relationship with God (we can call this the vertical dimension). For God to forgive every person of their transgressions, He must accept the consequences arising from both of those dimensions.
For the horizontal dimension, accepting the consequences of a transgression includes taking on the pain of every injury, experiencing the terror of every abandonment, and enduring the wickedness of every injustice.
If we believe a model of existence where God resides in a distant locality far removed from our reality here on Earth (for example, in a cosmic castle called heaven beyond the outskirts of our universe), it would be all too easy to also assume that God is also far removed from the suffering that afflicts mankind. Perhaps we might even believe that the Almighty is so insulated from the pain of that suffering by the cosmic distance that God doesn’t care – or is too far or feeble to do something about it. One might even conclude that God is merely a spectator watching things unfold on the stage of the Earth. Taken to the extreme, an infinite distance would be tantamount to there being no God at all.
What if God was not far, far away, but was present in every instant, and was a participant in every interaction that resulted in injury, suffering, and injustice? In this reality God would experience the pain and injury from every calamity, mistake, selfish act, assault, injustice, and evil act while absorbing the full brunt of discomfort, anguish and terror that each victim experienced. What if it cost God as much if not more discomfort than the human victims?
While it might not erase the pain a victim experienced, God’s co-experience of suffering would do two things: First, it would intertwine God’s consciousness of the pain of the situation with a stake in its outcome. God would not be a passive bystander in such a reality. Secondly, it would enable the potential for a community of suffering between God and the victim and allows for God to be WITH the victim in the midst of suffering. This is significant because the one need that was built into mankind from the beginning of creation was to address aloneness. (“It is not good for man to be alone.” Genesis 2:18 )
The consequences that God would need to accept in the course of forgiving mankind of their sin then, includes the experience of pain, injury, and suffering that arise from each sinful act (horizontal dimension), but it also must include the consequences of the rift in the relationship between the transgressor and God (vertical dimension). If God’s greatest interest in creating humanity was to have a personal relationship with every man and woman, then the choices for independence from God that underlie every transgression cause that vertical relationship to be diminished. Taken to its logical conclusion, a broken relationship results in aloneness. The transgressor finds him or herself separated from both the earthly victim of the transgression as well as from God.
For God to take on the consequences of separation means that God himself must experience that aloneness (both horizontal and vertical). Jesus’ dying words on the cross was, “Lama sabachthani”, which means, “my God, why have you forsaken me?” In that utterance, we are given a glimpse into the horror that Jesus felt at being alone from his heavenly Father. The Holy Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) which had only known community in the perfection of heaven for the first time experienced aloneness in the person of Jesus on the fateful day he suffered on the cross.
The consequences of transgressions can go far beyond a victim experiencing pain and aloneness, they can result in the victim’s death. In this case, the victim’s death would be the consequence of a most extreme injury. An injury so severe, the victim’s life is extinguished. For God to accept the consequences of such a mortal injury, God would need to die himself. God would need to accept the same consequence as the victim if he were to truly forgive.
In death, one loses all ability to contribute to one’s continued existence. Physical death is the ultimate state of dependence where one can not continue to exist unless there is an intervention from an agent outside of the confines of unidirectional time and linear space.
What are the ultimate consequences for the transgressor who causes another pain, injury, or injustice? At its root, every transgression grants the transgressor some measure of value or benefit at the expense of some other soul who pays a price for that value or benefit. Within that transaction, the transgressor drives a chasm of distance between themselves and the victim, and also between themselves and God. Transgressions at their core are a person’s choice for self sufficiency at another’s expense. A transgressor rejects any hint of dependency on God to provide for them and grabs at the reigns of control in a vain attempt at self sufficiency. Instead of leaning into and entrusting their lot toward a benevolent and involved Creator, the transgressor determines to grab by their own will, the desired commodity. This rejection of community and interdependence stems from a lack of trust, and an unwillingness to entrust one’s fate to another. Taken to it’s logical and ultimate conclusion, this independence leads to aloneness. Through a lifetime of choices, a person can drift farther and farther away from God as they pursue a life of self sufficiency and the illusion of control over one’s own destiny. The opposite of transgression, then, is faith – to entrust one’s circumstances and future to God and to lean into him/her in dependence.
The significance of this is highlighted in the story of the “original sin” in the garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and partook of the forbidden fruit. In an earlier post, we saw that this transgression was rooted in their desire for independence from God. They wanted to become self sufficient and obtain a desired commodity (the knowledge of good and evil) on their own apart from the Creator. In fact this same motivation (independence through self sufficiency) underlies all transgressions. The consequence proclaimed for this transgression was death. This might be seen as a punishment – a deterrent that might attempt to keep future souls from venturing across the line, or it could be viewed simply as a direct consequence of the move toward independence. The choice for independence away from the source of life results in a being that can not sustain their own existence so death).
According to the Christian faith, one can depend only on the Creator for restoration and continued life after death. If mankind was designed from the start to be in communion with the Creator and the man (and woman) choose to leave proximity with the Creator, they are operating outside of their “design limits.” Ironically, only the Creator can fix their predicament of isolation. No matter how hard mankind attempts to be self sufficient, they are brought one way or another (voluntarily or involuntarily) into a dependent state with the Creator, and ultimately through death if not some other means.
For God to accept the consequences of these moves toward independence (and thereby forgive them), God needed to experience dependency in a way never before encountered by the perfect Trinity in Heaven. Since before the dimension of time was created in our universe, God existed in the perfect communion of the Tri-partite Godhead (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). As God, S/He was self sufficient. This all changed when Jesus died on the cross. When this member of the Godhead died, Jesus was the one member of the Godhead who became totally dependent upon the other members of the Godhead to bring him back to life. Scriptures tell us that it was the Father to whom Jesus entrusted His fate. Jesus was God’s role model for how to entrust oneself, one’s existence to the Father, by being willing to let go of self sufficiency (which was a right of Jesus’ as the member of the Godhead) – and entrusting one’s future existence to another entity.
When we lose (or give up) our ability to maintain our continued existence, we die and immediately become dependent upon someone else to intervene on our behalf in order to have any chance of continuing to exist. Jesus chose to embrace that dependency so that the Godhead could experience the consequence of death, but also so that He could show us the way to entrust ourselves to the Father’s redeeming and resuscitating power.
In short, Jesus’ death on the cross was God’s mechanism for accepting the consequences of injury and injustice to victims in the horizontal dimension and it was also the mechanism by which God accepts the consequence of complete aloneness which occurs in the vertical dimension for the perpetrator of the transgression. A transgressor’s progressive steps toward increasing independence results in ultimate aloneness, a kind of spiritual death. The dead cannot restore themselves, and only a powerful outside agent can restore one’s existence from that death.
Jesus was God’s role model for us in both regards, and in both instances, Jesus’ total dependence upon his heavenly Father was the mechanisms by which the heavenly Father saved him and preserved his existence by raising Jesus from the dead.
The transformation of our prayer from “God, please grant us a silver bullet”, to “Lord, grant us the ability to see Your presence in the midst of our trying situation” is the indicator that we have accepted the burden of carrying the cross daily in following the Lord.
When we ask for eyes to see God in the present struggle, we have forgiven God for allowing this circumstance to befall us. (We are accepting the consequences of that injury) and we are acknowledging that our primary need is not to be shielded from hardship nor even evil, nor from brokenness, but to be fully in the presence of God where these exist. And where is God to be found? In suffering. That is His glory – He is the Compassionate God. (When Moses asked YHWH to show him His glory, the first thing YHWH revealed was, “I am Compassionate).
When we begin asking God for eyes to see Him in the present struggle, it quickly becomes evident that this is not a one and done request. It is not something that can be accumulated and stored up for a rainy day. It quickly becomes apparent that this needs to become a daily plea. And in some scenarios, it is a moment by moment plea.
We all want to store up that manna – that sign of God’s presence and provision – so that we have enough to last us a few days, a week, a few weeks, or a few months. But the nature of manna is that it can’t be stored up. There is only enough manna that can be gathered to last a single day (or a weekend). This is the daily reminder that our sustenance comes from God. We don’t want to need daily reminders. We wish we could be innoculated for a week at a time, a month at a time. But Jesus reminds us in the Lord’s prayer, that our request is for daily bread. We need to see God’s presence in our struggle each and every day.
So the prayer request for daily bread really becomes a request for vision – to be granted the eyes to see and recognize God’s presence in the difficulty, the calamity, the injustice, the feeling of abandonment.
The request for food from the faithful follower of Jesus is really a request for healing from blindness. We don’t need to invite God into our struggle, we need to recognize how He has been there already and that we are choosing to join Him in His demonstration of love through His compassion.