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SUFFERING AND THE SILENCE OF GOD
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[ part one | part two |part three ]
PART THREE: SHARING GOD'S SUFFERING
God is working to end suffering and calls us to work with him, to participate in his heart. Suffering will not be a permanent part of human existence. The New Testament talks about a future world where it will be different; where there will be complete justice and restoration and healing. Biblical justice is not about vengeance but about restoration - doing justice by helping the oppressed, the poor, the lost. Heaven is the epitome of this kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed. Heaven should be a model that shows us how we should live here on earth, seeking justice and healing and liberation. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. But all too often Christianity has presented a picture of heaven that goes more in the direction of unhealthy escapism and detachment from reality.
As Christianity became a religion of kings and power institutions, Jesus' revolutionary message of the kingdom of God among us -
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"what was intended to start an inner revolution, to spur us on to fight to end suffering here, instead became an opiate to justify it."
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of a God who was near and identified with the poor, who proclaimed freedom for the oppressed, and loving your enemies - was kept from the populace because it was too subversive. They were told just to follow the authority and one day they could get to heaven if they were good and obedient. And so the whole point of the Christian message of the hope of heaven was lost. Instead of it being a model that showed us how we are to act here, the epitome of the "kingdom of God among you" that Jesus proclaimed to the captives and the outcasts, that he ushered in to the sick and the untouchables, it became something distant used as a carrot on a stick to promote compliance and passivity to the status quo. In the face of injustice, what was intended to start an inner revolution, to spur us on to fight to end suffering here, instead became an opiate to justify it.
Most people today still think of heaven in this passive way. And so, as we have
moved away from monarchy towards individualism we have thrown this idea of heaven overboard as childish. We live for now and want to make heaven here. But because we have become so individualistic, heaven here does not mean working for social justice and loving each other, it means retreating to our little nest egg, to escape from the world into the safety of our Christian community, to fill our time looking to God above in Bible studies, quiet times, praise meetings, devotionals, seminars, and on and on in our safe tidy blessed enclave where we can "concentrate on the Lord".
This escapist fragmentation of life into the sacred vs. the secular leads to an unhealthy schizophrenic view of life. It produces a subconscious guilt at honestly
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"in Christ, the church carries within it the seeds of its own subversion."
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enjoying anything ordinary, anything "not spiritual", rather than seeing the sanctity of the ordinary: seeing all things as sacred, the whole of life as sacred, and letting that sight inform everything we do with meaning. This separation leads to us being distanced from our own suffering and the suffering of others so that we deny our own needs and are callus to others. And so we become just like those old kings. We may kid ourselves into thinking that now it is different, that now there are no peasants outside the gate. But we only need to watch the nightly news to see that this is a lie, or take a good look in our own hearts to see that consumerism and individualism, even when we have wrapped them in spiritualized labels, have left us empty inside, alone with an inner poverty.
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We are not fulfilled, but we keep thinking: all I need is to get more involved, or pray more, or be more disciplined, or have that revival come, or find that perfect partner, or that church, or be slain in the spirit, or get that spiritual insight. Then I will be fulfilled. Always just out of reach, one significant experience away, the same carrot on the stick as before. And so our life becomes a desperate never-ending introverted search to find that elusive something that will finally fulfill us.
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Our hearts long for freedom, to an end to suffering. This is a good desire, but when this healthy and fundamental desire becomes
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"Our encounters with the risen Christ are mostly like that:
enigmatic, fleeting, mere glimpses, little ambushes."
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an addiction of always looking for that "blessing" fix, or wanting to have our problems taken away so that we will not have to face them, it ultimately leads to either a denial and disconnectedness with ourselves and others, or to an extreme disillusionment and disappointment with God and with life. In other words, if we want to justify our carrot on the stick world, we must deny the cries of others and the cries of our own unfulfilled heart in order to maintain our picture of safety, subconsciously saying:
"Yes you can reach that carrot - that ultimate fulfillment. We're almost there, you just need more faith. Don't question. Don't tell me people are hurting here. I can't handle seeing that".
Instead of these dreams inspiring us to vigorously pursue them, and to have an inner revolution that confronts our problems honestly, we are told to submit and be obedient and wait, and one day revival will come and all our problems will be miraculously lifted away.
Once we have seen through this, and can finally admit that we are unfulfilled, we become severely disappointed and feel empty and lied to.
This destructive culture of escapism is very widespread throughout western society and especially within western Christianity. It can get so intertwined with our Christian experience that we can hardly tell anymore where one begins and the other ends. So it wounds us at the very core of life. It makes us question the very reality of our faith.
It is said that, "In Christ, the church carries within it the seeds of its own subversion." It is this revolutionary nature of God which is our only hope in this twisted scenario. Jesus wants us to question, to break the rules, to burst complacency. He said things that were shocking to get us to think, proverbially plunging our head in a bucket of ice water. Often Christians are so quick to solve problems with pat answers that they don't let this revolution take place, and that means we don't move closer to Jesus. In this section we will look at how we can we deal with these needs and longings in a healthy way together with God. How we can regain the radical and liberating hope of heaven that Jesus proclaimed: the Kingdom of God among us.
The Christian life is not one characterized by being fulfilled and complete here, it is about seeing beyond and letting that vision spur us to action.
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"God has broken though to us, shattered our blindness, and given us a deposit in out hearts that points us to him. "
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We see God here in glimpses, little ambushes that shatter our gray world and leave us gasping for more. For just a moment a window is opened up to Heaven and we can see, and our heart cries out "Abba!" We naturally long for this home, to be united with God. Our hearts were made for that. These glimpses point us to something beyond the gray.
The Message's
rendition of 2nd Corinthians 5:5 puts it,
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"The Spirit of God whets our appetite by giving us a taste of what's ahead. He puts a little of heaven in our hearts so we'll never settle for less."
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God has broken though to us in our dark and wounded world, shattered our blindness, and given us a deposit in our hearts that points us to him. If these glimpses were all there was, then that would be frustrating, that would not be enough. But they are there to let us see, to wake us up, to point us beyond, and to let that vision shape our world here.
In the on-line article Stuck on the Road to Emmaus
Mark Buchanan writes,
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Just at those moments when finally the scales fall from our eyes and we see that, behold, it is he, it is Jesus!--at that wondrous moment, he often up and vanishes.
Our encounters with the risen Christ are mostly like that: enigmatic, fleeting, mere glimpses, little ambushes. And we're left with the question, "Didn't our hearts burn within us? Didn't they?" The portrait of the faithful is not a portrait of the fulfilled. What defines them - what defines all of us on the road to Emmaus - is hope. What defines them is a slow, burning heart. What defines them is a yearning: knowing in
their bones, in spite of loss or sorrow or aloneness, that there is Something more, Something else, Something better. What defines them is a hauntedness, a shaky but unshakable conviction that the Christ they see now through a glass darkly, in little fleeting puzzling glimpses, they will see one day face-to-face. But for now, on this road, their slow hearts burn.
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Sometimes our heart is opened to see and it is scorching - our hearts burn within us - at other times they are merely warmed. Sometimes the touch is phenomenal, but more often than not, it is just something simple and ordinary, like seeing how Jesus
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"To follow Christ does not mean a trouble-free existence, a life
free from suffering, but a life devoted to caring for those who suffer"
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breaks the bread, and suddenly we recognize he has been with us all along. The caliber of our faith is not so much measured by the magnitude of theses glimpses and epiphanies, but by how we deal with the in-between times when it is gray, where we are carried by the faith and trust we have built. These glimpses through a dark glass need to lead to a developing and growing of that trust in God that can take us through the gray, they need to produce in us a hope of heaven that does not make us escapist, but fills our life here with depth, allowing us to embrace life because we see God in it filling the ordinary with value and meaning. They need to produce a life that is not detached from the world, but has its eyes wide open seeing what life is really about. I long for heaven because I long for an end to all suffering, for every tear to be wiped away. And that vision of Heaven causes me to work now to bring the Kingdom of God here by joining God in caring for those who are hurting, liberating those who are captive, and speaking hope to those who are lost.
This is what it means to "share in the suffering of Christ", to be a co-worker with Christ laboring to alleviate suffering for the sake of love. Jesus said "As you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me" and that implies something incredible. When you love me I am receiving God's love, and at the same time you are loving
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"Intimacy with God is
not an isolated relationship, but one that intertwines all of our lives."
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God through me. Intimacy with God is not an isolated relationship, but one that intertwines all of our lives. When you love someone you want to care for them, comfort them, protect them, nurture them, but it is hard to imagine doing these things for God. How could we comfort God? How can we minister to God's needs? Although there are many expressions of our loving God that may be shared directly, (trust, respect, affection), specifically these "parental" characteristics (comfort, protection, nurture), of our love for God find their expression in our loving the "least" - the weak, the tired, the lonely. In this very way we can love God with our whole being, with the complete expression of who we are as people.
Some Christian circles teach that as Christians we should not have trouble and suffering as a part of our lives. But this is just not something Jesus ever promised us. To follow Christ does not mean a trouble-free existence, a life free from suffering, but a life devoted to caring for those who suffer, a life of bringing the Gospel to the broken, the neglected, and the unforgiven.
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When we open our hearts to others, when we carry their pain, we hurt too, we suffer too. When you love someone you are not indifferent to their struggling, it becomes your own. We do not seek suffering, we seek to end suffering, to heal. But like Christ we take on and endure suffering for the sake of love. As we leave our insulation and open our hearts to care for one another, we suffer. We suffer the pain of those who we long to see free, and we suffer the outrage at injustice that we fight to make right, and we suffer in our own struggles just as Christ did at Gethsemane.
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In doing this we encounter how God responds to suffering and injustice. We share in God's suffering and God's heart. When we love others we love God, we minister to God's wounds: "I was naked and you clothed me, I was a stranger and you took me in" Likewise, when we allow others to love us we become a sacrament to them - in our being "the least of these" we become a tangible means for them to encounter Christ by loving us.
In The Suffering God
Charles Ohlrich writes,
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an amazing amount of space in the Gospels is devoted to the healings of Jesus. This underscores for us that the problem of suffering is a matter for action. Because God works to fight suffering, so should we - vigorously. We should use every means at our disposal to combat suffering - prayer, medicine, social action, relief work, and so on - our attitude should be to regard it as an enemy. Have you ever felt anger welling up within you when you see someone in pain? This feeling is not wrong or unchristian. It is even proper to hate our own suffering. It is right to hate loneliness, or disease, or the death of a loved one. The image of the suffering God we see on the cross is the image of a protesting God.
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These questions that God has implanted in us that cry out against suffering, that long for wholeness have been put there by God so that we can participate with him in the work of the cross, working to end suffering, tearing down the barriers that divide us. Being made in God's image, we too suffer. And this being so, God does not so much share in our suffering as we share in God's.
I know a couple who lives and works in the inner city "projects" of Chicago with the
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"Being made in God's image, we too suffer. God does not so much share in our suffering as we share in God's."
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gangs. They long to see these people break out of the destructive cycles they are trapped in, to see them find Jesus, and to see the whole oppressive structure of crime and poverty reformed there. That is a tremendous burden. It is crucial for us to realize that these burdens we have to see deep healing and change in people's lives that we love, ultimately belong to God. We can participate together with God in working for transformation, but if we carry the weight alone it will crush us. Its pressure can be debilitating. We need to participate with God in sharing his burden in a proper balance, allowing our strength and source to be rooted in God.
In Christi-Anarchy
Dave Andrews writes that
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Our service is not only a participation with God, but a participation with others - allowing them to go at their own pace, supporting their growth but not smothering. This does not necessarily only have to mean doing something dramatic, like giving all your possessions to the poor and devoting yourself to volunteer work in a far off country. There is need right next to you; in the lives of the people you already know and see every day, in the little things, in sharing the ordinary joys and troubles of life. It simply means opening your life and being real and caring for others, and allowing them to care for you, wherever you are.
Jesus calls us to follow him in caring for others, in speaking life into peoples hearts. This is not the demand of a God in the sky, but a God who has made himself a servant and beckons us to serve too, to join him down on his knees amongst the wounded. And if you are wounded God is kneeling over you. He loves you more than you can possibly imagine and places no demands on that love. But that same love urges us, calls us to follow, to participate with him, an imperative of the heart born of the Gospel of love. It's a hard journey, filled with deep joy, incomprehensible peace and rock solid hope. But also with trouble, darkness, and tears. And it's a journey that we never ever walk alone.
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