Thursday, 07 August 2008
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God's Suffering is Harder to Grasp Than His Existence
by mr maple
My friend wrote this recently in his blog:Several months ago a colleague of mine told me about a case he was working on. Four years ago a 14 year old orphan girl in Moyamba district, Sierra Leone, was offered “love” by a young man. She rejected him. Later when she was going to collect palm wine, he ambushed her, attacked her with a cutlass and raped her. As a result of her injuries, she menstruates every month through her nose and nipples. She needs to be hospitalized every month, and recently has been going into a severe fit every time.
After the initial attack, the man said he’d take medical responsibility for her. No surprise he didn’t. Instead, a year ago he attacked and assaulted her again. She’s now confined to a safehouse and a hospital every month when she menstruates. He’s living in his town, out on bail.
Since I heard about this girl in Moyamba, I haven’t gone a day without thinking about her. It’s with me wherever I go.
Perhaps the most powerful purpose behind suffering is its meaninglessness and capacity for terror. It reminds us that we are helpless and powerless despite the intensity and ferocity of our own protests. I cannot explain it. I cannot rationalize it. While doing so may bring temporary relief in the guise of sanity and purpose, in the end it strips suffering of its power and denies validation to those who have been cursed by it.
This is precisely why it is insane, appalling, and terrifying to believe that God himself suffers.
Christianity resonates so strongly with reality because at its center is the belief that Christ himself became a helpless babe in a manger, wept at the tomb of Lazarus, was tortured and beaten and maimed in such an appalling and senseless way. It is utterly incomprehensible why God himself would willingly choose to enter into such a condition, and in the moment we are struck by that paradox we come to understand what Love is. We are enabled into the presence of the divine, for there is no way in hell that we would choose such a fate for ourselves. Just as a poll, if you actually read this sentence and the rest of this post, could you please write the word zebra somewhere in your comment? Thanks.
We would do well in our modern, evangelical Christianity to regard worldviews and systematic theology with care to avoid a pharisaaical sort of pride in their tidy and logical frameworks. I have come to believe that the most difficult thing to accept in faith is not the existence of God but the suffering of God.
It does not take much to believe in whether something exists or not, but it takes everything I am to believe that God suffers because it means believing that I no longer have an excuse for exemption.
Only Christianity is bold and daring enough to demand, "Commune with suffering if you wish to commune with God; embrace death if you wish to embrace resurrection." For what is the entire process of communion about if not the consumption of flesh and blood? Again, it is utterly beyond our comprehension. It is mystical, not superstitious. Its goal is not comfort or a well-defined theology or the manipulation of means towards ends but an entire process of moments in which we are drawn out of our sane and structured and logical and just systems into an alternative reality where God definitively and absolutely demonstrates his authority.
And perhaps, just perhaps, when we are drawn into such a communion, we will be rescued from perishing.
Do you have a hard time remembering or accepting that God suffers with humanity?
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Comments (22)
thanks for sharing this. (zebra) :)
wow i've not heard it put that way before.all that you've said including "an entire process of moments" zebra. there are time when i am enduring circumstances that i hate, feeling hurt by others, enduring cruel and thoughtless words and acts. but staying because God wants me to and not leaving because i want to. that something will come out of those moments because of the process that God is working out. it gives it more meaning. thank you very much.
"she menstruates every month through her nose and nipples."
How does -that- work?
Christ suffered for a purpose. This girl got raped for no purpose at all. You can't equate her horror with Jesus' suffering saving the world. By making it a comparison, you're basically saying that her rape served some good to society. I have a problem with this.
Zebras are full of win.
I've always found it a struggle when it comes to situations where it seems injustice is more evident than God. Unless, of course, there is a secret *purpose*. But exactly what is the purpose for someone getting raped, and being in such a terrible condition? Is the whole "purpose" argument even a good enough explanation to someone who has suffered from injustice? It's easy to say that God is working out something when the problem is not with us. However, when the table is flipped, and we're the receiving end of terrible suffering, it's not so easy to just say "Yeah, God's working something out. Yep."
I think such an argument would not suffice the human soul. But I think love could.
Zebra.
I have always had a difficult time believing in a benevolent god who suffers with humanity. Whole problem of evil thing, ya know?
I don't believe in a higher purpose and when people say something along those lines it's one of my pet peeves. Not because I don't believe it--I just find it personally insulting and depressing.
@RiceDaddy7@xanga - Completely agree.
"I cannot explain it. I cannot rationalize it."
That accurately describes what I think of when I hear stories like this one. All I know for sure is that God is always in control and He is always good. It's who He is. He is faithfulness.
And then I think of the girl in the story. And of the others I know personally who have been through horrific things. And I know that I cannot just shut my eyes and pretend it all makes sense.
I would never barge into someone's grief and suffering and start soapboxing about the attributes of God and faith and all that. I would have done so, with the best of intentions, a few years ago. But not anymore. Now, I will only love them. Love them and know that God is loving them beyond what I can imagine.
For myself, I know what I cling to is that nothing--nothing--I could ever experience would equal the spiritual/emotional/mental anguish Christ experienced when the Father turned away. Because of this, and the strength God supernaturally puts in us, I will endure any and all things. But again, I would not thrust this truth in the face of someone in pain. I would only hold out my arms. God speaks when we are ready to hear Him. He doesn't need me to jump the gun.
Zebra
~Victoria
Sometimes I think of God as immune to suffering, as though it would be contradictory for Him to do so (as not Loving would be outside of His nature since, well, He is Love). But Christ's very existence on this earth, not to mention His death, are foundational to Christianity. Therefore, so is God's suffering.
It's quite convicting to be reminded that I am causing His suffering by not living in His will. And yet humbling to think that He is willing to endure the suffering for my sake.
Sometimes I just feel like a zebra.
zebra!
i hate to say it, but there's a huge difference between what Jesus experienced on the cross, and even the worst of disasters to mortals. unlike God, we have no friggin' clue what's going to happen next. i don't think i'm a particularly strong individual, but a lot of what limits me is the unknown. if i knew beyond a single shadow of a doubt what would happen to me every moment of every day, there's plenty of things i'd do. and if i knew for certain that God would come down and save me, i'd hang on a cross for a year. give me absolute knowledge, and i'll never suffer as a mortal ever again.
but that's the problem with Christianity... we have faith, not proof. no religion, not even ours, is founded on 100% fact... just personal experience and a gut feeling that what we're doing is right. and while there's plenty i'm willing to risk and do based on that faith, there's also a ton of things i'm not.
I'm a little stuck on the medical aspect of this story. How in the world could a person menstruate out of their nose? As a midwife this thought horrifies and yet fascinates me. Sorry, I know this was supposed to be a spiritual post but just that fact distracts me.
This is one of the two or three outstandingly deep and thoughtful posts I've read on Revelife.
We tend to focus on the tidy black-and-white pet zebra of our doctrines when the fact is that the life of faith is a huge, passionate, agonizing, joy-filled, uncontainable, messy, ragged, raw, overwhelming relationship that generates more questions the longer we live. We're anchored by a few things we know and by Who we know, as we're tossed about in a raging sea of things we don't understand.
zebra
I used to wonder a lot whether God suffered with me, and then He showed me something that was like an inter-cut movie in my mind. I saw one of my worst days of childhood, and at the same time I saw Jesus dying on the cross. I realized that He died directly for the things I had suffered and that, in a sense, if God is in all moments at the same time, Jesus was dying at the same time I was suffering. It comforted me deeply.
Some of those things are hard to understand. I know I don't understand it all. My heart cries out to the young woman. "God's ways are not our ways and His thoughts not our thoughts. His way are higher than our ways"
God Bless you!! Your Friend, Ellen
My zebra, the suffering is scary. Reading Hebrews can be scary. Being sawed in two? Scary.
@Sir_Bissel@xanga - I was wondering the same thing; maybe I don't want to know.
yep, i do have hard time accepting the fact that God does suffer, but not because i do not believe He does, but rather i am trying to understand His love and it's just too much for my tiny brain to comprehend that someone would willingly come and suffer for me.
*struggling for words* yeah...
and yet, i know that He is with us in all that we're going through. therefore, He feels what we're going through...
*in my humble zebra's opinion*
Zebra, I'm pretty sure (just logically) menstruating out the nose is not possible. I could understand a chronic bleeding related to the menstruation, but for all the stuff down there to happen up at the nose just is not possible. Your organs don't connect up there. But blood is blood.
Anyways, God's promises are an already formed tower.
Just one thing I'd like to point out: the girl had no reason to hope-- she didn't KNOW a reason. God, on the other hand, knew that there was a reason for his suffering, for sending Jesus Christ down on earth. Or are you talking about perpetual suffering?
zebra.
This wonderful post caught my eyes.
I have asked myself many times the same questions on the problem of evil, of suffering. It's true, it's insane, appalling, and terrifying to try to go down the dark depths of the unknown just to see what's in there and understand all the why's in there. My mind is finite, I can never totally grasp what is infinitely Eternal.
Within me I know it's hard to accept, why people suffer--and for seemingly no reason at all. But looking with an open heart and mind, the issue made me realize some things:
I will never know what is good if there is no evil.
I should never take things for granted.
What do I do with my freedom?
Life is precious, I shouldn't be wasting my borrowed time.
My mortal frame is just a temporary tent that I (the real me, a spirit) dwell in; any sickness, disability, wound, or damage is temporary. My soul is more important than my body.
I was given a family in the mortal realm to make me learn values and virtues of living (i.e., I can appreciate things like freedom, peace, love, joy, laughter, etc. because of relationships with my fellow human beings, so I begin with the smallest unit of society).
When I eat rice, vegetables, fish, or meat (no, I don't eat zebra meat
), it makes me wonder that I don't think that this living plant, fish, or animal died for me so I can add a moment to my life.
I love freedom but I have to be responsible for my actions because I will surely reap whatever I sow.
When I see a beautiful film, I appreciate it as a whole, but then every role in there--main or extra--was important in making that movie.
I believe we play a role or two, no matter how insignificant, in this earthly life. But each of us is part of a complex plan that can never be achieved without us playing our allotted role/s. I talk about goodness and perfection, but how do I know what is good and what is perfect--that good and perfection are both pleasant things? And how do I also know what
continuation...
"pleasant" means?
These things made me realize the value of God's free gift of Salvation: Eternal Life. On earth I learn to appreciate what is good and perfect because I am able to compare them with what is evil and flawed. God offers a perfect life in His Divine realm.
http://www.tparents.org/Moon-Books/SunMyungMoon-CSG/CSG-01-04-02.htm