true heart. The cross should cause us to love this God, turning from sin and receiving forgiveness and new life. But it’s always our choice. We can look at amazing love and melt in full repentance. We also can look, hate on, and die an unnecessary death. If we receive and are renewed by divine love, what happens to us? Seeing the suffering love that is God, we are enabled to become agents of that love in a suffering world. We are to become models here and now of what God is always and everywhere. We will never be God, of course, but with God in us and serving through us we can function as apostles of divine love.
Given where Christ now is, at God’s right hand, where are we to be if filled with Christ’s Spirit? We are being drawn toward the suffering of the world, just as God was and is. Suffering love is a reality at God’s very heart and also at the center of our calling as God’s children. Karl Rahner once put it well in an Easter homily:
Christ is already in the midst of all the poor things of this earth, which we cannot leave because it is our mother. . . . He is in all tears and in all death as hidden rejoicing and as the life which triumphs by appearing to die. He is in the beggar to whom we give, as the secret wealth which accrues to the donor. He is in the pitiful defeats of his servants as the victory which is God’s alone. He is in our powerlessness as the power which can allow itself to seem weak because it is unconquerable.27
Beautifully said! Given the loving heart of God now shared at great cost for us, where and how should we be as God’s faithful children? We are to be with those who are suffering just as God has graciously been with us.
Biblical faith reports that who God is and what God has done and is doing is for the sake of this creation. The new creation in the blood of Christ is intended only secondarily to “get people to heaven.” Primarily, it’s intended to make the disciples of Jesus “responsible, grateful, and joyful citizens of earth.”28 God being with and identifying with us brings pain to God; our identifying lovingly in God’s name with this creation and its troubles will bring pain to us. So be it! So says the entire Bible with its signposts and truth anchors.
God Will Show the Way Even When There Appears to Be No Way
We learn something important as we move along the jagged pathway of Christian faith. Resurrection trumps crucifixion!
One reason why it’s so hard to understand the will of God is that there are three of them.
The Christian community relies on the Bible for its primary understanding of the revelation of God. We saw in the previous chapter that this sacred source speaks often about suffering. There are some mixed messages. There also are several sure truth anchors for our thinking and believing. Relying on these anchors, we now will identify key elements of belief that helpfully orient us as we travel the jagged path of faith throughout our lives in this troubled world. Together they form the basics of a Christian theology of suffering and authentic discipleship.
The Threefold Path
Suffering penetrates and shapes the very meaning and trajectory of Christian faith. In our personal experiences it tends to follow the threefold 8-9-10 path of 2 Corinthians 12:8-9-10. The experienced trajectory of a Christian’s suffering moves through the troubled terrain of a life of faith in this broken world. It goes from verse 8 (we say: “Take the Pain Away!”), to verse 9 (God says: “My Grace is Sufficient!”), and finally leads to verse 10 (the fact is: “Weakness Can Be Strength!”). We who belong to Christ can go from shock and denial (v. 8), to a greater awareness of the divine dimensions of the situation (v. 9), and finally to our being transformed into the image of Jesus, allowing God’s love to be realized in and ministered through us in spite of and sometimes even with the help of suffering (v. 10).
Wherever the snake came from that seduced Adam and Eve, and whatever mischief it’s still creating, know that its head is already cut off!
St. Paul pioneered this trail of tears and triumphs. He once was addressing the church in Corinth that needed his witness in the midst of its severe troubles. The witness came in the form of his own reported life paradox, the pit of human experience (thorn in the flesh) and its pinnacle (being transported into the highest heaven). He begged God to have the first removed, but it wasn’t. He was careful not to boast inappropriately about the latter, even though God was lavishing goodness on him in the midst of his suffering. A resurrection had overwhelmed Paul’s cross with a glow of glory. He had learned that there can be gain in loss, and that all gain is by God’s pure grace.
Christians have chosen the cross of Jesus as a central symbol. Why? Because it represents the dramatic redemptive act of God and the full range of the experience of those faithful to Jesus. We humans are fragile beings. When following Jesus, we find ourselves out of step with the world as it now is. Our weakness is real and we are not promised a free pass through trouble. On the other hand, the crucified Jesus is no longer hanging in death, nor should we be terrified of a cross for ourselves.
The story of Jesus did not end when his tortured breathing ceased. Resurrection trumps crucifixion. Here is theological wisdom. “To the New Testament, pain is not morbidity or hopelessness or retribution. It is still the devil’s work, but the devil has been overcome and the penalty has been cancelled. So pain is now cleansing, illumination, and vocation. . . . The Event of Christ has changed the bitter waters into a pool of healing.”29
The later chapters of this book attempt to explain how the bitterness can be transformed into healing and how suffering should become our calling as Christians. To be a true Christian is to walk a special and often rocky path. Suffering will be part of it. Some have called the suffering “apostolic,” that is, we will be speaking and acting and being treated like Jesus. Again, so be it!
The Christian’s jagged faith and discipleship journey is paralleled on the larger scene by God’s own journey. What is the will of God for events on our earthly scene? The answer is not simple to state. There is the threefold will of God (see below). Not being clear about this is responsible for a rash of unnecessary and troubling questions people ask constantly, especially when suffering.
Did God cause the disaster or bring my suffering to me? Why didn’t God stop it from happening in the first place? Does God control everything in this world? If all-powerful, how could God not be in full control? What is the usual way of God’s working in our tragic situations? Is it through divine love or divine power? See the ROSE metaphor in chapter two and the explanation below of the threefold divine will. They are both critical to addressing these questions and walking successfully the 8-9-10 path of suffering.
Dimensions of the Divine Will
Classic (“orthodox”) Christianity speaks often and clearly about our present suffering and God’s present working. Obviously there is some variety in this speaking, like the mixed messages we find in the Bible. But also, again like the Bible, there are some key anchors of belief that have received broad consensus. Here is a brief summary of this consensus as reported in the masterful work Classic Christianity, by Thomas Oden.
1. “God’s will is the effective energy inherent in God by which God is able to do all things consistent with the divine nature.”30 There are no “limits” on the actions of God other than the divine nature itself, which is love. God is Person and has created persons to share in loving relationship with God. This ultimate will of God never changes regardless of what we humans do.
2. An essential element of personhood is freedom to choose and act accordingly. Humans have been granted such freedom by the loving God. The wrong use of freedom is the source of much of the evil in this now-fallen world. Despite the current circumstances of our human history and personal lives, God remains free to express the divine loving will, but necessarily now within the changing conditions of our freely chosen history (Ps 40:8; Matt 6:10; John 7:17). See below for an explanation of the threefold will of God.
3. When we humans act counter to God’s