Under the lash of the kind of suffering outlined in my last post it is hardly surprising that many people have cried out to God in utter despair, perhaps for the last time, as their faith gets permanently swallowed whole, by the rage and pain of their suffering.
There is a branch of theology called Theodicy, which attempts in various ways to answer the question why God permits such suffering and evil in the world? However, while helpful in the scholarly realm, it’s philosophical and theological conclusions which are varied and numerous, are of little or no practical help in the very real world of those who are despairing in the here and now.
The eternal problem of God’s role in suffering, if any, is not a new question; it is as old a faith itself. It was this very vexed issue that the book of Job, which I wrote about in a recent post, was trying to tackle.
I believe that our suffering and its relationship with God really centers on the sort of conception of God we consider and adopt. Without doubt, it’s going to be a very rough ride, if, when utterly broken, our conception of God is anything like I learned as a boy. If our conception is the all too common, ‘old white fella with a beard,’ punitive one. He, who hangs out, far off in the heavens somewhere, giving us an occasional good lashing for our sins! Then things can look very dark indeed when the suffering times come. Small wonder that in hard times, people in their droves have turned away from this conception of God.
How this old bearded white fella, who gets off on doling out blessings or punishment like some badass judge, ever came to be king of the heap in God conceptions is not at all clear to me. Perhaps it is the very human need to conceive an all-powerful God, that can avenge the many evils that men in every time and place inflict on each other.
Whatever the source or veracity of the badass judge God, make no mistake, it stands in stark contrast to the ‘One Who Is Love and Compassion,’ which is the central image of God that the bible portrays. I’m not saying you can’t find plenty of biblical passages that creatively portray the punitive fella, but I am saying that’s not the main game. Yahweh is portrayed is a wide range of settings in scripture, but none is more central and pervasive than use of,
“Yahweh, Yahweh, compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness,” (Exod 34:6).
This is the gold standard of God imagery, the God de jure. No other scriptural depiction of God is more widely drawn upon throughout the bible.1
Consider the mystic writers of the psalms, for example, and you get a sense of just how central the compassionate God of love was to their spiritual poetry. This includes, “He heals the broken-hearted, and binds up their wounds,” (Ps 147: 3). Now, what’s not to like about that conception? Especially when we are fully broken and wounded. Another example among the many is the multiple mirroring of Exodus 34:6 by the psalm poets in,
“The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love,” (Ps 86:15; 103:8; 145: 8).
And as the saying goes, comrades, there’s plenty more where that came from. It may take quite a leap to abandon some of the punisher God conceptions that are imbedded in our consciousness. But suffering in my experience has a way of sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly of guiding us in that direction. Far from cracking the punishers whip in some far off never, never land. The God of compassion, which actually means ‘to suffer with,’ is never closer to us than in our deepest suffering.
When we weep, the God that Henri Nouwen so beautifully imaged as “The Wounded Healer,”2 cries a damn river with us. Our pain is God’s pain, our heart break, breaks the heart of God in pieces. When the suffering times come smashing through our lives, comrades. The conception of God, who weeps with weeping, bleeds with those who bleed, might just be worth giving a red hot go! It is none other than this conception of God that mystics of the heart, whatever their ilk or creed, have embraced since time immemorial.
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