This is the second part of a two part response to a Shane Claiborne article titled, “Holy Week in an Unholy World,” that I saw a few times on my facebook timeline during Holy Week. The first part of my response highlighted where I strongly agreed with Shane and was thankful for his post. In this part of the response, I will share a critique I have and why I think it matters.
The pivotal line in Shane’s moving story of the grieving mother’s connection to the Good Friday Worship, was also the main theological point of his article (although to be fair, I would say the main thrust of his article was more about connecting our Christian story to where people are at in our world). Shane writes,
“Afterwards, one woman said to me: ‘I get it! I get it!’ I asked her what she meant. And then she said something more profound than anything I ever learned in seminary: ‘God understands pain. God knows how I feel. God watched his Son die too.’ Then I realized she was the mother of a nineteen-year-old who had just been murdered on our block. God understands our pain. That is good theology for Good Friday.”
I would actually argue that ‘God understands our pain,’ is a defective theology for Good Friday that not only gives only an illusion of hope, but also that says something about God that Christian theology has traditionally found lacking. Perhaps you are now reflecting upon the story I shared in closing my previous post and are wondering what is different in what I wrote about Christ entering into our suffering and what Shane wrote about God understanding our pain. That is precisely where the difference lies. It is imperative to ask the question, “What is the purpose for Christ entering into our suffering?” for the answer to this makes all the difference in the world.
Did God enter into our suffering in order to better understand our situation? Does God *need* to be better enlightened of our situation and our particular sufferings? Or, in other words, is the real problem that God was lacking in some sort of knowledge or experience and only now, after the crucifixion of Christ, can God *really* know and *really* understand our pain and our need? The issue with this line of thinking is that it locates the deficit within God – God’s lack of knowledge is the problem – God’s inexperience is the issue! However, even a moment’s reflection reveals that this is not the case. God’s lack of knowledge or experience is not the issue. It is pompous, audacious, and ludicrous for us as finite creatures to even pretend we have some knowledge or anything really that is beyond our Creator. If anything, we lack the capacity to even realize what we are talking about. The real issue is that this woman’s son was tragically and unjustly murdered. The problem is death. The problem is injustice. The problem is our sinful and broken world. The problem does not, in any way, lie within God. Therefore, ‘God understands our pain,’ is a horrible way to theologically understand Good Friday (which is perhaps, why Shane didn’t learn it in seminary).
My favorite theologian (when I understand him), David Bentley Hart writes about the temptation to find a ‘suffering God,’ in his brilliant book, “The Beauty of the Infinite.” He writes,
“Thus I want to see the cross as a necessity not only for me but for God: salvation involves a change in God, who is apparently finite and egoistic, like me, who can learn to pity more, to enter into deeper fellowship, to come down from his gilded halls, to discover that he needs to be more forgiving and to see things from my perspective too.”
And then the real problem with such a temptation:
“The heresy in such thinking is obvious, but not necessarily the moral cruelty: for, in pursuit of my own plaint and chary of anything that might weaken my sense of being aggrieved, I actually do an immense disservice to those for whose genuine suffering I deceive myself that I am principally concerned. Do those who know true and hopeless suffering really long for and need a companion in pain, or a savior?”
(pp. 374-375)
And this final point, in the end, is where my theological sensibilities are most offended. We need a savior. Just as Claiborne makes the point that the celebration of Easter cannot be taken in apart from the cross of Good Friday, the opposite holds true: the tragedy of the cross of Good Friday is completely and utterly transformed by the Resurrection. Now, in the cross we do not see a companion in our pain, but instead the conquest and defeat of evil. Now, in the cross of Christ we don’t see God *learning* something about us, but instead the full devastation of our sinful rebellion on display and taken up by Christ. And – this is important – it is taken up not for better understanding, but instead to be defeated. Christ didn’t die in order to better understand sin, but instead to destroy sin and death. That is hope. That is the word a broken world needs to hear. We don’t need a companion in suffering – we need a God who enters into our suffering in order to conquer it and bring us redemption and resurrection.
What it comes down to is this – the consolation that the Gospel offers this grieving mother is not that somehow God better understands where she is coming from. The consolation is that someday, joy of all joys, she will receive her son back from the dead because of Jesus Christ.
That hope ought not to be sold short or compromised ever. We ought to be crystal clear on it. It is our Easter proclamation, and even today the light of the resurrection is breaking through the shadows of our tragedies, for:
Christ is risen from the dead,
trampling down death by death,
and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!