There are times in life when communities experience a time of great suffering. Why suffering seems to happen all at once, I do not know. Maybe once someone we love is suffering, we become more aware of the suffering around us? Or, maybe suffering really does come in threes and that is just the way that God made it?
Honestly, I really don’t think there is an answer. Within the last couple weeks my community went through a great time of suffering. When those around you experience suffering in such a great way it brings up all-to-familiar questions. Why does a loving God allow suffering? Why can’t God just take of this suffering away? Why me? Why now?
Recently I was reading a chapter from Jesus Christ for Today’s World by Jürgen Moltmann, entitled, “The Passion of Christ and the Pain of God.” (Do not worry; this has nothing to do with Moltmann’s panentheistic views of God, creation, or redemption. Throughout the chapter Moltmann perfectly outlines a view of God that allows how we have a God who loves us so much that he suffers with Son and his people. Moltmann writes, “The history of Christ is the history of a great passion, a passionate love. And just because of that, it became at the same time the history of a deadly agony.” (1)
Within the passion of Christ, from Gethsemane to Golgotha, we see a Christ who does not struggle with himself, but who struggles with God. Jesus asks many of the same questions and makes many of the same pleas that we ask in times of pain and suffering, including “take this cup of suffering from me” and “why my God have you forsaken me?”
It is with the passion that not only Christ suffers, but God also suffers. In order for Christ to take on the shame and sin of the world, God had to turn his back from the Son, so that Christ could take on the sins of the world As Paul states in Romans 8:32, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all…” In Christ’s death, “God suffers the death of his Son.” (2)
The book of Hebrews paints a beautiful picture of this reality stating, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). If we in fact have a high priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses, I ask what other time in our life are we weaker than when we are experiencing suffering and pain?
Some are uncomfortable with a God who suffers in this way, yet, as Moltmann clearly points out, if we do not believe in a God who suffers, then the passion can only be viewed as a human reality, not a divine one.
Moltmann then progresses to a place in his theology of suffering where some are uncomfortable with; he states that God so loves us that he enters into our suffering with us and suffers as we do. Some believe that suffering is not “appropriate for God,” as if God is supposed to fit into our modernistic ontological framework.
However, Moltmann approaches this theology through the framework of love and apathy. He believes that if God is a God of love, then he has to be able to empathize with those whom he loves, even in the midst of their suffering.
I am not yet sure if my theology allows for all that Moltmann’s theology might entail, but I have to admit that there is a small part of me who longs for a God who suffers with me, who feels what I feel, who experiences what I experience.
One thing that I do know, we have a God who comprehends what it is to suffer. God has gone through the pain of losing a loved one, had a child turn their back on him, and felt the pain of being alone.
I don’t know about you, but that is a God who I want to worship; a God who is also a high priest who can sympathize with me, especially in times where I am suffering.
(1) Moltmann, Jürgen, Jesus Christ for Today’s World, (Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 1994), pg. 31
(2) Moltmann, pg. 37
