One of the central conflicts in the human story is how we deal with the reality of unspeakable evil. I make the argument in Discovering The God Imagination: Reconstructing A Whole New Christianity that the cross is God’s response to how far we as humans think we can go. It invites us into the reality that there is nothing we can do to lose the love of God. But we can lose site of it. And because of this possibility we still encounter evil. It still exists. To engage the God imagination means going through the cross. And that’s not easy to do.
I received the following letter from a friend who is working through Discovering The God Imagination. His letter is brutal but at the same time deeply hopeful. I look forward to your response to it.
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I enjoyed the youtube promo clips – well done! It was my wife’s birthday yesterday and your book was part of our dinner conversation at the steak house last night. I’m glad I finally had a chance to let her know why I feel so passionate about the whole matter and why I spent quite a bit of time thinking and blogging about it.
Less than an hour ago, I received a phone call from the daughter-in-law of one our elderly church members. Her dad had been in a wheelchair for the last 20 years of their marriage and just died a few months ago. Being widowed hasn’t been easy but somewhat manageable for the mother-in-law but she also has a younger brother who is a bit slow (not quite mentally retarded) – a very gentle soul who couldn’t hurt a fly. He’s come to church with her many times. Earlier this week he became victim of a home invasion during the night. He woke up from the commotion and the invaders beat him into a pulp. They broke his neck and back, threw him down the stairs and then tried to set the house on fire on top of him.
I don’t know any details how he survived but he’s in ICU right now and the doctors are predicting that he will be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life as well.
The daughter-in-law told me that her mom was pretty mad at God after receiving the news. It’s more than understandable. It’s one thing to intellectualize the problem of evil and quite another to have it hit so close to home. It really puts the God imagination to the test like nothing else. It’s hard to see unchanged dignity in people capable of such unspeakable evil and unprovoked violence. It’s difficult to maintain faith in humanity and an unshaken belief in the continuing perspective of ferocious love in God for the enemies when love itself has been so utterly perverted into senseless satanic brutality against the innocent and when you have to experience and endure it yourself or see it happen to a loved one. That particular aspect of the cross is being repeated over and over in our world, not always to such an extreme but brutal enough to leave all of us scarred in the end.
I guess what I’m trying to say is: as simple and compelling the God imagination may be to an open mind and in the attempt to grasp the meaning of God’s story, the very reality of evil and our personal encounters with it can easily shout louder in their presentation of evidence to the contrary. It’s in situations like this where one feels much more compelled to embrace a concept of utter depravity and evil identity of human beings who are all bound for judgment and hell unless they miraculously change by God’s intervention. We judge the tree by its fruit. If the fruit is so evil, obviously the tree must be evil as well. It is the question who we really are when the evil evidence presents itself.
How do you talk to a victim of horrible violence about God and about those who inflicted the suffering? I know that what we want to hear is that God hates these criminals just as much if not more than we do. What we want to hear is that even though they got off the hook now, God is going to get them later. Justice will be served. They’ll burn in hell and deservedly so. And we hear it as an echo of all the martyrs whose blood still cries out for justice.
Problem is: where does that leave US? Are we incapable of the same evil? I know that deep down we really believe that we could never do what these guys did, or those who ran concentration camps, gulags and alike – who seemingly without any remorse abuse, torture and kill. We really do divide humanity into the good guys and the bad guys. And we’re convinced that in heaven we finally don’t have to deal with the bad guys anymore. But there’s always that nagging question too that just won’t go away: am I really good enough? Will God possibly judge me as evil too? We may not carry with us the same degree and depth of evil but still enough to know that there’s lots in our own lives that cannot pass as holy and pure.
For me personally, it still all comes down to the meaning of the cross. The cross reveals the evil inside of me just as it does reveal the evil in those who were complicit in Jesus’ arrest and execution or who actually carried it out. But it reveals at the same time how far God’s love and grace is willing to go – not to give evil a free pass and encourage it to continue but to give everyone a chance to see evil clearly and embrace love instead – a love that sees value in people apart from their evil deeds and is undeterred by hate and senseless brutality, a love that has the power to free us from hate and transform us into lovers ourselves.
So my conclusion is this: Suffering and our broken understanding of it may speak louder than the truth but it cannot drown it out. If our evil acts determine our identity and those of others, we’re all doomed, not just those who are beyond the line of acceptability in our own thinking. Thoughts of revenge and deserved wrath may be a true reflection of our understanding of evil but they don’t solve anything. It doesn’t really lessen our pain nor will it change the perpetrators. The only way to heal is by seeing and embracing God’s way of redeeming through consciously and willingly taking up the cross as an act of love towards all. We can only overcome the sting of suffering and death by embracing suffering and death ourselves. I’m not able to love this way apart from being profoundly impacted by God’s same love for me.
Those are some intitial thoughts after feeling quite numb having heard what happened. Maybe you have some comments of your own. I’d be happy to hear them.
Much love,
(Friend)
Note: Please feel free to share your thoughts on the letter and what it means to love in the midst of unspeakable violence.
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Discovering The God Imagination: Reconstructing A Whole New Christianity offers a sweeping new interpretation of the narrative of Christianity, Jonathan Brink explores the remarkable dissonance between our historical understanding of Gospel and what the story in Scripture actually reveals. It offers a compelling possibility for those looking to reconstruct their faith in a whole new way. Available today from CreateSpace and Amazon. Order from CreateSpace and use code 5GFARGT9 to receive a 15% discount.
