God’s Suffering and God’s Mercy
As I’ve already said, I don’t think I have answers for all my intellectual questions about suffering and pain. I guess I could write another book on all the stuff I don’t know about suffering. But what I learnt as an 18-year-old, as I was wondering what God understood of my loss, has changed my perspective forever. In the great work of art we call the universe, I cannot always follow the hand of the Artist: some of his work just eludes me. But what the biblical narrative tells me—and, in particular, the account of Christ’s passion—is that while I may not be able to trace the Artist’s hand at all times, I can always trust his motives. The God who is in control of all things, who acts behind the scenes in all things, is also the God who willingly suffers. He is the one I can shout at, cry with and find comfort in. His heart, if not all his ways, is clear to me because on the cross he wore it on his sleeve for all to see. This God is able to sympathise with those who suffer not simply because he is `all-knowing’—an attribute ascribed to any version of divinity—but because he has experienced pain firsthand. . . .Having said this, God’s wounds speak to more than just our wounds, they address something even more fundamental. . . Christ’s death is more than an identification with us. The Bible makes clear it is a substitution for us. On the cross God not only stands alongside us, he stands in our place. Here we arrive at perhaps the most liberating dimension of biblical faith: in that god-forsaken moment on the cross Jesus bore the god-forsakenness I deserve for rejecting my Maker and mistreating my neighbour, or in biblical shorthand, for my ‘sin’. Jesus’ death, therefore, is God’s invitation to experience not just his comfort but his mercy as well.
- From If I Were God, I’d End All the Pain by John Dickson
