If you are currently in a season of suffering or struggle or meaninglessness, and are trying to conceptualize it/God, have a look at this. This just knocked me upside the head this morning. I have to believe that Jesuss solidarity with suffering on the cross is actually an acceptance of a certain meaninglessness in the universe -- its nonsensical tragic nature, a black hole that seems constantly to show itself to sensitive souls. To accept some degree of meaninglessness is our final and full act of faith -- that God is still good and still in control. How hard that is to do sometimes! The final and the full gift of meaning, is ironically, the incorporation of no meaning and not knowing. This is the same mystical mind of faith that emerges in all of the worlds religions at the more mature levels. But a crucified God places this issue absolutely front and center so we cannot miss the point and to save us from our common despair...I have to believe that the God who knows when the sparrows fall and says that not one is forgotten in Gods sight, knows and deeply cares that most humans and animals die painful deaths. Gods presence first hides, and yet, ironically, is also revealed in such seeming total absence, but only for those who search and ask. The problem of good shines the brightest after we struggle and when we patiently struggle with the nonsensical problem of evil. There is nothing ascetical or morbid here, or any negative message that, You should suffer more. That overreaction misses the earth-shattering proclamation that suffering makes about the very nature of God and all those who love him. Instead, it reveals that to accept full reality will always be a kind of crucifixion both for God and for ourselves. For us, it is a sure death to our easy opinions, our forced certitudes, any futile attempts at perfect control, our pre-planned life, any intellectual or moral superiority, and eventually, any belief in our separateness from God. Jesus, on the cross, says that God is somehow in and with all these dyings. This is a trusting that stretches us to our limits many times, just as it did Jesus. Suffering seems to overcome the semi-permeable membrane between ourselves, others, and God, and sometimes rather completely. It can overcome all of the major splits from reality we all enter into -- the split from our shadow selves, the split of mind from our body, the split of death from life, and the split into separateness from God and others. Overcoming these foundational splits is what I mean by necessary suffering, and is almost the definition of any in-depth spirituality. -- Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi
Posted on: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 15:19:39 +0000
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