the cross.

Take the word ‘focus’. Say it 20 times. Now say it 20 more times. Listen to yourself saying it. Most of us at this point will have become weirded out by the word. It becomes simple a small collection of syllables and vowels, a meaningless sound because of its relentless bombardment. We can’t even use the word. For a little while we are confused by it. All meaning has been sucked out.

In our church café we have a whole wall dedicated to the display of crosses. Some are bare and simple, some are floral, others are almost comedic in nature. It seems appropriate that the symbol we Christians are defined by takes such a prominent place in our worlds. We want to give it attention because it is so central to the story we endorse. But the frequency in which we use it in church life can sometimes have a detrimental effect. We can become desensitised to it. In the same way that we have become used to graphic violence in media without even giving it a second thought, the cross is basically lost to us. It simply represents a cold transaction of sin or something. A religious icon divorced from reality.

One of the most telling experiences I ever had was as a student teacher in a local primary school. One Thursday morning an enthusiastic young woman from a nearby church came to give the class I was in a Bible in Schools lesson. The class was made up of 6 year olds and most of them knew very little of the Bible or Christianity.  This young woman proceeded to tell this group of young children the crucifixion story. Of Jesus being nailed to a cross by his hands and feet. The listeners were wide eyed and one scared child had to leave the room in tears. What this young woman had failed to realise was that the crucifixion story is not a child friendly account of history. It isn’t even really PG. It is brutal and horrific.

To put it bluntly, we have domesticated the cross. We have turned it into a get out of jail free card in our evangelistic methods or a piece of poetry unique to our belief system. We have turned it into a “Jesus thinks you are to die for” bumper sticker without actually giving too much thought to what the experience would have actually entailed. Sometimes non-Christians recognise the barbarity of it more than Christians do, due the fact we’re so used to talking about it.

But the cross. It possesses profane horror and godlessness.

Jesus died as a rejected blasphemer.

Crucifixion was the most degrading form of punishment.

It is totally inappropriate for God to go through something like this. It is bad taste.

It is a total scandal.

It is in conflict with anything humane and rational.

Jesus endured nakedness, powerlessness and senselessness and alienation to all.

God experienced God forsakenness.

On this cross we behold a crucified and defeated God.

For God so loved the world.

Domesticate that.

More on Suffering: Who is God?

Do these questions feel familiar?

“There is but one only, living, and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions; immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute; working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will, for his own glory; most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek him; and withal, most just, and terrible in his judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty.” (Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 2.1)

The god described in this passage of writing is essentially the god of classical philosophy. God becomes the idea of perfection, separate from creation in the way he is so different, so impenetrable, so transcendent above us and so impossible to comprehend. And all this is true of course, but not in the sense that there is no way of knowing him beyond an idea of absolute perfection. Getting there somehow by reason and talking lots about ideals tests the limits of our imagination and helps us to sort of conceive of a divine, but it doesn’t help us to know that divine being.

The cross has always been the central symbol for Christianity to draw attention to the sacrifice Christ made on the behalf of human beings, and a reminder of God’s grace. However, to have chosen to communicate His love and grace through this particular sacrifice says much more about the nature of God. However, in most popular writing around this, it does not go beyond the sentimental or symbolic. In his book, Drops Like Stars, Rob Bell muses "Perhaps that's why people... continue to identify with the cross. It speaks to our longing to know that we're not alone, that there's someone else "screaming alongside us." Is the cross God's way of saying "I know how you feel"?”  Even self-confessed atheist theologian, John Shelby Spong sees it as the ultimate expression of who God is, saying “"...the cross is not a place of torture and death; it is the portrait of the love of God seen when one can give all that one is and all that one has away. The cross thus becomes the symbol of a God presence that calls us to live, to love and to be."

But if we are to formulate a more complete understanding of the relationship of Jesus within the Godhead in suffering, we must go beyond divine empathy and using symbolic language around the cross. How is God Himself located within the suffering of Christ and the crucifixion? Nicholas Wolterstorff briefly explores this tension in saying:

"God is not only the God of the sufferers, but the God who suffers. The pain and fallenness of humanity have entered into his heart... Though I confessed that the man of sorrows was God himself, I never saw the God of sorrows. Though I confessed that the man bleeding on the cross was the redeeming God, I never saw God himself on the cross, blood from sword and thorn and nail dripping healing into the world's wounds."

How exactly is one to see God suffering in Jesus? This becomes a highly problematic task when God is understood primarily in terms of transcendence, impassibility and distinctiveness without a strong appreciation for His immanence.

What does the cross actually say?

God dies an excruciating, shameful, humiliating, painful and bloody death. What do we even do with that?

Have we become used to the idea of the cross?

Has it become an empty symbol, a shallow trinket?

Why does it not shock us anymore?

How is this God Himself?

Peter Rope: Can Love Be Defined?

What is Love – billboards, popular magazines, television, films, books all reveal the various dynamics of romantic love – it's on display everywhere. These ideals are prised. There is certainly value in romantic love, and my question is whether I am the only one who is questioning whether this is what Love is? Is there more? Is love this narrow conception?

As a young Christian I'm also confronted with another type of Love rather than this narrow ideal. There is this dichotomy that I'm confronted with every day – What is Love? What is true Love?

As a philosophy, modern society expresses Love with 'feelings', the 'feelings of romanticism'. This involves a feeling of possessiveness and exclusivity. But even society acknowledges family Love which is different again - our children, closeness, bonds that bind, blood is thicker than water …. These are valid and worthy.

As a Christian, I am faced with a different kind of Love, this encourages me to go beyond ….. Loving God becomes a priority, as is loving our neighbour (means anyone else). Partiality is gone and within this context is a distinct lack of exclusivity – it's a bit of a shock to a new Christian what is involved with this commandment to Love.

One person's example of Love

The apostle James says true religion, that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. (James 1 verse 27).

Catholic Priest Henri Nouwen is an author whom I read with interest. His life inspires me, for after teaching at universities such as Yale and Harvard he dedicated his later life to care for people with disabilities.

Throughout his life he struggled with both depression and his sexuality but yet set an amazing example for others to follow of Christ like love and sacrifice. Does it make Nouwen any less loving, or less knowledgeable of love, that he was celibate? I would argue most certainly not.

In fact, I would say the love Nouwen had and gave to the poor and disabled was a kind of self sacrificial love that many people may never touch. It’s graceful in its unmerited favour in an age in which for some possessive and preferential love reigns supreme. To have compassion for the weak, the vulnerable, and the powerless, is in itself subversive and is a place where the light of Christ shines through.

In this matrix of love it is not the feeling that comes first. Nouwen didn’t care for the disabled because he fell in love with someone who was poor or disabled, no; love is the work of love. And the work of love is his life. The task is not to find a loveable object or person, but the task is to find the given object or person - loveable.

A theologian

A highly esteemed theologian Søren Kierkegaard had a great deal to say about Love.

“With respect to love we speak continually about perfection and the perfect person. With respect to love Christianity also speaks continually about perfection and the perfect person. Alas, but we men talk about finding the perfect person in order to love him. Christianity speaks about being the perfect person who limitlessly loves the person he sees.”

In my view, he seems to be saying that each of us should be working on ourselves instead of chasing the dream of the perfect object or person to love.

As none of us are perfect, there should be an inherent attempt to be a more loving person towards all – this is at least something we might be in a position to control and developed within ourselves.

The Scriptures certainly affirm that following Jesus Christ enables this endeavour to 'Love' which is aided by the Holy Spirit dwelling within each believer. For me therefore Love is of God, and pure love comes from God whether it is romantic love, family love, service to others Love or a more internal expression of Love in how we live our lives. 

Grant Harris - Easter Message - Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?

Continuing with our discussion on suffering is Grant's Easter message, if you would rather have a listen than read. Enjoy!

what is up with suffering?

Over the past few years, I have become near obsessed with the issue of suffering. It's strange really, because it's not like I've experienced huge amounts of tribulation or pain myself. I guess what I have begun to realise is that God so closely associates himself with suffering, and I find this intriguing. I have begun to ask myself the question: what if there is more to suffering than just trying to avoid it? It seems that it is not something that God is interested in simply getting rid of, but an important part of the way He reveals Himself.

Suffering is a significant roadblock for a lot of people, and it is no surprise. How is a human being supposed to reconcile a supposedly loving and all powerful being with the fact that a family member is suffering from a debilitating disease and is in huge amounts of pain? How can He just watch rape, genocide, starvation and terrorism and apparently sit on His hands? This problem is not to be analysed under the microscope of the ivory laboratories of theological debate, but in the messy, excruciating, desperate realities of real existence on this risk laden planet.

The problem of suffering is referred to in theological spheres as “theodicy”, meaning the ‘justice of God’. Discussion usually centres around this age-old conundrum: If God is good then he can’t be all powerful if He lets people suffer. But if He is all powerful then He can’t be good if He lets people suffer. Therefore God cannot be both good and all-powerful at the same time. Consequently, the God of the Bible that claims to be both of these things is nothing more than a revered fairy tale and a cause for tribalism.

But then there’s Jesus. Jesus who actually was good – goodness in the flesh. God Himself. But instead of preventing suffering and exercising some sort of divine control and separation from pain, Jesus enters into pain, social isolation and extreme physical suffering. He chooses to. If Jesus is truly God (and if you’re a Christian, then that’s you my friend) then Jesus is revealing who God really is, and God’s stance to the problem of pain. God enters into it; he doesn’t put an end to it. What on earth do we do with that? All our theology needs to begin with Jesus, and if our theology of suffering does too, we need to begin all our discussions from the cross.

Unfortunately, our tradition has offered some less than helpful answers to the issue, looking to defend God in what seems to be some sort of pious Stockholm Syndrome. Some of these thinkers sound a lot like Job’s friends offering suggestions that seem reasonable explanations to them, often blaming the sufferer or appealing to some sort of “the ends justifies the means” argument. I heard the story of a woman who suffered a miscarriage and while in hospital recovering, her well-meaning friend suggested that the reason her baby had been taken away from her was because “God looked around Heaven and decided that He needed something to brighten the place up.” The woman had to use every ounce of self-control to not say something nasty back to such a ridiculous response. We must do some good thinking around here since it is a place that so many people fall off.

John Newton suggested that we suffer so that we don’t become too attached to this world and keep our eyes on Heaven. John Piper thinks that our suffering is a means to greater glory and is evidence with your union with Christ (why non-Christians suffer too then, is a mystery). James Boyce wrote it is necessary because there is no other way to build character. While there is truth in these statements, they are flimsy and shallow once applied to real situations, like a road worker shot down senselessly in south Waikato this week. The question remains: What is God up to?!

Over the next little while I’ll be looking at this whole topic in more detail, but for now, perhaps we need to change our perspectives around this. Instead of framing suffering around ideas of injustice, how do we frame all suffering in light of the cross? God suffers. How does that even work? And what does that mean for the suffering of human beings?

Peter Rope: Desmond Tutu and Les Misérables' lesson: be the difference

1940’s apartheid South Africa: a small African boy of age nine and his mother, a domestic worker, are walking down the street. Passing the other way is a tall white man, a priest in a black cassock. As they pass on the street the priest glances at the boy’s mother and tips his hat.

The young boy is blown away by this small gesture. Why would a white man tip his hat to a black woman? Looking back, he would call this occasion the defining moment of his life. Later, the priest would visit the boy for two years and sit by his bedside to chat when he caught tuberculosis.

The boy later came to see that the priest’s actions were consistent with his beliefs; that every person is of significance and infinite value because they are created in the image of God.

The young boy would develop a passion for the message of Jesus and human rights. That one meeting and action changed his life. And that young boys name was Desmond Tutu.

This story moved me strongly the first time I read it. That such a small action would set what has become such a significant man on his trajectory.

Les Misérables

Another thing that moved me more recently and caused me to think about such things was the musical movie that has recently been released, Les Misérables.

There is a parallel between this true story about Desmond Tutu and the priest, and the story in Les Misérables of the main character Jean Valjean (played by Hugh Jackman) and his meeting with the bishop.

In the movie Jean Valjean steals from a bishop, but is pardoned by him and sent off with what he has stolen as well as more to start a new life, instead of being handed over as a thief. This has a profound affect upon the character of Jean, and this unmerited favour proves redemptive. It’s a great example of the teaching of Jesus illustrated quite dramatically, and a powerful moment in the film.

In both cases the actions of a man following the teachings of Christianity (in the bishops case the quite dramatic outworking of the Sermon on the Mount) resulted in a redemptive effect upon the lives of the main character in the story.

The Culture

A conversation I had this week brought this all home to me in a more practical way. I was talking to my father about apologetics when he mentioned that, in our current secular culture, young people often don’t even know the remnants of Christian morality that used to be at least known and given lip service when he was a child.

This means that many of us young people in Australia and New Zealand live in what is a post-Christian culture. With many of our peers being brought up with no experience of Christianity in the household, and little religious education. A generation of mixed households and drifting morality.

Given this, Christians living in this environment should stick out like sore thumbs. For we have a fixed moral compass and truth we believe in, as well as the example of Jesus to follow, granting us a way that is dramatically different from how the world lives, and giving us the impetus to transform it. A way that offers love, redemption, and forgiveness.

In both the stories that I shared the practical outworkings of Jesus’s teachings were dramatically different from the actions of the surrounding culture. And caused both Desmond Tutu and Jean Valjean to question from whence these gracious acts came, and what would cause someone to perform such acts.

Given the culture that we live in and the gospel that we believe in, perhaps all that is needed sometimes is a little practical outworking. Something that displays the disparity between a lost culture and a transformative gospel. Sometimes maybe, all you have to do - is be the difference.