A God who Feels Pain

If you’ve been to a carol service this year, you might have heard that cryptic phrase: the Word became flesh. While those words seem confusing on their own, the rest of this passage from the Gospel of John makes it clear that they describe the essence of the Christmas story: God took on human form.

This fundamental truth of Christianity changes the way we think about the man we call Jesus. We miss the point if describe Jesus as a teacher, humanitarian or prophet. By becoming human, God revealed something more than ethical guidance. He revealed something of Himself.  

When God became Man, He made it clear that He is a God who cares for the people he created. Some people, asking themselves why a personal God would create a world so full of terrible things, argue that God must be impersonal. They see God as being in everything and everyone, or as a force like gravity, or as some ultimate truth.

I understand how someone could come to that conclusion. The problem of evil is something that has perplexed Christians for millennia. But thinking of God as impersonal doesn’t deal with that problem. It may make God less responsible, but it leaves Him indifferent to suffering. To me, that’s far worse than believing in a God who is control when suffering happens. It means God is unable to explain or even understanding the pain we experience in life. Some religions and philosophies see transcending suffering as the key to a meaningful existence. But how can any ultimate truth explain anything if it can’t account for the pain that characterises so much of human life? And how could any ultimate truth ask us to ignore the feelings that are so fundamental to the who we are? Sometimes, I wonder if the only people able to transcend suffering are those who have never experienced it.

But if God became Man, then He not only understands pain- He experienced it. When faced with the death of His close friend, Lazarus, Jesus made no effort to ignore what he felt. He said nothing about the need to transcend pain. Neither did He come up with any sentimental nonsense about Lazarus living on in our hearts.

Instead He did what all of us would do- He cried.

Of course, that would be meaningless if Jesus was just a good teacher. But if Jesus was God, then it means that the Creator of the World knows what it is like to be human in a way that no impersonal God, force or ultimate truth ever could.  You could pray to a God like that. But how could you pray to a force and expect it to sympathise with you? If God is not personal, if God doesn’t care about you, than His existence can offer you no hope during the hardest times of your life. The force of gravity is far from comforting when the aeroplane engines fail at 40,000 feet. I can’t see how an impersonal, force-like God would be any different. Whenever I hear about a force-like God, I think of Star Wars. I think of the Force, a mercenary God that serves both good and evil.  And if God is nothing more than a force, I can’t see how it could have any conception of right and wrong. How would you know that God wasn’t on the side of the tyrant? If that’s what an impersonal God is like, then I’d rather be an atheist.

 At best, you could hope for Karma to carry out some form of justice when you are wronged.  But that offers no hope if you are in the wrong.  If Karma is impersonal, there is no mercy. You must suffer for what you have done. You can’t ask Karma for forgiveness.

But if God is personal, then there can be forgiveness. In fact, God became Man so that there could be forgiveness. In dying as a human, God restore the personal relationship with Him that we had broken. Because he has personal, He can forgive us for breaking that relationship. But only if we ask him to. If we do ask, then we can enjoy a personal relationship with a personal God who understands what it is like to suffer. But instead than just experiencing this suffering, God defeated it when Jesus rose from the death.

None of this is possible if God is an impersonal or is no more than a force. And because God is personal, He is too familiar with suffering to ask us to transcend it. Instead, He chose to endure suffering so that we could enjoy a world without it. 

"He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem."

Isaiah 53:3

Are Christians wasting their lives?

Two week ago, a man walked into the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs and opened fire. 26 people died. The following day, news broke that Ian Squire, a British missionary and charity worker being held hostage in Nigeria, had been murdered by his captors.

Tragedies like this remind me of what my Christian faith is really about. When the lives of Christians are cut short, we are forced to wonder whether we are wasting our lives. Why should we dedicate so much of our short lives to our faith? Shouldn’t we be making the most our lives rather than wasting our time on something that might not even be true? Was Pastor Frank Pomeroy right to spend hours of his life in church meetings and Bible studies when he could have spent that time with his 14-year-old daughter, Annabella, who died during the attack?

Sometimes people talk about religious beliefs as if they are just a matter of taste. Religions, they say, are just different ways of helping people to find meaning in our short lives. We have a right to pursue happiness in our lives and if we want to do that through Islam, Christianity or none of the above, it’s all equal. We can pick whatever moral code suits us best as long as we don’t impose it on others. If someone’s faith helps them to be a better person, then we have no right to judge what they believe.

But when Devin Patrick Kelley opened fire on the members of First Baptist Church, what his victims believed about life after death really mattered.

Religion is not a matter of personal preference. It’s a lot more like life insurance. Life insurance might give you peace of mind in life, but what really matters is what happens after death. The true test of a policy is whether it pays out. The peace of mind it provides is irrelevant.

Of course, Christianity is about more than just death. It does provide us with a moral code. It is a refuge when life is hard. But if Christianity turns out to be wrong about life after death, then it would be nothing more than a faith of false hopes.   It would be as much use as a life insurance policy that never pays out.

The Bible itself such as much. In 1 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul addresses those who deny that Jesus rose from the dead:

“¹⁵If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. ¹⁵ More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.¹⁶ For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either.¹⁷ And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. ¹⁸ Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.¹⁹ If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”

There is no inherent value in faith. It’s not rewarding to dedicate your life to to a God that doesn’t exist- it’s delusional.  

If what Ian Squire believed in the wrong God, they he died for nothing. If 26 victims of the Sutherland Spring shootings were wrong about life after death, then they ‘of all people [should] be pitied’. If they were right, then every moment they spent on their faith was worth it.

There is no middle ground.

"I know everyone who lost their life that day, some of which were my best friends, and my daughter. "And I guarantee without any shadow of a doubt they are dancing with Jesus today. God gets the glory."

Pastor Frank Pomeroy

“Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”
C.S Lewis

How can God ask us to worship Him?

The idea of God demanding to be worshiped is difficult to swallow. It makes God seem like an attention-seeker who relies on our praise to bolster his fragile ego. The idea that He would create the world or cause events to happen in order that he would be ‘glorified’ through them seems equally problematic.   Even as a Christian, it’s taken me a while to understand how a God who asks us to be humble could ask us to place Him at the centre of our lives.  

Some people answer this objection by referring to God’s role as the Creator of mankind. Just as the carpenter owns the table or chairs she creates, the act of creation gave God certain rights over us, including the right to be worshipped.

I can see the attraction of this argument. But it’s always seemed flawed to me. I am not a mahogany table. I see no reason why the carpenter who made me would be free to let me gather dust in the attic. Having a right to use an object as you please is very different to having unlimited rights over a person. We have word for the latter: slavery.

Even our parents, who literally created us, don’t have a right to use us as they please. I love my parents. But heaven forbid they ever have unlimited rights over me. They are flawed people. We all are.

Every one of us is flawed and so the thought of them having unlimited rights over us is terrifying. When we talk about a God that wants us to praise Him, he sounds like yet another flawed human being. And only the most flawed and selfish people every openly ask anyone else to worship them. He may be powerful, but that doesn’t make His claims over our lives any more valid. If His strength was the only reason He could command our obedience, God would just be another despot.

But God has a right to our praise not because of His strength, but because of His moral perfection. That’s why the act of worshipping God is fundamentally different to worshipping a person. Perhaps it is closer to worshipping a virtue. Most of us, I imagine, would consider the worship of an ideal to be more acceptable than the worship of a person. In fact, many of us already worship a virtue. “Love trumps Hate” seems to have been the standard response to so many of the horrible things that have happened recently. We put our faith in Love. We put our hope in Love. We think of it as the guiding principle of our lives. That sounds a lot like worship to me. 

Don’t get me wrong, worshipping Love is not the same as worshipping God. I do not believe that God is a metaphor or an abstract ideal. (How could anyone worship a metaphor?) Though God is outside of this universe, I believe that He is as real as the world around us. (Yes, I know that Elon Musk, the Independent and Morpheus from the Matrix question whether the world is real,  but let’s forget about them for a minute…)

But in God those virtues are embodied in a person. If God is, as the Bible claims, Love, then worshiping Him is fundamentally different to worshipping a person. To worship something else would be to worship something that wasn’t Love. If only God is perfect, then to worship something else would be to worship something morally imperfect.   If only He is just, then to worship something else would be worship injustice. That is why, I think, God can only allow people to worship Him.  I don’t see how God could be perfect if he were happy for us to worship something that was imperfect. And by God, I mean the Christian God of the Bible.

If God were content for us to worship anything, be it a totem pole or Allah, then he would again be saying it was ok to worship something that wasn’t the perfect embodiment of love, compassion, perfection and justice.

If God were not Love, I don’t believe He would have the right to demand that we worship Him. I’m not certain, but I don’t think the fact that He created us would alone be justification for worshipping Him.

I know this is far from a complete answer. Perhaps it even raises more questions than it answers. Where do the virtue of Love, Justice and Compassion come from in the first place? Are they set by God or are they independent of Him? Some, I know, will find it difficult to accept the claim that God is love itself. But I hope this at least explains why I’ve become more at ease with the idea that God has the right to demand that we worship him.

Donald Trump: A lost cause?

We’ve given up on Donald Trump. It doesn't feel like that. After all, courts have blocked his odious Muslim ban. Every day, a new public figure weighs in with yet more condemnation of his sexist, racist, everything-ist policies.  I’m proud to say that my own pro-refugee placard lies somewhere amidst my laundry, ready for the next anti-Trump protest.  

But while we haven’t given up on fighting President Trump, we have given up on him. That’s clear from the number of less than innovative variations on “F*** Trump” placards at every demonstration. We don’t just oppose his values; we oppose him as a human being. It okay to hate Donald Trump. Some even justify wishing for his death.

Most people believe that human nature is inherently good but corrupted by society. Often this leads us to think that anybody can change. But despite this belief in the innate goodness of man, we don’t expect Donald Trump to change. We see him as a lost cause.  He will stay sexist, racist and obsessed with money to the end of his days.

Though I don’t believe that human nature is innately good, I am convinced that that people can change. As a Christian, I believe that humans, though created in the image of God, have become corrupted. When Donald Trump announced his heartless ban on refugees, we saw the corruption of the image of God. In contrast, when lawyers flocked too airport terminals to offer refugees free legal aid, we saw the love and goodness that comes from being made in the image of God. That’s not to say that some reflect the image of God while others are characterised by this corruption. No doubt, Donald Trump has at some point reflected the image of God. I believe that all of us, whatever our faith, are capable of reflecting both the image of God and the corruption of this image. As the Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once said;

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

You might call me a pessimist for thinking this way.  If we believe that all of us are capable of acts of extreme evil, how can there be any hope for humanity? If all the good we do is tainted by corruption, how can we be optimistic that humans can change?

John Newton, the writer of Amazing Grace, was a slave trader. Though his career would have been considered respectable at the time, he was guilty of one of the most extreme acts of evil- the trade in ‘human souls’. It was during his time as a slave trader that he became a Christian. Although he had asked God that his sins would be forgiven, he saw nothing wrong with his career as a captain of a slave ship. Even after ill-health but an end to his career, he continued to invest in the slave trade.

34 years after becoming a Christian, Newton published Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade.  He described the pamphlet, a copy of which he sent to every Member of Parliament, as ‘a confession, which ... comes too late’. He described the shame he felt about his involvement in the slave trade;

‘It will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me, that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders.’

Now fully convinced of the barbarity of the slave trade, he used his own experiences to campaign against it. He lived just long enough to ‘rejoice at the wonderful news’ when the slave trade was abolished in the British Empire in 1807.

It is true that Newton was not representative of every Christian at the time. While many Christians played key roles in the fight against the slave trade, others profited from the suffering it created.  It also took an undeniably long time for him to see that his involvement in that barbaric trade was morally wrong.

But the fact remains; this slave-trader became an abolitionist. For years, he was no doubt considered a lost cause. He would have been despised. Many slaves and abolitionists would have gladly seen him dead. But, against all the odds, John Newton's life was changed.

We may not be able to wait 34 years for Donald Trump to change. Thankfully, many have been transformed much more quickly than this. The Bible tells how the Apostle (or St.) Paul, a man known for murdering the innocent, was transformed by God in an instant. Throughout history, countless murderers, criminals and even apparent good guys have become different people as a result of God working in them.

Of course, I know that Christians are still only the corrupted image of God and so are capable of evil things. Neither do I deny that some people’s lives are changed dramatically without a belief in God. I cannot, however, say I’m overly optimistic that Donald Trump will be transformed through self-reflection and pulling his own moral socks up. I’m not convinced anyone else is either. 

But I do know that anyone, when they accept that their own moral efforts can never make up for the wrong they’ve done, can ask God for forgiveness. Anyone can ask to be treated as if they themselves lived Jesus’ perfect life. Even Donald Trump.*

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All of this leaves me optimistic. Though I despise Trump’s politics, I don’t think he’s a lost cause. I believe that God can begin to restore the image of God in Donald Trump. Yes, it would be a miracle.

But it's a miracle that's happened before.

* I know Donald Trump claims to be a Christian. But since he's also said he has never asked God for forgiveness, I really don't see how he could be. If he is, however, then I am still confident that, like John Newton, he can become a changed man.

Looking for Utopia

According to the UN, there is enough grain in the world to provide every single person on this planet with 3,600 calories a day. Our bodies need just 2,500 calories every day. Yet 795 million people do not have enough food to eat and 21,000 starve to death each day.

Over the last four years of studying Politics, this is the thing that has shocked me the most. To me, no other fact else capture the tragedy and injustice of this world. When I first read those statistics, I was one reminded of an old saying from the Bible:

“A poor person's farm may produce much food, but injustice sweeps it all away.”

Proverbs 13:23

It’s a verse I first learnt as a child. Our church had just started to serve only Fairtrade tea and coffee. Though it would be years before I developed any firm political opinion, Fairtrade was the first political issue to pique my interest. This first introduction to trade justice was one of the many things that would lead me to study Politics at university.  

Despite what you might think, studying Politics hasn’t turned me into an idealist. In fact, it’s crushed any lingering hopes of a utopian future. We may have eradicated deadly diseases and put an end to horrific human rights abuses but in some ways this world is stubbornly unchanged. Two millennia have passed since the Book of Proverbs was first written, yet daily injustice still sweeps away the food of the poor. Though unprecedented social and economic development has led to better lives for many, our unfair treatment of the vulnerable is so embedded in our trade system that no longer need to consciously choose to exploit them. We simply carry on as we normally do and we leave the world worse off.

Yes, studying Politics has taught me that the world is messed up. But it’s also taught me that everyone wants a better world. Lively classroom debates about how to make the world a better place leave me in no doubt that we all have a conscience. Though the ‘normative’- that is, taking a stance about the way things should be- is usually frowned upon by the academic, no essay ever questions whether the world should be a better place. Academics don’t dispassionately observe our unjust world- they want to change it.  

So how does my faith come into this? Where does all this leave me, an idealist mugged by reality?

My faith still motivates me to try and make the world a better place. While society tries to ‘inspire’ me into challenging injustice, the Bible is unrelentingly clear that standing up for others is not merely commendable. It is a binding moral duty. As the Book of Isaiah puts it; ‘Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.’  As is clear from the Book of James, the Bible doesn’t mince its words when it comes to condemning exploitation; ‘Behold. the wages of the labourers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts… You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.” Standing aside in a world of exploitation is not an option.

Following a God who is so angry about injustice makes standing up for others a duty. But we know that there are limits to our capacity to change the world. As G.K. Chesterton once said; ‘What’s wrong with the world? I am.’ Reforming our economic system could clearly alleviate suffering, but nothing can completely remove injustice. For that, we must change human nature.

Though I don’t believe that a Utopia is possible, my Christian faith leads me to believe that there will eventually be a world without suffering. Not on this earth, however.  It is too contaminated, too messed up. Instead, I look forward to a world where the human nature at the root of injustice has been changed. My unjust human nature won’t by my own moral efforts, but because of God’s gift of forgiveness.

“He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death' or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

Revelation 21:4