Two Good Friday thoughts

(posted on Facebook too)

Eli, eli, lama sabachthani

Over the past few years, I've come across several stories about those whose prayers have been met with silence. Mother Teresa's long struggle with spiritual darkness was re-visited as her canonization approached. Michael McLean spoke openly about his decade-long faith crisis. Professors, motivational speakers, and many others have described similar journeys through darkness, despite countless prayers and tears begging for some kind of reassurance.

"In me ye shall have peace," the Savior promised (John 16:33), but what if that peace doesn't come when it's needed? What then?

One of my favorite tellings of the Adam and Eve story describes a scene shortly after they have left the Garden of Eden. Adam prays, and prays, and prays, desperate for guidance from the God he once knew well -- and instead Satan shows up. Adam had already repented of partaking of the fruit, and forgiveness had already been granted. He and Eve were keeping the commandments. And yet it was Satan instead of God who showed up.

This scene has been replayed by countless people throughout history, often when they are trying their best to draw closer to God. It seems like spiritual darkness and heavenly silence are no respecters of persons, though they seem drawn in particular to those who have suffered abuse, deal with mental illness, or are even just plagued by sleep deprivation. This doesn't help matters -- what if what they thought was spiritual peace was really just good physical, mental, and emotional health? Is anything certain anymore?

Perhaps not -- and perhaps that is how it should be. Perhaps in order to be truly like God, we must first have our certainty stripped away. After all, if our fervent convictions about His existence and His gospel are matched only by our fervent convictions about our politics or our pet theories, then we are not on firm ground. Perhaps silence is a chance to rebuild true faith slowly and deliberately, without emotions and preconceived notions pushing us through the process. Perhaps if we are to become engaged in His work, be it the details of administration or the details of ministration, we need to be left to our own devices, not always gently led along or given clear instructions. Perhaps if we are to develop charity, we need to first know some darkness.

"Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" Jesus cried from the cross (Matthew 27:46). Like Adam and Eve, like Mother Teresa, and like so many of us, Christ knew how it felt to be forsaken. He knew what it was like to be taunted by Satan instead of succored by angels. And because of this, because He descended below all things, He knows how to succor us. In Him we will someday find peace.

I posted that on Friday, and I read a lot of lovely things this weekend about Good Friday that related to that post. This one in particular stuck out to me:

"That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already, but that God could have His back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents forever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point—and does not break. In this indeed I approach a matter more dark and awful than it is easy to discuss; and I apologize in advance if any of my phrases fall wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which the greatest saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach. But in the terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt. It is written, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." No; but the Lord thy God may tempt Himself; and it seems as if this was what happened in Gethsemane. In a garden Satan tempted man: and in a garden God tempted God. He passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror of pessimism. When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay (the matter grows too difficult for human speech), but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist."

—GK Chesterton

"God seemed for an instant to be an atheist."

I have wondered how Christ could descend below all things when He never had reason to doubt. And yet this year I think I began to understand His cry from the cross. It wasn't just that He didn't have the Holy Ghost with Him. It was that an entire facet of His identity -- that of God -- was somehow stripped from Him while on the cross. He was left as a mortal then, it seems. He was confronted with the same doubts that many face here. All the miracles up to that point really truly might not have mattered at that moment -- He really might have doubted everything, at least momentarily.

"Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. . . . and with his stripes, we are healed" This is the good news of the gospel. This is the good news that He proved by rising from the dead, and it is the good news that will save the world.