‘There’s a lullaby for suffering,
And a paradox to blame,
But it’s written in the scriptures,
And it’s not some idle claim’
Leonard Cohen
‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life’.
Jesus Christ [John 12:24-25]
As the war in Ukraine continues to rage, and talk of peace is accompanied only by seemingly more intensive attacks by the Russian aggressors, there are no doubt many in that country who understandably fear for their life. For them there is no guarantee that they will make it though another day alive.
Which is, of course, something that is true for all of us, even if, in our relatively peaceful circumstances, we manage to kid ourselves otherwise. But whilst I am conscious that today really could be my last, I am also concerned that I have not yet died enough.
One of the things that has become apparent over the last few months is that we all, myself included, have an opinion as to how the current crisis can best be resolved. And we’re all too happy to voice that opinion. Why is that I wonder?
Perhaps it is because we have a need to think that we’re in control, that there is something that we can do about the problems that we face. Some of us may be comforted into thinking that everything will be a OK by believing that world leaders and their advisors know what they are doing, but others of us are less sure and instead draw comfort by believing that we know what needs to be done and that, if we shout it loudly enough, somebody will hear and implement our sage advice.
But what if that wasn’t the case? What if there really was nothing that we could do? What if we really were helpless? What then? Might we have to look elsewhere for our comfort?
A while back I worked my way through a book entitled ‘On being a theologian of the cross’ which takes a look at Martin Luther’s 1518 Heidelberg Disputation. If that sounds rather heavy, that’ll be because it is! Even so, it really is quite brilliant. Here’s what I understand the one time German monk to have said.
God is who he is. And we need to understand him in relation to who he has revealed himself to be rather than on the basis of how we would like him to be. Because the two are often very different.
Luther sees the cross as central to Christianity. He calls it God’s ‘alien work’, an attack on sin which, since our aspirations are as fallen as the rest of us is, at the same time, an attack on who we are in our fallen state. In short, our desires are not what they ought to be and, consequently, those things that we want, and which we might expect God to be pleased to deliver, may not necessarily be what God wants.
The crucifixion of Jesus Christ, that wholly unexpected event in history, is central to God’s revelation of himself. At the cross, we see him manifesting his glory, paradoxically through suffering and death. Luther calls those who understand God in these terms, ‘theologians of the cross’. They are, he says, those who see God as he really is.
Luther also had a name for those who, along with the world, see the crucifixion of Jesus as foolishness. He calls then ‘Theologians of Glory’. They are those who consider the cross to be ‘folly’ [1 Corinthians 1:23]. As a result of their fallen nature, they not only glory in the same things that the world glories in, but imagine that God glories in those things too.
But when we expect God to act in the way that we want him to, when we expect him to want for us what we want for ourselves, we are, in fact, creating for ourselves a God in our own image. In so doing we are usurping the ‘God who is there’ and seeking to place ourselves on his throne.
God, however, is God. He is who he wills to be. His ways are higher than ours, as are his thoughts. [Isaiah 55:9] and, as such, his greatness is unsearchable’ [Psalm 145:3], and ‘the thunder of his power’ is not something that, of ourselves, we can understand?’ [Job 26:14].
Which is why God often works in ways that surprise us, in ways that we would not choose. Indeed, as he did at Calvary, God sometimes sees fit to work through pain and suffering and so, just as it was through the cross that he most fully revealed himself to the world, we must be prepared for Him to still use pain and suffering as the means by which he reveals himself to us today.
However, because of our fallen nature, we are all, by default, theologians of glory. And because we can not be what we are not, it is impossible for us to see God for who he really is without him breaking into our lives and changing who we are.
As theologians of glory, those who think as the world does in terms of performance and reward, we find it impossible to understand what was achieved through the death of Jesus on the cross. And so, rather than being the recipients of the grace and mercy that was poured out there, we instead keep on trying to merit God’s approval. We like to think that, somewhere deep within us, there is a kernel of goodness that might allow us to do something that would impress God enough to earn his favour. We comfort ourselves by imagining that if we try just a little bit harder, we might, by our efforts, make progress in our search for his acceptance.
But what if that wasn’t the case? What if there really was nothing that we could do? What if we really were helpless? What then? Might we have to look elsewhere for our comfort?
Luther is convinced that in our fallen state we really are helpless. There really is nothing we can do to change. Everything about us is flawed and, as has already be stated, our default position is such that we are all, myself included, theologians of glory. Indeed, this inherent tendency in me was made apparent when in an earlier draft of this blog, I initially wrote of how I needed to ‘allow’ God to be God! ‘Allow’? Really? What pretension on my part to think God needs permission from me to be who he is!
Not only then do theologians of glory imagine that God wants for us what we want for ourselves, that he will provide our best life now, a life characterised by health, wealth and prosperity, they also believe that we are inherently worthy of God’s love and that we can, by an effort of the will prove ourselves to be so.
But they are wrong – and we can’t.
In fact, according to Luther, a belief that we can earn God’s favour in our own strength is a sin in itself – one that only worsens our situation still further. Because, by maintaining that by keeping the law we can make ourselves any more acceptable to God, we deny the need for his grace and, as a result, compound our guilt.
The first thesis of Luther’s disputation states that: ‘The law of God, the most salutary doctrine of life, cannot advance humans on their way to righteousness, but rather hinders them’. This is wholly in keeping with the apostle Paul when he writes that ‘by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.’ [Romans 3:20]
Our problem then is far greater than we would like to imagine.
It’s not merely that we need to try harder – rather it is that the task is too hard.
It’s not merely that we need to think more highly of others – rather it is that we need to think less highly of ourselves
It’s not merely that we need to humble ourselves – rather it is that we need to be humbled.
God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble [James 4:6]. But it is only when we come to despair completely in the effectiveness of our own efforts that we are able to receive the grace that God is so eager to pour out on us. And to be brought to this point, to be humbled so completely, our old selves need to die. That is why, as I said above, my concern is that I have not yet died enough.
Theologians of glory think as the world thinks, they stress our worth and minimise the necessity of the cross. They see the crucifixion as merely a demonstration of God’s love for us rather than the bloody sacrifice that was required for our salvation.
In contrast, theologians of the cross see things as they really are. They acknowledge our inherent sinfulness – and the perilous danger that we are in if we fail to appreciate this reality. Furthermore, they accept that God, just as he did 2000 years ago, through the means of cruel nails and a bloody cross, still sometimes works to bring about his purposes in ways that are incomprehensible to the world.
Sometimes he works through heartache and sorrow,
Sometimes he works through pain and suffering.
And sometimes, perhaps, he may even work through a war in Eastern Europe – one that, though we must, nonetheless, pray for it to come to an end, may yet have to sadly accept that it needs to continue a while longer rather than being brought to an unjust and temporary end by peace deals that seemingly have more to do with the personal interests of those who try to broker them than what is actually right and wrong.
Along with Bob Dylan, my favourite musician is Leonard Cohen. Following his death some years ago I wrote a short blog after I came across something interesting he had said in response to being asked why so many of his songs had a melancholic feel to them. If you’re so minded you can read that blog here, but this is what he said:
‘We all love a sad song. Everybody has experienced the defeat of their lives. Nobody has a life that worked out the way they wanted it to. We all begin as the hero of our own dramas in centre stage and inevitably life moves us out of centre stage, defeats the hero, overturns the plot and the strategy and we’re left on the side-lines wondering why we no longer have a part – or want a part – in the whole…thing. Everybody’s experienced this, and when it’s presented to us sweetly, the feeling moves from heart to heart and we feel less isolated and we feel part of the great human chain which is really involved with the recognition of defeat’.
Cohen, then, is speaking here like a theologian of the cross, one who acknowledges the normality of sadness and appreciates how life is about ‘the recognition of defeat’.
But here’s the thing. Is there, I wonder, a joy to be had in being conquered by someone who is greater than ourselves, one who is worthy of our admiration and in whom we can delight?
I think there is.
By seeking satisfaction in ourselves, scripture tells us that we ‘have committed two evils: [we] have forsaken [God], the fountain of living waters, and hewn out cisterns for [ourselves], broken cisterns that can hold no water.’ [Jeremiah 2:13]. There is though, real refreshment to be had in the contentment that comes from no longer having to win, a relief that comes from having the burden of being a success lifted, a real pleasure that flows from admiring, not ourselves, but the God who really can satisfy our souls.
I believe that to be conquered by God is, therefore, something that would be good for us all. It would most certainly be good for me.
And so, when life is difficult, as it sometimes is, for me as well as others, and when I am tempted to wonder where God might be, I need to think more like a theologian of the cross, one who sees God working through the pain and sadness. Because as he does so he is breaking my fragile dependence on myself in order that I might depend securely on him, lessening my unsatisfying obsession with myself in order that I might be fully satisfied in him, and lovingly putting me to death in order that I might one day rise again in Christ.
So then, perhaps it is when our difficulties seem to be genuinely overwhelming that it is time for us to believe that ‘this light momentary affliction [really] is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look, not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal’ [2 Corinthians 4:17-18].
Only as God lovingly brings us to the point of surrender will we find real comfort in ‘the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God’ [2 Corinthians 1:3-4]
But as these verses continue, we see again the paradoxical nature of the God who refuses to conform to worldly expectations. For it is not only that God comforts us in our suffering because it is as we suffer that we are comforted and able to comfort others who, as they themselves suffer, are themselves comforted too.
Having started with a statement on the inability of man to contribute anything to their salvation, Luther completes the Heidelberg Disputation with words which are, again, totally contrary to how the world thinks. This is what he says: ‘The love of God does not first discover but creates what is pleasing to it. The love of man comes into being through attraction to what pleases it.’
And here too is real comfort.
Because, whilst our love is only ever a response to what we find lovely, God’s love originates within himself. Which means he loves us, not because we are lovely, but because he is both loving and the one who is love [John 4:8]. Furthermore God loves us in order to make us lovely.
So then, though we can not do anything to warrant it in and of ourselves, God, through the foolishness of the cross, through the pain, suffering and death experienced both there and in our lives, does everything necessary to make us how we were always meant to be. He does everything necessary for our salvation including all that is required to make us humble enough to accept it.
And, because he loves us, he does it regardless of how painful it might seem to us at the time.
‘For the Lord disciplines the one he loves…he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.’ [Hebrews 12:6,10-11]
‘Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!’ [Romans 11:33]
God is a theologian of the cross.
‘[He] is God and there is no other; [he] is God there is none like [him]’ [Isaiah 46:9]
‘[He] kill[s] and [He] make[s] alive; [He] wound[s] and [He] heal[s]; and there is none that can deliver out of [his] hand’ [Deuteronomy 32:39]
Oh that we might know and be known by the one true God, the God who is like no other. Oh that he would wound us that we might be healed – that he would kill us that we would be made alive. Oh that we might be forever in his hands.
And oh that He would do everything necessary to make us true theologians of the cross, even if, in order to make us ‘rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead’ it makes us feel, like Paul, that we ‘had received the sentence of death’ [2 Corinthians 1:9].
Jesus said ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.’ [Mark 8:34-35].
It is my prayer therefore that I might be brought to the point whereby I know what it is to follow Jesus in the way that he calls me too. And that I might know what it is, by the Spirit, to put to death the deeds of the body and thereby live. [Romans 8:13]
Because, though ‘to live is Christ…to die is gain’ [Philippians 1:21]. It is my earnest belief that God will raise me from death and it is only then that I ‘shall see him as he is’, it is only then that I ‘shall be like [Jesus]’ [1 John 3:2], and it is only then that I will know the full joy of of being with him forever. [Luke 23:43].
So now, ‘to him who is able’, sometimes by trials or tribulations and sometimes by death or disease, ‘to keep [us] from stumbling and to present [us] blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Saviour, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time, and now, and forever. Amen’ [Jude 1:24-25].
Related blogs:
To read ‘When Bad Things Happen’, click here
To read ‘All’s Well that Ends Well’, click here
To read ‘T.S. Eliot, Jesus and the Paradox of the Christian Life’, click here
To read, ‘Donald Trump, the Health, Wealth and Prosperity Gospel, and how I want to die’, click here
To read “Suffering- A Personal View”, click here.
To read “Why do bad things happen to good people – a tentative suggestion”, click here
To read ‘Monsters’, click here
Some musings 