- Jesus
Slow belief or Suspended disbelief?
In order to get the fullest experience from a work of fiction, whether on screen or in a book, we are often
required to suspend disbelief. We know people can't really fly around on broomsticks, or spaceships travel at warp speed to distant galaxies, or caped wonders bend bars of steel. We also know reasonably mentally healthy people can distinguish between fantasy and reality.
And we know people don't come back from the dead. Especially those who die in an exceptionally brutal manner!
To shake them (and us) out of the fog of disbelief, Jesus directs our thoughts to this powerful truth: the Savior fit to save all mankind must suffer the worst of mankind's warped world.
He created a world worth redeeming.
He came from heaven to rescue that world from natural and man-made induced suffering.
He gave himself to show what it is that makes a god worthy of universal devotion, honor, sacrifice and worship.
He lived Perfect Obedience to the Perfect Will to develop Perfect Love in all the created order.
God plunged himself into the most significant and toxic of human experiences: the suffering man brought upon himself when he realized not only his own vulnerability and the fear of exposure when his disobedience cast him out into a hostile environment, but that he could, with forethought and malice, inflict hurt on other naked/vulnerable members of the species.
As Dr. Jordan Peterson* observes,
Sacrifice and Suffering
The idea of sacrifice as a means of holding suffering in "abeyance" and ensuring a more beneficial future is an idea as old as mankind itself. The greater the sacrifice, the greater the benefit.
My wife recently took a tumble with her horse resulting in a severely broken ankle. She was in another state hundreds of miles from our home on a trip she'd planned with several of her horse riding friends. Those friends demonstrated extraordinary sacrifice in ensuring the best possible future for my wife's foot. First, they immediately cut short that day's ride. Then they transported her to the nearest emergency room...an hour away. Then they rearranged their schedules to accommodate the follow up visits with the surgeon who needed to repair the ankle. And they took her place for cooking and clean up duties so that she could rest! The benefits of their sacrifice included minimizing the suffering my wife had to endure and a deepening of the bonds of friendship.
Why must the Savior suffer?
The greatest benefit for all of mankind is to be made right, eternally given to the highest good possible: Oneness with God. The disciples would have some sense of this idea as sons of Israel whose history was replete with illustrations about the purpose and effectiveness of God-ordained sacrifice.
What they certainly did not grasp is how God himself would offer himself as the Ultimate Sacrifice to achieve the Ultimate Benefit for mankind. Nor that his resurrection put the stamp of finality that this sacrifice was eternal!
"...the Son of God, who, instead of accepting the sacrifice of one of his creatures to satisfy his justice or support his dignity, gave himself utterly unto them, and therein to the Father by doing his lovely will; who suffered unto the death, not that men might not suffer, but that their suffering might be like his, and lead them up to his perfection" -George MacDonald
Just as suffering shapes the person (our response can leave us stronger, more patient, humbler, with deeper understanding of God's care and will, -or- it can leave us bitter, vengeful, angry, wounded) sacrifice shapes the suffering in giving it meaning and purpose in helping us reach our potential to love...like Jesus.
"Greater love has no one than this that a man lay down his life for his friends."
Now you know.
*Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules For Life, chapter 7
In order to get the fullest experience from a work of fiction, whether on screen or in a book, we are often
And we know people don't come back from the dead. Especially those who die in an exceptionally brutal manner!
To shake them (and us) out of the fog of disbelief, Jesus directs our thoughts to this powerful truth: the Savior fit to save all mankind must suffer the worst of mankind's warped world.
He created a world worth redeeming.
He came from heaven to rescue that world from natural and man-made induced suffering.
He gave himself to show what it is that makes a god worthy of universal devotion, honor, sacrifice and worship.
He lived Perfect Obedience to the Perfect Will to develop Perfect Love in all the created order.
God plunged himself into the most significant and toxic of human experiences: the suffering man brought upon himself when he realized not only his own vulnerability and the fear of exposure when his disobedience cast him out into a hostile environment, but that he could, with forethought and malice, inflict hurt on other naked/vulnerable members of the species.
As Dr. Jordan Peterson* observes,
"...the rise of self-consciousness and its attendant realization of mortality and knowledge of Good and Evil is presented in the early chapters of Genesis (and in the vast tradition that surrounds them) as a cataclysm of cosmic magnitude...
Earthquakes, floods, poverty, cancer--we're tough enough to take on all of that. But human evil adds a whole new dimension of misery to the world. Conscious human malevolence can break the spirit even tragedy [can] not shake.
...the central problem of life—the dealing with its brute facts—is not merely what and how to sacrifice to diminish suffering, but what and how to sacrifice to diminish suffering and evil—the conscious and voluntary and vengeful source of the worst suffering."
Sacrifice and Suffering
The idea of sacrifice as a means of holding suffering in "abeyance" and ensuring a more beneficial future is an idea as old as mankind itself. The greater the sacrifice, the greater the benefit.
My wife recently took a tumble with her horse resulting in a severely broken ankle. She was in another state hundreds of miles from our home on a trip she'd planned with several of her horse riding friends. Those friends demonstrated extraordinary sacrifice in ensuring the best possible future for my wife's foot. First, they immediately cut short that day's ride. Then they transported her to the nearest emergency room...an hour away. Then they rearranged their schedules to accommodate the follow up visits with the surgeon who needed to repair the ankle. And they took her place for cooking and clean up duties so that she could rest! The benefits of their sacrifice included minimizing the suffering my wife had to endure and a deepening of the bonds of friendship.
Why must the Savior suffer?
The greatest benefit for all of mankind is to be made right, eternally given to the highest good possible: Oneness with God. The disciples would have some sense of this idea as sons of Israel whose history was replete with illustrations about the purpose and effectiveness of God-ordained sacrifice.
What they certainly did not grasp is how God himself would offer himself as the Ultimate Sacrifice to achieve the Ultimate Benefit for mankind. Nor that his resurrection put the stamp of finality that this sacrifice was eternal!
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| image by 2013 Anatoly Shumkin |
Just as suffering shapes the person (our response can leave us stronger, more patient, humbler, with deeper understanding of God's care and will, -or- it can leave us bitter, vengeful, angry, wounded) sacrifice shapes the suffering in giving it meaning and purpose in helping us reach our potential to love...like Jesus.
"Greater love has no one than this that a man lay down his life for his friends."
Now you know.
*Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules For Life, chapter 7
