GOOD FRIDAY 30 March 2018 Where Is God? Introduction Theodicy Grant Bullen In the savagery, destruction and total misery of civil conflict in Syria where is God? In the lonely horror of an abused child where is God? When my life falls apart in sickness, or ageing or the suffering of my loved ones where is God? The theological word for this questioning is theodicy if God is all-powerful and all-loving, how can there be so much pain and suffering in the world and how come evil always seems to win? Where is God and what is he doing? It s a damn good question Jürgen Moltmann Biography Jürgen Moltmann, one of the greatest Christian theologians of the 20 th century 1, was born in Hamburg in 1926. Sent to the front as an 18-year-old in the last days of WW2 he simply dropped his rifle and walked until he found a British soldier and surrendered. The next four years were spent in various POW camps. In the first of these, the guards posted graphic photos of Auschwitz and Buchenwald confronting the prisoners with the horrors perpetrated by their nation. Where was God and what was he doing? Moltmann wished he d died rather than live to face what his people had done. It was in these POW years that he committed himself to Christian faith. He was 22 when he returned to his flattened home of Hamburg; indeed, the whole country was in ruins. But Moltmann during those 4 years of internment had found hope in a new beginning. He was excited about the rebirth of German Christianity, dreaming of a new and different church, a church that would rise from the ashes of deep suffering. But to his bitter disappointment, he found a church busily rebuilding on an unchanged pre-war model in a desperate attempt to forget and deny the horrors, done and experienced, in the war. A church pretending that nothing had happened. 1 He s still writing today. 1
Ken Bullen returning from war Ken Bullen, my father, was sent to war as an 18-year-old and he too returned home 4 years later a shattered man. He had terrible physical injuries but the lasting damage was what we d now call PTSD. He d been hospitalised several times through his service years with shell shock patchedup and sent back to fight a cycle that ended with a direct hit on his gun turret off the coast of New Guinea in 1944. Where was God and what was he doing? With great courage he and Mum built a life of ordinary stability together managing/containing the monster of darkness he carried within. He smoked heavily and went out to the shed alone a lot and managed it somehow until his early death at 53 a heart that couldn t beat anymore. Working long hours for the church was one of Dad s ways of coping. Was he hoping for healing in faith? I don t know. What I do know is that church, like society, never talked about the war apart from the annual romanticised sentimentality of ANZAC Day. It was like it had never happened all that horror all that death and violence. Outside the immediate family no one knew what dad was carrying and even we were never honest about it. And there were thousands of Australian homes sharing the same secret as ours. Jürgen Moltmann Theology Back in post-war Germany, Jürgen Moltmann wouldn t accept a church in denial, and he began work on a theology that would speak honestly of the war experience. He was one of many Christian and Jewish theologians who addressed the question of theodicy as the critical issue of faith. In the darkness of WW2 Where was God and what was he doing? Moltmann said God is on trial God must give an answer to the suffering and to the overwhelming power of evil. God must give an answer And then there was the matter of the future of the earth. Was humanity destined to ever-increasing cycles of violence and death? World War 1 World War 2 and then Korea Was this now how it would always be? 2
In 1975 Moltmann wrote a book titled The Crucified God mind-splittingly difficult for someone like me to read complex in its exploration of the nature of the Holy Trinity and yet his argument is simple. On Good Friday, it s God who s crucified! Christian doctrine had traditionally said that God was impassible you may remember it from teenage catechism classes that God is above all emotion God does not feel pain or suffering or any involuntary passion. But Moltmann said, If God cannot suffer, God cannot love. In the suffering of the Son, the pain of the Father finds its voice. On the day of crucifixion, God is not a passive observer the Father doesn t watch-on as the Son is tortured and killed. If Christ Jesus is one with the Father, then God the Father must be one with the Son in this most terrible experience of rejection, suffering and death on a cross. The God we meet in and through Jesus is a crucified God. We say that Jesus on the cross is representing all humanity you and me. This also is true that he also represents the Father on the cross. We re all up there! God, Jesus, us All life is pinned on that cross. We say that because God is God, he does have the power to exempt himself/herself from this so God chooses the cross not for this one man, Jesus of Nazareth, but for himself. But because God s essential nature is self-offering love, the choice is academic where else could love put God? God declares himself as a co-sufferer with humanity. It is an act of solidarity and compassion. It s not merely sympathy for our plight it s participation God s in it with us. It s the Christian answer to the question of theodicy Where is God when darkness envelopes us? God is actively in the middle of the pain with us. What is God doing in the darkness? In the midst of suffering God is active, bringing about a new creation a new beginning for all things all people. 2 Now, that s not provable indeed it sounds outrageous foolishness Paul calls it (1 Corinthians 1.18-25) but that s the story the Christian faith tells. 2 The theological word is redemption. 3
Personal What difference does it make to believe in a Crucified God? I can only respond to that question by personal testimony When suffering comes to my life, as it always has and always will, I never feel abandoned. No matter what loneliness I might experience, God is with me not as an impassive spectator, not as a sympathetic onlooker, not as a magic fix but with me in it. And as a matter of faith, I trust that the suffering can lead to deeper freedom and new life if I open myself to it. The fact that I often can t see how or when or even what doesn t matter. Built into the experience of pain and darkness, is the liberating life-bringing process that cannot be denied God at work. To believe in a Crucified God may well be foolishness and if it is I ll live as that sort of fool. All Creation Jürgen Moltmann would urge but that s not enough there s more For the Christ-story is not about individual salvation it s about the coming of a new creation. Paul says, the whole creation groans in travail, yearning for freedom 3 The Cross is God the Creator entering the world s pain and suffering confronting the powers of violence, injustice, cruelty and even death itself saying, I will not sit idly by watching you destroy this creation that I love. You will NOT do this. The Cross is the creating sustaining Spirit of all Life entering the realm of pain and darkness, in order to transform it from the inside so that all people indeed all creation may be free. Free to live as a new creation where love rules and even death will one day, be no more. 3 Romans 8.22 4
Conclusion Where is God? Good Friday says, Look and see! 5