The Jagged Journey. Barry Lee Callen

when evil events are unstopped. But the Christian should follow the Master who said he did not come to destroy but to fulfill his Jewish tradition. In fulfilling it, he often corrected its common teaching traditions, especially by turning law into a love focus. Jesus ended the sacrificing and suffering of animals by placing God on the altar once and for all! The great love of God was willing to suffer. God self-sacrificed on our behalf! That’s the very heart of Christian faith. True and undeserved love redeems our lives and sets us on the jagged journey of loving others.

      Admittedly, it’s hard to get away from the focus on divine power. Much Christian theology over the centuries has been formed while the church was existing as a prominent center of power in various worldly empires. It’s been observed that a “prestigious” church, Christianity as the official religion of an empire, can hardly afford to be known as representative of a crucified God! Women theologians have rightly told us recently that for much too long the church has highlighted the power manner of God’s working, reflecting an excessively male reading of the Bible and an unbalanced masculine way of being in the world.

      Could it be that, in our day when the church is being reduced to much less prominence in secularized societies, she could rediscover her true self? If so, a power focus would give way to the more biblical love focus. The Bible would stop being read as God coercively marching in triumph over all enemies and conquering all suffering and evil by mighty power, even by pre-planning all events. It would be read as intended, God in Christ reaching in love to make possible the redemption of all the lost, Christ through his Spirit working through suffering in the midst of our suffering to bring good out of evil.

      If we read the Bible through the eyes of God’s love, not through a dominance of God’s power and judgment, the TULIP theological metaphor of Calvin yields to the ROSE of Wesley. We then come to better understand why evil manages to happen even in God’s world. We come to see more clearly that those who gain new life in Christ, through the graciousness of the Father’s love, are called to join in the ministry of suffering and self-sacrificing love. When in pain ourselves or seeing a great injustice crippling others, we come to be less inclined to place blame on the victim (“you’re getting what you deserve”) or blame God for allowing it in the first place when the power was available to force justice.

      We also should note the celebrated book When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Rabbi Kushner deals with suffering in his family and among the many to whom he had ministered over the years. He comes to some radical conclusions, or are they just so different from how people often think that we judge them radical? He certainly champions the love focus of God, which for him leads to some dramatic conclusions.

      “Our being human [by God’s design] leaves us free to hurt each other, and God can’t stop us without taking away the freedom that makes us human.” So, God couldn’t stop Hitler from his monstrous evil. “God wants justice and fairness but can’t always arrange for them.” Is God the source of evil happenings? Absolutely not! “God is as outraged as we are.” “The God I believe in does not send us the problem; He gives us the strength to cope with the problem.” The God who “neither causes nor prevents tragedies helps by inspiring people to help.”22 It’s the way love works.

      Again, there are two options before us for reading the workings of God. I choose the ROSE-like one, God the compassionate lover over God the judgmental wielder of power. Why? Because in Christ we have received God’s own self-revelation. God works in the way most consistent with the divine nature and intent, and both are seen hanging on the cross of Jesus.

      But, even when this understanding is firmly in place, there may be exceptions, unanswered questions, and occasions when the power option prevails. Rabbi Kushner may be essentially right and yet somewhat wrong when insisting that God “can’t” act forcefully against evil. In fact, the Bible records numerous examples of God doing just that. These examples are real if only the exceptions to God’s preferred way of working.

      Pivot Points and Truth Anchors

      People commonly see what appears to be the Bible’s mixed messages about the causes of suffering and the related action or inaction of God. Some people can’t tolerate anything mixed coming from the Bible and choose one aspect of the whole to be the final and only biblical answer. This reaction is very human, and yet it also is very unfair to the Bible, which sees

      The Bible sees the whole of life, reports the whole, and gives sure anchors to allow safe passage through the maze.

      the whole picture, reports the whole, and in the midst of it all gives a few sure anchors to allow safe passage through the maze. Here are the orienting, dependable, and clearly biblical anchors of truth.

      Anchor #1. Love, Not Coercion.

      What about all the grotesque and dehumanizing suffering we see or at least hear of constantly? The answer isn’t easy for believers in a God who is believed to be all good and all-powerful. It lies somewhere on the line connecting “intends” and “allows.” The Sovereign of all is also the Lover of all who surely intends only good for all. Then why does any awful suffering ever exist?

      We know this much from the Bible. God is a risking Lover who allows suffering by giving freedom of choice to us humans. This is a love gift that necessarily includes the possibility of its misuse, sin. God never intends sin or suffering. It comes from our choosing not to love in response to God’s love. The divine intention is that humans freely choose a loving relationship with God and each other. Since that obviously has gone sour by human choice, God reacts in love while allowing the negative results of our wrong choices to play out.

      The major reaction of God, however, is to choose in Christ to enter into the arena of our suffering in order to share the suffering and work to bring good out of the evil we have created. In this “incarnating” process, God never gives up sovereign control of the creation. Nothing in the creation can ultimately frustrate what God intends. In the meantime, however, we creatures have much to say about how our history goes. It often goes badly, bringing suffering even to the innocent, even to God. That’s how the biblical story goes.

      What God allows includes the awful cross of Jesus, with something about that cross needing to be made clear. It’s a dramatic picture of the bleeding heart and reaching love of God the Father. “The Cross was no more the will of God than any other brutal murder. It was the work of wicked men.”23 Christians often have insisted that God planned the death of the Son all along, even that the death was necessary for the forgiveness of our sins—an extension of the tradition of animal sacrifice. On biblical grounds, I argue otherwise.

      Our well-being and loving relationship with God have been God’s plan all along. God’s reaching love has infused that plan. Self-giving sacrifice has been at the heart of God’s very identity from the eternities. Our sin forced its activation in Christ on our behalf. In that sense, the cross was “planned,” but only in that sense. The cross was a heavy price for God to pay for our sins. It was the bleeding heart of the divine dripping healing and forgiveness on our broken souls.

      Here’s what is shown so dramatically on that cross of Jesus. Love does not coerce. The power of God is to be seen through the lens of God’s love. God allows evil because God’s nature is love. Love instructs, persuades, and disciplines, but coerces only as a last resort. One might say that evil cannot be forcibly stopped without violating the free choice of humans—which would make us marionettes and not potential love partners with God. This necessity of allowing our free choices is not to be seen as a “limitation” of God’s power; it’s merely an acknowledgment of who God really and always is.

      Anchor #2. Divine Patience.

      Note this brief dialogue I once created between God and the whale over how best to handle the wayward Jonah:

      God: “There’s a guy with an assignment from me who hasn’t the stomach for it. He’s being sent to Nineveh and choosing selfishly to head in the wrong direction. I want your help.”

      Wally (the whale): “I say, why don’t you smack him in the face and make him pay attention without bothering me? You’re the biggest thing in the whole creation, not me!”

      God: “Sorry, Wally, but I’ve decided you’re