Yesterday, I wrote about suffering and God. Afterward, I talked to my husband about it, and I realized that the concept was far greater than I ever imagined. I have been struggling for a really long time with a concept about allegory in Bible stories. I can understand the idea of Adam and Eve being an allegory. I can understand the idea of Noah being a flood myth. However, the one that I couldn’t take was Jesus just being an allegory. After all Jesus was a real man. Then, I started learning more and I realized that there really are lots of savior stories in many other cultures. Several men who died and then were resurrected, just like Jesus. Some of them are even historical figures. If the story of Jesus, the man, is just an allegory, then what could it possibly mean? Could my understanding be a misunderstanding? I didn’t know for certain until yesterday.
Yesterday, I understood something miraculous about God. He sees me at all the times in my life, but He also sees us at all the times of our lives. He experiences everything at once. When He decided to give us freewill, He knew that meant allowing us to suffer through pain and evil and it meant He would suffer along with us. It meant that all at once He would take on all the pain, all the evil, all the sin of the world in a single moment and He would do it because He loved us so much that He would rather give us free will than make us live like mindless robots.
I always get a little upset whenever I see people who get emotional at passion plays and they say that seeing Jesus crucified that way really touched them because the physical pain that the passion play exhibits misses the point. It isn’t being crucified that hurts, lots of men at that time were crucified. Although it was a very painful way to die, it isn’t the most painful way to die. The point of the Passion of Christ is that He felt all the pain of the world that afternoon when He died. He felt the pain of all the victims of the holocaust, all the victims of 911, all the pain of anyone who ever was murdered, all the pain of those who were killed in any war. He felt the pain and suffering of every sin we ever caused or ever will cause. It is an unimaginable amount of pain. God feels our pain all the time. Every sin, every evil act, every tear we cry, and every pain we feel, He feels it. That’s message that He wants me to share. It means so much on so many levels. We are not alone. He will not abandon us.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
