4 But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us 5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved. [Ephesians 2:4-5, NRSV]
Beautiful Jesus with Child
Christianity has been around for two millennia. In his book titled “Narratives of a Vulnerable God: Christ, Theology, and Scriptures”, William C. Placher spotlights and laments a pervasive neglect of the God who is “vulnerable”.
In any part of the world, where Christianity has been a dominant religious influence, people assume that they know what the word “God” means. Whether or not they believe in God, whether or not they even find the notion of God attractive at all, they do have some idea of who “God” is and what the term “God” refers to. They all tend to center their idea of God on power. God has the power to do this, that and the other, things which humans cannot do. To say “God” is to refer to an all-powerful, omnipotent, Being – the One who is in charge of everything, in heaven and on earth, the entire universe.
As people take their idea of God for granted, they fixate on some equations:
- God is “king”, but a king without a consultative body like a parliament, and so an absolute monarch;
- God is “father”, but old-fashioned and conservative, this father is a domineering patriarch;
- God is “the Lord”, but demanding and non-negotiable, He places his subjects under obedient servitude.
Ideas such as these, in which God’s power is taken for granted, continue to underline even the classical conundrums posed against “God”:
- If God is all-powerful, why is there evil and suffering in the world?
- If God is all-powerful, how can human beings have any freedom?
- If God is all-powerful, why do good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people?
- If God is all-powerful, why did He have to make His Son die on the cross like that?
The problem, really, is a colossal failure in reading the Christian Bible properly. It is so easy to buy into the idea of “power” because power is attractive and comes with an easy solution for “salvation” from all kinds of woes, especially deep human sufferings and calamities and, finally, death and eternal doom. Yes, God is powerful, and the element of power runs through the entire Bible. But, the Christian gospel neither starts its understanding, nor pins its hope, on a God of secular power. It starts from a very different place, offering from the outset a narrative of God whom we encounter, first and foremost, as love. The question is: Why do humanity, and worse Christians, have apparent great difficulties in comprehending the God of love, preferring to equate God only with power?
John’s first epistle puts it in such a way that is as simple as it is troubling:
- He who does not love does not know God; for God is love [I John 4:18].
Most apparent perhaps in family life, the one who loves willingly risks being vulnerable and places oneself on a path dotted with suffering. God, who is love, is truly vulnerable in love and vulnerable to great suffering. We see this in God’s self-revelation, Jesus Christ. In the biblical stories, Jesus comes across as one who has stunning power that can only come from heaven and yet, he suffers pain and humiliation in extreme powerlessness.
- From Calvary to Bethlehem, Jesus Christ was kept out, first with “no room for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7) and born in a manger. As an adult preaching the kingdom of God, he wanders with nowhere to lay his head (Luke 9:58). Like a servant, he washes the feet of his disciples (John 13:5). Arrested, locked up, spat at, slapped, crowned with thorns, interrogated, stripped, mocked, put through severe physical torture, pain and humiliation, paraded before a whipped up mob, pronounced a blasphemer, condemned to death by the religious authorities in connivance with the political power of the day, carried his cross to Calvary, and crucified outside the city-gate, like a common criminal together with other criminals (Mark 15; Matthew 27; Luke 23; John 19). The “powerful” King of kings is as Isaiah had foretold, so tortured and disfigured, “despised and rejected by others, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3).
And yet, just this “powerless” Jesus is proclaimed in the Gospels as the human face of God. He is not merely a messenger of God or a prophet, but God’s own self-revelation to humankind. The Spirit of God has descended into him and stayed in him during his baptism at the River Jordan (Mark 1:10), and he so declared it at the beginning of his Galilean ministry in the synagogue: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me” (Luke 4:18).
The point in all this is, if God becomes truly human in just this way, then the Gospels are telling us something about how we might seek and live out our true humanity:
- “not in quests of power and wealth and fame but in service, solidarity with the despised and rejected, and the willingness to be vulnerable in love.”
Christians, drawn as we must all be to a theology that begins with Jesus Christ whom we encounter in the Gospels, are therefore expected to care most about the outcasts and the suffering people of the world. We are supposed to be the most suspicious of raw power with its inevitable entourage of status, prestige and privileges, both inside the Church where we presume God is present as in the outside world which we in the Church are so brazen as to label “secular” suggesting that it is irreligious and essentially without God. It is a manifestation of the fallen humanity whenever and wherever we see anyone with vested power abuses that power and control, through the simple expedience of rules and laws and administrative control, to elevate oneself and to put others down. In the Catholic Church, the harsh and damning reality is: he who has the power to consecrate has all the powers! There lies the immense sin-trap and Pope Francis never tires of exposing it, to the chagrin of other power-ranked churchmen who do not fancy his humble style of governance.
Writing from her feminist perspective, Elizabeth A. Johnson reminds us all that the liberating dynamic initiated by Jesus the Christ and bequeathed to the Church community he left behind – “do this in memory of me”; “I have given you an example, you too must do the same to one other”; “love one another as I have loved you” – has been consistently twisted into justification for privileged status, superiority and domination. “Thus coopted, the powerful symbol of the liberating Christ lost its subversive, redemptive significance.”
Today, God has raised another prophet, Pope Francis, to try and put things right. Quite a few have emailed us, and more have spoken directly with us, voicing their concern over the persistent challenges, from some “conservative” quarters of the Church, against the words and actions of the current Roman Pontiff. Repeatedly, to reduce their confusion, we have suggested that they focus on the deeper reality in what Pope Francis is doing. Be consoled, and notice how closely, in contrast to his critics, Pope Francis tries to imitate the simple, down-to-earth, humble and vulnerable Jesus his Lord portrayed in the Gospels. For instance, by:-
- Focusing on the liberating Christ of the Gospels, and not the harsh image of him in the books of strict doctrines and punishing laws.
- Setting people free to become the best human persons they possibly can as children of the God of love.
- Loving, accompanying and walking the difficult journey with the people instead of issuing negative judgments on them all the time.
- Reforming the domineering and corrupt structures in the Church and calling for repentance and change on the part of the ordained and consecrated leaders.
- Insisting on a Church of the Poor and for the Poor.
- Insisting on living a simple and humble existence, washing the feet of the “little” and marginalized ones.
- Calling on Christians, beginning with the ordained, to humble service, upon the knowledge that there is no humility without humiliation.
- Accepting a mission of compassion, mercy and forgiveness, a mission in vulnerable Christian love..
Copyright © Dr. Jeffrey & Angie Goh, January 2022. All rights reserved.
You are most welcome to respond to this post. Email your comments to jeffangiegoh@gmail.com. You can also be dialogue partners in this Ephphatha Coffee-Corner Ministry by sending us questions for discussion.