The idea that God needs our pain to make us pure is more than a bit sadistic. Christianity is here dangerously close to the bloodthirsty god Huitzilopochtli that demanded human sacrifices in exchange for victory and prosperity for the Aztec people.
A bloodthirsty god-image stands behind all "this is for your own good" theology (the writings of Alice Miller and Eugen Drewermann have opened my eyes to this twisted theology). Such theology is similar to a kind of thinking that is actually characteristic of abused children.
Abused children tend to internalize their abuse by blaming themselves and excusing the abuser. Sadly, a lot of theology has this same effect in a spiritual sense by teaching that pain is the punishment for our sins and the means by which God purifies us from evil. Such an idea is really no better than the twisted logic of the abused child that says, "Daddy beats me because I am bad."
Although I am more than a bit suspicious of the idea that suffering makes us pure I also see some therapeutic value in it. In a positive sense suffering actually motivates the quest to understand life. If I can make some sense out of what I am going through then the pain becomes more bearable.
Maybe the belief that suffering can purify us is a way that we attempt to regain power in a situation that terrifies us because it reveals our powerlessness. If I can't control the situation then at least I can maintain my psychological mastery by figuring out what is happening and possibly even why it is happening.
On a theological level I see an even deeper link between pain and purity in the Exodus story of the liberation of Israel from imperial oppression in Egypt. Exodus 2.23-25 says that "The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them."
In this text we see the power of voiced pain to get God's attention. It is not the shout of the victor but the cry of the victim that elicits a response from Yahweh. Scripture gives a loud voice to human misery because our pain attracts God's presence to our lives. I don't think that God needs suffering to make us pure but our pain is like a magnet to the divine power. Ironically, that which most exposes our weakness is the very thing that attracts God to us!
If You're Not Living on the Edge You're Taking Up Too Much Space
2 comments:
I like what you are saying. Pain is the result of sin. I believe God can make order or make sense out of our pain but God does not order pain for us.
God is far to complex to use such a simple tool, pain or the fear of it. In the perfect eternity that proceeded us what did God use to teach and instruct His children? There was no sin so there was no pain. God gets blamed in a lot of our pathological thinking.
Pain. He makes order OUT of it, not orders it on us.
Good point Greg. Pain is a simple tool and obviously not even that effective or there would be more really holy people in the world! But then human beings are more complicated than Pavlov's dogs.
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