A Bizarre Pact
I still don’t get it. Why it is that way. And it was a mutual decision, not an agreeable one nor welcome, but mutual – a bizarre pact to take on the blackness of the world. In one staggering and dramatic act God delivers a message: that his love is so great he allows only one with the capacity to embrace all that rips humankind from his heart. The energy that causes immutable separation and suffering He draws into a heart of purity, a cauldron of cleansing, where it radically transforms. God’s son, Jesus, chose to receive this burden on an altar of crucifixion. It wasn’t a forced decision.
But the Christian story of a God who allows his own son, an innocent and beloved son, sacrificed on a cruel pillar of execution in atonement for the sins of humankind, well, this just seems barbaric. The ancient markers meant as readily understood symbols for that time – the practice of sacrifice (animal) as expiation for wrong doing was common to Judaic practice although not exclusive to the religion or culture. An asset of value given over to destruction in a symbolic gesture of repentance – a burning up of wrongs that separate the atoner from God – was a purification rite of sorts.
But that was back then; in today’s age sacrifice to appease a bent-out-of-shape God is hardly relatable. We may even chuckle at the black and white movies our grand-parents enjoyed in an earlier age, the ones depicting stories of ancient tribal practices where young virgins get tossed (likely unwilling) into fiery volcanoes to satisfy the blood lust of an angry and vengeful god. The exchange meant to assure favorable conditions like good weather for the crops so the rest of the tribe ate. Dissuading the wrath of gods with such archaic drama no longer speaks to modern, educated and sophisticated minds; the paying off or hedging of spiritual bets no longer believable.
A Bizarre Defiance Against Cosmic Authority
No more understandable was the other day when sitting in a friend’s living room. It was a bible study and we were listening to a tape by Dr. R.C. Sproul on the seemingly contradictory subject of God’s holiness and justice. In his writing Dr. R.C. Sproul rather strongly cites the premise for God’s justice: The slightest sin is an act of defiance against cosmic authority. It is a revolutionary act, a rebellious act where we are setting ourselves in opposition to the One to whom we owe everything.
If Dr. R.C. Sproul is right we, as humans, every day fail God, ourselves, each other and our world. In a million different ways we commit revolutionary acts against the Creator through displays of apathy, despair, envy, greed, hate, indifference, injustice, jealousy, laziness, lust, malice, misogyny, narcissism, neglect, prejudice, racism, spite, and wrath. Have I missed anything? It isn’t difficult to see that God has a right to anger; being sorry, making compensation and setting our relationship right is, perhaps not so archaic after all.
A Bizarre Sum
Yet, a loving God and an angry God is hard to sum. 
Even less is a beloved son volunteering as the whipping boy for humankind. God’s frustration vented on the nearest and dearest thing to him, Jesus bears the agony of a father’s despair in his children: “I’ve given you everything and look how you treat me.” The cross misunderstood is a vengeful, hateful act, an exploding of uncontrollable wrath and irascible anger against an innocent. Dr. R.C. Sproul best describes the dichotomy:
“The cross was at once the most horrible and the most beautiful example of God’s wrath. It was the most just and the most gracious act in history. God would have been more than unjust; He would have been diabolical to punish Jesus if Jesus had not first willingly taken upon Himself the sins of the world.”*
A long pause ensued in our bible study discussion after the reading of this last exert. Of those gathered some looked into their laps, others gazed sightless ahead clearly their thoughts turned in; occasionally someone stumbled to offer a few halting words in a vain attempt to articulate the incomprehensible. But for the most part rendered speechless by the magnitude; a choice so enormous that no words could contain.
The Bizarre Story that Bridges
To choose the brutality and degradation of death on a cross is mind numbing. A gentler option of fast acting poison – a small sip from a cup and then oblivion – would make for a quick death with far less suffering. It is in the suffering, however, wherein lies the power of the message, not in the lack thereof. Suffering is humanely understood in that it is conditional on being alive. It is in the raising high on an altar of pain where hope is radically juxtaposed, not in some obscure and gentle death. A radical message requires a radical symbol. And the most profound, incomprehensible and transforming symbol that ever exists is Jesus’ violent death on a cross.
In Jesus God breaks away his heart and makes it into a man. In Jesus humankind meets God face-to-face in a way that is flesh and blood real, relatable real, like you and me real.
As self-centered humans still residing in the dark ages of spiritual immaturity we tend only to understand things when we feel them and see them in our terms. So a rejected and suffering God with a human face – the face of Jesus – this we can actually relate to.
Jesus because he is not separate from God is the only one with the capacity to bridge the abyss that divides humankind from Love. And the pillars that brace the bridge is Jesus on the cross. Withstanding the enormous weight and burden of the world’s broken state he upholds the pathway back to God’s heart. Jesus is the story that bridges.
Maybe it is this way because we won’t understand what God is trying to say any other way.
But I still don’t get it.
*The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproule. Wheaton, IL: Tyndall House 1998, 121.