Over the past few years, I’ve become more and more convinced that love is the foundation of all reality. Love is the deepest truth about God, about creation, about humans. So where is the God of love when people are suffering?
Of course, our lived experience often seems to contradict any idea that “all we need is love” or “love lifts us up where we belong.” Our lived experience even seems to contradict the idea that “God is love.” This present moment of coronavirus has included both heroic and ordinary stories of love, but it has also included the horrible reality of divorce rates that skyrocketed as soon as Wuhan province in China opened its doors, rising numbers of calls to domestic abuse hotlines, and an ever-increasing narrative of suffering and death due to COVID-19.
God and Suffering
Where is the God of love when so many human beings are suffering?
I certainly haven’t stumbled upon some perfect answer to this question, but in today’s podcast, I do talk about how Jesus helps us understand a God of both love and suffering. I talked last week about how distraction, fear, and injustice keep us from living in love. This week I’m talking about how voluntary self-sacrifice motivated by love allows us to participate in love.
Suffering Isn’t the Worst Thing
The bottom line is that suffering isn’t the worst thing. Separation from love is the worst thing. Our typical daily lives—filled with distraction, fear, and injustice—often keep us separated from love. This disruption in our daily lives is an invitation to connect to love.
(To hear more on these ideas, listen here, and to get future episodes, subscribe to the Love is Stronger Than Fear podcast.)
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PODCAST SHOW NOTES
- Casey Cep in the New Yorker on the gift of church: https://www.newyorker.com/news/on-religion/the-gospel-in-a-time-of-social-distancing
- NT Wright in TIME: https://time.com/5808495/coronavirus-christianity/
- NYT on politician turned Jesuit: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/opinion/sunday/cyrus-habib-jesuit.html
- CS Lewis quote: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/221026-a-man-s-physical-hunger-does-not-prove-that-man-will
- Bloomberg Article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-31/divorces-spike-in-china-after-coronavirus-quarantines
- Philippians 2:1-10
- Romans 5:8
- John 3:16
- From White Picket Fences:
“The privilege of whiteness and wealth can become a wall against the privilege of being human, loved not for status or performance but simply loved, and able to give love in return not because of obligation but in grateful response to an invitation. I have been given much that I do not deserve, and my very real social privilege has cut me off from others as much as it has also made my life comfortable. But social privilege is not the end of my story. The real privilege of my life has come in learning what it means to love others, that love involves suffering and sacrifice and sleepless nights and tears and heartache and great gifts. It makes sense to talk about privilege in terms of access to private clubs and schools and bank loans and preferential treatment by authorities. It makes sense to expose the injustices of privilege and call for them to be rectified. But there is also the privilege of cleaning the wounds of people you love, of participating in healing and new life, of becoming vulnerable and needy and receiving love and care. There is another type of privilege, privilege that connects instead of divides, that shimmers through the air like a link of light, available if only we stop counting the coins and look up.”
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Want to read more? Here are some suggestions:
- Coronavirus, Suffering, and Two Questions About God
- Reflections on Suffering… and Love
- COVID-19, Privilege, and What Keeps Us from Living in Love {Ep 105}
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