******
His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answered, "Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him."
This was the line that most struck me in this passage from John. Here and in other places in the gospels, Jesus dismisses the idea that bad things happen to people as a punishment from God for sin.
This stuff about suffering and why it happens made me think of an article I'd just read about suffering and the suffering/death of Jesus. The article explores the contradiction between the compassionate loving God Jesus talks of in the gospels (Abba) and the idea that God's plan was for Jesus to suffer and die for our sins.
The author of the article thinks the disciples and later theologians (Augustine and Anselm) constructed the idea of Jesus suffering as a debt payment for sin as a way to understand why the "messiah" had met such a horrible end.
Then he presents an alternative theory ... the whole purpose of creation is for the Incarnation, God’s sharing of life and love in a unique and definitive way. God becoming human is not an afterthought, an event to make up for Original Sin and human sinfulness. Incarnation is God’s first thought, the original design for all creation. The purpose of Jesus’ life is the fulfillment of the whole creative process, of God’s eternal longing to become human. Theologians call this the “primacy of the Incarnation.”
It's not a new theory. He says it's backed up in John’s Gospel and in the letters to the Colossians and the Ephesians and is promoted by a Franciscan scholor, John Duns Scotus (1265/66-1308).
The ideas in this article - that God does not desire suffering but works to overcome it. - seem supported by what Jesus says and does (the healing) in this passage from John's gospel.
Duns Scotus -
4 comments:
Thanks Crystal.
I think we're all getting slower here. For a while I worried about it. There doesn't seem as much enthusiasm for commenting as before. But this might be jsutwhere we are in our lievs outside of here.
It amy also be that we are egtting to know one anotehr so don't feel the urgency of proving ourselves. And that is a good thing.
And then there's Meredith's point about meditation. If we really want to take up our sense of the passage and other's thoughts into our meditations we need more time and space. Deitrich Bonhoeffer would take one small passage and stay with it for an entire week. we amy need to talsk at some point about needs and how thsi bible study fits with our lives.
So I'm glad you reposted.
What really struck me about you original post was that you and I both approach this passage a people living with disability. As people who have met otehr people's responses to our disability. Jesus' words are hopeful here in ways that maybe they aren't for others.
And the idea this passage was written while early Chrsitians struggled trying to understand why Jesus had to die was really new to me. I'm gald you pointed that out.
Crystal, you wrote:
"The ideas in this article - that God does not desire suffering but works to overcome it. - seem supported by what Jesus says and does (the healing) in this passage from John's gospel."
Absolutely.
Larry
Crystal,
Thank you for re-posting this. I have been deeply considering your thoughtful comments here. I have always been confused about sin, punishment, and compassion. They seem like conflicting notions to me. You bring some clarity to this quagmire with the article you shared, and the quote from it. "God’s sharing of life and love in a unique and definitive way" rings so clearly in my truth. Compassion would be that we feel what another feels, even in their suffering, and that we bring loving kindness to any situation in which suffering is present. This is sharing our life and love in a difinitive way.
Thank you, Friend.
Post a Comment