Through Christ's Enveloping Pain

What is the purpose of life?

Be still and you will know

There cannot be life without sacrifice
Nor sacrifice without pain
For it is through our pain that we see the pain of others
And through seeing the pain of others that we come to know another
And through our knowing that another is created

But I can’t be still until I know

No, you cannot be still until you are known

Such is the self-sacrificial love of the mother and father in the coming-into-being of the child
Such is Agape, the love through which we are created and sustained
The love that would give up one’s own life just to know the depths of another
And in so doing bring them to life

But how can one give up for another a life that was not first given up for them?
How can one sacrifice what was never sacrificed for them?
How can one create without themselves first being fully formed?
And who among us could ever claim to be complete creations?

Surely then, it is brokenness that is our inheritance!
And suffering our only guarantee!
What was not completed in those before us
How could it be completed in us?

Who then is to blame?
Who is responsible for our half-formed state?
Shall we not let him come forth that justice might be meted out?
Shall we not crucify such a man?

For all the horrors this world has seen!
For all its deceit, for all its death!
For the lives that were not and should have been!
For the lives that were and should not have been!
Shall we not crucify such a man?

He who would stand by in the face of it all!
Through the abuse and neglect of the child, he stands by!
In the darkness of Auschwitz, he stands by!
Shall we not crucify such a man?

Hear hear! Let us crucify such a man!
Let us break him ten thousand times!
And ten thousand beyond that!
That he may know the brokenness that is all we have ever known!

Let him come forth!
Let us drive nails through his hands and feet!
Let him be humiliated at the hands of those he has afflicted!
In recompense for all the brokenness of the world, let him suffer and die!

May hell close in around him!
May he lose all faith in the good that never was!
May his final cry be one of despair!
That he may know the depths of the pain we have suffered in this dark world!

I know what it is to be broken
For in all the brokenness of the world, I am being broken
For all you have suffered, I have suffered
For all your despair, I have despaired
But that you may finally know this truth
So be the cross

That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already, but that God could have His back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents forever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point -- and does not break.

In this indeed I approach a matter more dark and awful than it is easy to discuss; and I apologize in advance if any of my phrases fall wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which the greatest saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach. But in the terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt.

It is written, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." No; but the Lord thy God may tempt Himself; and it seems as if this was what happened in Gethsemane.

In a garden Satan tempted man: and in a garden God tempted God.

He passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror of pessimism. When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God.

And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt.

Nay (the matter grows too difficult for human speech), but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.

- G.K. Chesterton

Indeed, may his final cry be one of utter isolation and despair
That we should learn the true meaning of Emmanuel
The truth that in the heart of our brokenness is God himself
And in the heart of God, our brokenness

What then is the good news of Christ?
If not that the stain of sin has afflicted God most of all
That our alienation from God is inscribed into God himself
That the labor pains of Creation are but the pains of the Creator himself

How then can we remain apart from God?
If indeed our being apart is a part of God?
How can we remain in darkness?
Knowing that it is in our darkest night of the soul that we are most identified with Christ?

Indeed, it is brokenness that is our inheritance
And suffering our only guarantee
But what was completed in Christ
Shall it not also be completed in us?

To go willingly to the cross
To bear fully the burden of suffering
To surrender to being broken by and for this broken world
Surely, this is what it means to follow Christ

For the revelation of the cross is none other than this
That it is through being broken that we are born into wholeness
That through our wholeness the world as a whole is made whole
And that in this process we are participating with divinity itself

Still we know that the scars nonetheless remain
That forever our hands and feet will bear the mark of what pains we have endured
For healing does not erase what terrible things have come to pass
Nor does wholeness replace our brokenness
Rather it is wholeness that takes brokenness into itself
And is made all the more whole besides

Such is Agape, the love through which we are created and sustained
The love that would give up one’s own life just to know the depths of another
And in so doing bring them to life

For it is through our pain that we see the pain of others
And through seeing the pain of others that we come to know another
And through our knowing that another is created

Tell me truly then: am I known?

I Am