L.J. shares the following reflection on Sunday's reading from the Gospel according to Matthew:
Emmanuel means God is with us. And God is within us. And God is one with us. This God suffers with us.
God is with us. God is within us. God is one with us. This is the revelation of the name Emmanuel in today's Gospel reading. Still, there's a tremendous amount of violence, suffering, and evil in today's world. Jesuit priest and theologian Richard Leonard sees the evil of the world and attempts to address the fundamental spiritual question evil raises, which is where the hell is God? He wrote a book with this very title: Where the hell is God? It is a real, burning question. The massive amounts of gun violence raise the question. The Holocaust screams this question. Many see no satisfying answer, and so conclude there is no God.
Why God allows evil is a tough enough question on its own. Still, we have some very bad theology out there mucking up this question and making things worse: “God only sends tragedy to those he wants to bless.” “There’s pain and suffering in your life because God is punishing you.” “Well, I look at all the bad stuff in the world and think, either God isn’t interested or isn’t powerful enough to do anything about it.” “God made this world, so it’s all his fault and he’s a monster or he doesn’t exist.” These statements reflect illusions about God and the revelation of Jesus, Emmanuel. Therefore, Leonard sets out to dispel the illusions that obscure both a good answer and the true nature of God. As he rightly points out, these illusions alienate us from God. I want to mention three of them.
A first illusion Leonard dispels is that God is out to get us. There are a fair number of Christians who think God punishes us by sending pain and suffering our way. There is no basis for this is the Gospels. Jesus presents God as pure and tender mercy. This God doesn't punish us. Nor is this God ever angry with us. Who wants to get to know an angry, punitive God? I don’t think God is into punishment at all, for the very idea contradicts the message of the Gospel: the unmerited, nonjudgmental, and infinite love of God revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
A second illusion is that God sends us pain to test us. God does not do this. God isn’t a sadist trying to prove our faith through suffering. Some things in life are just hard, even horrendous. Now, it is true that if we suffer with God we are purified of selfishness. God can bring good out of any evil, as demonstrated in the passion and death of Jesus. This, however, is a far cry from saying God causes us pain deliberately. Such a God is not a God of grace and mercy, as Jesus affirms. God is not into pain, but life and transformation. Allowing God to transform us through our pain means we realize how God does not let evil and death have the last word. Rather, as the Risen Jesus proves, God gives life the last word.
A third illusion Leonard names is that we assume God should have created a perfect world. Since God didn’t, God is responsible for evil in the world. God doesn't create a perfect world, but we bear a great deal of responsibility for evil in the world. God cherishes our freedom and the environment in which our choices have real consequences. If God created a perfect world it would be heaven and our freedom would be meaningless. A perfect world would not be an environment for true freedom. One consequence of real freedom is that we bear a great deal of responsibility for the way the world is. Humanity has created a world in which people die of starvation and war. We cannot blame God for evil. God permits evil, but doesn’t cause it. We cause a lot of it. This freedom may be at least part of the reason why God has created a less-then-perfect world. God cherishes our freedom because God is into love, and love requires free choice. Only an imperfect world allows for a real freedom to choose love.
Dispelling these illusions leaves us to focus on the essence of the Gospel: God is with us, within us, and one with us. In light of this, a great truth of the Incarnation, of Emmanuel, is that God suffers with us because God is with us, within us, one with us. What happens to me happens to God. Where the hell is God? Here and now, God is within me, of course! Lest we get lost in theological debate, though, the Gospel doesn't spend much time answering a theological problem but shows us a way of transformation. The Gospel is a way of transforming our pain by letting go of self – in imitation of God – and thereby sharing in God's own life. Such is our happiness. Such is a good response to the question, "where the hell is God"?