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“I don’t think that’s true,” my 10-year-old daughter said, “I don’t think God gets mad at people.”
My girl was describing to me something she heard about God. Her inquisitive brain always warms my heart, and I love the conversations we get to have about God. In the moment I received my faith (or constructed it) I also began deconstructing my faith. Because to someone like me, who finds comfort and identity in the questioning and learning, deconstructing and reconstructing faith is a constant, real-time cycle of belief. But there are big moments of deconstruction, and J hits on it in her honest reflection. As we move into holy week, there is so much to contemplate about the dying of Christ, and then the coming to life of Christ on Easter Sunday. My big question is: how can I understand the death of Christ when I no longer believe in the wrath of God? I’ve done my fair share of studying atonement theories. I know that I was taught penal substitutionary atonement (PSA) growing up, though I doubt the leaders of my Pentecostal church knew it was called that. I read R.C. Sproul and several other reformed theologians. I had constant conversations at my college cafeteria table about theology and atonement. I had to turn in journaling assignments to one of my writing profs and I was always blabbing on about theology. He stopped me one day and asked if I considered going to divinity school. I landed somewhere near TULIP, but more like TUIP, because the limited atonement piece bothered me (but the total depravity didn’t?). Even with the genuinely horrible people leading our nation, and the depravation of humanity coming to light in the Epstein Files, I still reject God as a wrathful being. But I don’t really know how to reconcile it all. I think these people deserve punishment. But I also firmly believe that justice and violence are never the same. Jesus died in one of the most inhumane and unjust ways. And if he didn’t die to appease God’s wrath, why did he have to die? Maybe he was crucified as a way of showing victory over the powers of evil and death (Christus Victor atonement theory) or maybe Jesus was killed by human wrath and shows us just now nonviolent God will be in the face of violence (Non-Violent atonement). Many argue that when Jesus says, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do,” it’s proof of the need for atonement. But there’s also the other side of that: “In each Gospel we discover that God didn’t need the cross in order to forgive. The truth of God’s “grace upon grace” is that God forgives sinners, tax collectors, and cowardly disciples, in other words, everyone, before Jesus even went to the cross. —Adam Erickson, The Nonviolent Atonement: God’s Grace Upon Grace And Christ’s forgiveness was so palpable with his disciples. As I’ve said before: Judas’ presence at the Last Supper tells us that even those who betray God are welcome at God’s table. It’s the inclusiveness I cannot get over. While agonizing in the pain and suffering he’s in the middle of enduring, Jesus transfers identity and creates a new family dynamic with two sentences: Woman here is your son. And here is your mother. (John 19:26-27) If Christ is a reflection of God, this moment feels miraculous. Christ can no longer take care of Mary economically. He cannot be there for her. There is another who can take over his protector, provider, and familial role. Another who can love her well. So the family expands. Dear woman, here is your son. He can be for you what I cannot. And here is your mother. As Christ offers a new mother-child relationship to his earthly mother, maybe this is also a greater reflection of what he came to do. He makes a way for his spiritual mother, the Holy Spirit. But I tell you I am going to do what is best for you. This is why I am going away. The Holy Spirit cannot come to help you until I leave. But after I am gone, I will send the Spirit to you. (John 16:7) Franciscan school of thought says about the cross, “Jesus was not changing God’s mind about us; he was changing our minds about God.” What if we saw Jesus as midwife. Dear Mother God, here are your sons and daughters. Daughters and sons, here is your Mother. You belong to each other.
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 Clouds & FireAnd the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night. The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people. … Then the angel of God who was going before the host of Israel moved and went behind them, and the pillar of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them, coming between the host of Egypt and the host of Israel. And there was the cloud and the darkness. And it lit up the night without one coming near the other all night.
—Exodus 13:21-22; 14:19-20 It has been rare for me not to know where my next meal would come from or if it would come. Even so, those moments stay with me. They—along with the memories of annoyed and judgy faces in the grocery store as I pulled out my WIC vouchers, counting every dollar and saving every quarter, and a meticulous envelope system—are in the past. But the past is not easily forgotten. And in some ways, I hope it never is; it keeps me grounded. I don’t judge my neighbor for getting her nails done even if she can’t keep the rest of her life together. I give more generously because I know what it is like to not have what you need, let alone what you want. But it also has a way of springing up unexpectedly. I often wonder: what can I do now to never be back there again? Planning and prepping with hell-bent focus that stresses me to exhaustion some days. What are we supposed to do with a past always before us like a cloud? I started getting mammograms in my late 30s because of my family’s history of breast cancer. Prevention has increased since then: every other day I take a pill called Tamoxifen that reduces estrogen in my body. I’m not sure I’ll ever know if I’m in perimenopause, or if I’m experiencing the symptoms because of my medicine. Recently, I felt a lump on my breast. A physical examination, two ultrasounds, and a diagnostic mammogram later, I can take a deep breath knowing I don’t have cancer … yet. I thought I’d feel more relief. I did feel some. But I also felt the weight of my future. I often wonder: will it always be this way? Waiting with trepidation to see if my high probability turns into reality. Wondering what decisions I’ll make one day about mastectomies, reconstructive surgeries, and care. Wondering how I’ll keep showing up for the people who depend on me. What are we supposed to do with a future always before us like fire? Two days ago, I broke down. The cloud of my past and the fire of my future would not depart from me. I felt I was wandering aimlessly. There were days not too long ago where I believed with all my heart that everything happened for a reason, and God ordained it all. There were days I argued and persuaded others on that perspective. But like my youth, it too has passed, and now I find myself between the ancient story of the people of God and my present life that feels so far from those people. So far from the ways I used to identify with them. So far from the comfort I had in having the answers I swore their stories gave me. And yet, a different comfort finds me now. One that says you don’t have to have all the answers to be holy. You don’t have to strive to be someone else’s version of a Christian to be righteous. You don’t have to know what to do with the clouds and the fires. You don’t have to figure out how they somehow save you from evil. Maybe there’s comfort in the story, that it is a story. Not some divine and magical guidebook that you must match your life with. Not some filter through which all things must pass. The Exodus story is one of a people group seeking and finding God through miracles of bread from heaven, water from a rock, and guidance from nature. Ultimately, theirs is a story of a successful migration away from slavery and exploitation. --- Decades ago, my great aunt and Catholic nun, Sister Grace Miller, and I were discussing the Genesis story. Hers is a story of a life dedicated to serving Christ. A life I will always look up to: one of service and sacrifice and the most tangible expression of unconditional love I have ever seen. “Do you believe the creation story is literal—historical fact?” I asked her. “Does it matter?” she replied. --- Mine is a story of a girl seeking and finding God through the miracle of letting go of all I was certain of, releasing the idea that there is only one way to look at Scripture, only one way to follow Christ, only one theology that counts. Only one viewpoint of who God could be. Mine is a story of learning how to give myself freedom to see other perspectives, read other interpretations of the Bible, and still find my identity in Christ. Mine is a story of seeing a bigger God now than I ever could have imagined back then. Maybe I, too, am successfully migrating away from slavery and exploitation. The clouds of my past and the fire of my future may always be before me. They may lead me, or blind me, or both. But I am not just the sum of my past or the probability of my future. I, too, am also my present. What I do today will be informed by both cloud and fire but not bound by either. Not ordained but autonomously chosen. |
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