NOTES for Mar 15:22-41

However wordless the effort to overcome one’s own pain and suffering may be, every person still seeks to put those experiences into words. Philosophy has a problem known as theodicy. It asks how the supremely good God could allow suffering and evil. Everyone approaches it differently: some recall Leibniz and his statement that the Lord created the best of all possible worlds; some recall Ivan Karamazov; some recall Job. We often use their words in place of our own rejection of suffering. Yet there always remains a sense that this question cannot be answered positively, that it is altogether insoluble. At this point many turn their gaze toward the Cross. It is impossible to understand why small children fall ill and die, but it is possible to understand that the Lord shared their suffering: He Himself made Himself the object of evil, and now evil is no longer evil. For the most terrible and only true evil is the absence of God, Sheol; but God is present in suffering, so it is no longer the same kind of evil, because He shares our suffering within it. The single thought that Christ shares my sufferings is the greatest happiness. One recalls the saying, “With the one you love, even a hut is paradise”; likewise, with God, evil is not evil.