A Weak Theology of Suffering
We have been lulled into a weak theology of suffering.
(the following is an excerpt from my class “Beauty, Brokenness and the Cross”)
I wrote this nearly a year before the most recent lynchings, before the El Paso Massacre of Latinxs, and before the Pandemic.
I began my journey here, toward a larger work. I submit them as a way to understand the process of untangling my faith from white supremacy, and a weak theology of suffering.
(I give thanks to the works of Shelly Rambo, James Cone, Chelle Stearns and Dan Allender).
Jesus stood in front of the donkey, got on it, no scars yet and they all cheered as he entered the city. I cannot watch the live feed of Facebook without wondering if I am another onlooker, or observer, cheering for the next great moment of harm in someone’s life.
Celebrations often precede murder, rape, torture, harm, because we believe dissociation saves us from suffering. The lens of white America has been constructed to redact the names, places and categories of ongoing harm present in life.[1] In the midst of the fight for life, through death and pain, I cling to the witness of one, Jesus.
Jesus embodies kinship with the other.[2] However, his color, scars and story have been conveniently redacted by Western theology. Jesus has been white-washed to be the all-American good guy, working hard, giving to the poor and weak in his stance toward inconvenient justice. White culture cheapens Jesus’ scars because it is unwilling to offer compassion and witness to the narratives of harm in our society. The cross has been construed as victorious redemption, rooted in the victorious ending and culmination of a battle won over evil. A weak theology of suffering remains, meant to placate you and me with afterlife as reward.[3]No doubt, the battle with death was won by Christ.
Jesus won in the silent void, amidst rancid stench and the surprising glory of lingering in death. What links me to Jesus is a tree, connected to others, breathing, and scarred. The tree weathers circumstance, suffers and brings beauty each Spring. I am wounded, have suffered and will suffer. I tolerate pain. I rage at God, worship, and curse.
The laments of ongoing suffering connect me to the source of life.
I propose the hope of Jesus is located in scars, which are beauty unmatched; and the Christian normative white-out of Jesus’ suffering has erased the power of the resurrection. The question of redemption and reconciliation is found in the face-to-face encounter of brokenness and beauty, from past and present, pointing towards a future littered with the debris of hope. It is a telling of truth.[4]
Atonement theories have construed the cross as a bridge over the gap between God and man, meant to comfort both the perpetrator and victim because both can find a place in Jesus; however, a mere bridge over the void is not redemptive or healing, but a pathway to Hell itself.[5]
Western theology of suffering, using the cross as a bridge, is made of white fragility, an illusionary path to redemption, which crumbles under the weight of Jesus’ suffering.[6] This is the fantasy of hope for redemption, crossing the bridge, only to find you’ve lived separated from the wounds that can heal you.
For the cross to be redemptive it must also carry the sex worker’s trauma, racial trauma, socioeconomic trauma and yet a weak bridge cannot bear that weight. The darkness of my own heart is too heavy for a bridge. I have sat with myself, in a dark corner of my house, with the slander of my family reverberating through my mind. My kid has mourned over being called F-ing Dora. My husband has raged over racist men who slander his hard work, and I’ve seen a woman need stitches after rape.
Walking past Jesus’ bloodied body and pretending the scars are frozen in the past is a betrayal of Jesus. It is a betrayal of the suffering bodies of people I know to assume the resurrection is summed up in life after death. Atonement through Jesus means being made alive in death each day.[7] It is an ongoing process more than a destination. It cannot be reduced to the bridge that Western theology hedges its bets on for eternal glory.
Trauma lives in my body; however, resurrected followers of Jesus often live as if healing the harm in their stories requires nothing but more obedience to God.[8] Jesus lived in oppressive systems, navigated the tension of holding the beauty of creation and those who were physically, spiritually and mentally sick.
Gonzalez states, “It is in their daily lives that humans encounter God and bear witness to God’s presence in their lives.”[9] In living through the void, surviving past death, he offers witness and a lived, ongoing atonement in suffering.[10]
The witness the world needs honors Christ, the truth of suffering, and the teller of a story that connects.[11] The depiction of the tree scarred, and turned glorious is a combination of questions and rage which honor God through worship. Romans 1:18 (NLT) admonishes the suppression of truth, “But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness.”[12]
The ‘cross as bridge’ cheapens white salvation and the brown bodies it oppresses. It suppresses the truth by negating the cries of the suffering, the cries of Jesus in his last breath.
Psalms 13:1 (NLT) states, “O Lord, how long will you forget me? Forever? How long will you look the other way?”[13] The angry fist I shake at injustice clenches and pleads with Jesus to see. Trauma steals innocence.[14] It asks the body to fight for survival.[15]
I am seduced by the partial harm I acknowledge, the pieces of desire I can embrace, and I am cut off from the icon of redemption which gives power, the tree. My unaddressed anger lives – a self cut off from a self – lives in the cells of my body.[16] In this shadowland, there is a sense of powerlessness in the cross – the tree was killed, and counterfeited.[17] This kills desire in my heart.
I see rage, anger, grief, joy, sadness and lament as a part of the solution, not a part of the problem. It is not rage at God that is the problem, it is the shadowland of self I live in, not fully able to reveal my face or allow another to see my face.[18]
Trauma provides a way to understand the intersection of rage and worship.
There is an opportunity to look in the face of glory to see the beauty of the tree, and reconnect the fragments to this life-giving structure. Engagement of this truth enters heartache and anger, strangles shame, turning our faces towards a living God.[19] Jesus entrusted the witness of his life and death to his companions.[20]
My desire to be witnessed and to see Jesus is something I must lean into.
The opportunity to witness Jesus’ scars, death and his resurrection is glorious. I walk through death daily. I don’t know if I have a witness. The silence of the void will not strangle me, but denying it will.[21] I walk in Jesus’ steps, witnessing his engagement of death and life. Jesus collaborates with humanity in pursuit of understanding trauma and attachment cues in the body.[22]
Knowing the depth of Jesus’ suffering is a vehicle for healing.
To be continued……
[1] Chelle Stearns, “Beauty Brokenness and the Cross” (lecture, Theology of Eroticism, Seattle, WA, June 2019).
[2] Gregory Boyle, Tattoos On The Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion. (New York, NY: Free Press, 2010).
[3] Shelly Rambo, Resurrecting Wounds: Living in the Afterlife of Trauma. (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2017).
[4] Dan Allender, “Shame, Self-Contempt and Rage” (lecture at Recovery Week, Union, WA, May 18-23, 2019).
[5] Rambo, Resurrecting Wounds: Living in the Afterlife of Trauma, 263.
[6] Ibid, 183.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid., 103.
[9] Maria Gonzalez, “Latino/a Theology: Doing Theology Latinamente. ,” Dialog: a journal of theology. Volume 41, 2, 63-72(2002), p. 68.
[10] Ibid,199.
[11] Rambo, Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining.
[12] New Living Translation Bible. Wheaton, ILL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2004.
[13] New Living Translation Bible. Wheaton, ILL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2004.
[14] Allender, “Shame, Self-Contempt & Rage”.
[15] Danielle Rueb, “Beauty, Brokenness and the Cross” at The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, June 3, 2019.
[16] Daniel J. Siegel, The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are. (New York, NY: Guilford Press, 2015).
[17] Rambo, Resurrecting Wounds: Living in the Afterlife of Trauma.
[18] Stearns, “Beauty Brokenness and the Cross” (lecture, Theology of Eroticism, Seattle, WA, June 2019).
[19] Allender, “Shame, Self-Contempt & Rage”.
[20] Rambo, Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining.
[21] Ibid, 966.
[22] Rambo, Resurrecting Wounds: Living in the Afterlife of Trauma.