Good Friday

 One of my favorite Christian songs is Blessed Be Your Name, covered by plenty of CCM bands and artists through the years. This song is a big one for me in regard to the lyrics and what happens inside my entire body and soul, my mind and emotions, and will- specifically my will- when I sing them. To me, singing them in the midst of whatever I'm going through in life, all things on the spectrum from most terrible to entirely enjoyable, is me making a choice, a choice to believe the things I believe even if I don't feel all of them.

Today is the day we Christians call Good Friday, but many may have pondered at some point the question, "What is so good about this day?" I don't necessarily mean this specific day in history, but of course I mean the day that we are supposed to be commemorating here. Jesus is crucified on Good Friday.... is that good? Do we call that good? Do we wear crosses around our necks, symbols of death some would say, because it is good? Was it good that Judas betrayed Jesus? Was it good Jesus' friends betrayed him? Was it good those in authority abused their power, sentencing someone to death even though they did not find him having committed crimes worthy of such a sentence, if crimes worthy of a sentence even exist. Even that is debated. What is good then?

People get lost here, or mixed up. I have often. Are those who are seemingly destined to kill Jesus actually wrong if God destined them for that? Is Jesus really good if He endures if He was actually God? Wouldn't it have been easier for Him if He was God, is God?

All religions encompass mystery, in some way, Christianity is no different. Theologians spend time seeking to explicate in ways that can satisfy or convince, make sense of all that which seems to make no sense. Laity and the like hear words like antinomy, the concept of holding two supposedly contradicting concepts or truths in conjunction, in tension, and accepting there is an ability to understand which we humans, as only humans, cannot attain. Many try to make it all palatable. All that is good and well I suppose- noble, and I will reluctantly enter into all of those conversations at the right time, though it can get tiring. I am not opposed to the questions that intelligent beings made in the image of God pose about that which does not make logical sense at all times to us since we are just that, in the image of God and not God. I don't suppose God is opposed to it either as our Good Father and Creator. I myself quite enjoy, in my better times, explaining things to my children when they do not understand, even if they are angry, as little Eden was yesterday when she was convinced that her toy would not break if she banged on it too hard. I was wrong, and she would show me... until she realized, in fact, that showing me only proved my own point, that I may know a little more than she knew about the issue at hand and plastic toys.

So what was good, then? Why call this day good? I'm sure plenty of pastors will speak about this topic today, or at least, I hope they will because the truth is that there was good in the day we are commemorating, but there was also a lot of bad, and this IS that about which we need to be talking.

Something Christians do that annoys me is calling bad things good just because they feel like- we feel like, we are supposed to have faith, and we think that in order to be good believers attesting to Romans 8:28 (You know the verse. The TV show Manifest made it popular, right?) we have to say that. God works all things for good, or in all things God works good. But oh the myriad of complexities of life that verse said tritely glosses over. Such a habit does little good at making anything about the truths of Christianity attractive or palatable to those seeking to make sense of the world or endure suffering. Actual truth is that in order to see life working toward good, we do NOT have to call bad things something they are not. We do have to figure out how to see the good. God does indeed have to bless us with eyes that can do that, but bad is not good. No. Never.

Being betrayed is not good.

Suffering for crimes we don't commit is not good.

Being tortured is not good.

Being mocked is not good.

Being gaslit is not good.

Being lied to or about is not good.

Being abused is not good.

Dying is not, necessarily, good.

Watching those we love suffer is not good.

Choosing to hurt another person is not good.

Earthquakes and famines and tsunamis and tornados are not good.

Mass shootings are not good.

Political debate that aims at destroying one side in order to garner esteem and praise for others while never effectively solving actual issues is not good.

An innocent man having to die so that those who are so unworthy may know God is not good.

BUT, our choices in the midst of these types of things, in the midst of suffering, well- those can be good.

Repaying evil with good is good. Doing unto others as we would have them do to us is good. Praying for our enemies is good. Forgiving is good. Accountability is good.

Jesus made choices on Good Friday, and Jesus' choices were good. I've been listening to a book called Beautiful Outlaw, written by John Eldridge. (He's come a long way since his and his wife's days of being caught up in the I Kissed Dating Goodbye current. Reading this book demonstrates his theological understanding of God, faith, and life has grown in the past 25 years.) Eldridge's book concentrates on the aspect of Jesus people gloss over the most, His humanity. Jesus is called God incarnate because He is just that, God INCARNATED in human flesh. Christ was entirely human. (Once again- feel free to enter into the theological conversation at some other point about how one can be entirely human and entirely God all at once. So far as I know, it has only been possible for one, Jesus Christ. So I don't necessarily think it's a concept easily understood.)

Concentrating on the fact that Jesus is God incarnate, and concentrating on Jesus' humanity, and being careful not to gloss over the incredibly humiliating and excruciating choices Jesus made and endured as a human is that which empowers true Christian humans to endure even their own pains, their own sufferings, their own griefs and losses and injustices which - once again - are not good. Jesus' God-ness did not make it easier for Him to be human. If we ascribe to that fallacy, then we don't have a Savior, a Son of Man- then Jesus is not one-of-a-kind. Actually, if that is true, that it was easier for Him to endure humanness because He was God, then He got a free pass, one I'd like to have. No... Jesus was human, as human as me, and Jesus overcame sin which is the inability to choose and do good in the face of evil or anything else. Jesus didn't have a free pass, but Jesus did, in a way, create a free pass. Of course I don't mean that entirely literally, as in it's easy to skirt through life or repentance or anything. What I mean is that those in Christ do not suffer the just penalty for rebellion against God, the just penalty which literally all humanity deserves. Jesus did that. He chose to do that although He had no culpability in it, even though His own choices merited it not.

Today I will have choices. I will see evil, and I will see good, and I will be asked to choose. Today I will interact with people, and I'm sure I'll be tempted to repay those who treat me poorly with poor treatment. I'm sure there will be times I'm tempted to yell out justifications for myself, scream them from the mountain tops and demand justice. Goodness gracious if the past few years have not been a master-class for me in having to learn to keep my mouth shut in the face of injustice, mocking, abuse, you name it. Life will do that to us from time to time, all of us. It will knock us on our knees only to knock continually at our knees each time we attempt to stand.

One thing good about Good Friday is the choice Christ committed to over and over again, to accept, to endure. Talk about distress tolerance. This Friday in the life of Christ could be called a course in dialectical behavioral therapy at it's finest. THIS day thou shalt be forsaken by God. THIS day... but not eternally.

And for us, well, once again- the free pass thing... We will NEVER know that, what Jesus knew. We will never know that forsakenness by God if we are trusting in the merits and righteousness of the most human man and best human made ever born of woman. There is a lot that is not good- too much even, but it is not beyond our ability to choose good because Jesus has defeated death and the human need to justify oneself once and for all for all those who will but trust in Him.

If you find yourself struggling today with faith, with belief, with theology even (although that's my least favorite of those three), reach out. You are not alone. If life doesn't make sense to you then it probably means you have a better grasp on life than all those people out there claiming that it does make so much sense. As well, if you come face to face with evil today, face-to-face with pain, injustice, fear, pride, and grief... all those things which threaten to undo us or tell us that we are unable to bear, know you are not alone, and your feelings are not unique even though often they seem to be... stilil, so many have them. We are in this thing called life together to some degree or another whether we like it or not. Our experiences are entirely different on so many levels. Different levels of injustice plaque us. Some of us can walk down the street in any neighborhood and not fear getting shot. Others cannot. Life does call us to the task of humility and learning to learn, to empathy, listening, enduring, changing, and recognizing the various degrees of privilege, justice, and injustice that we have all/do all face as we live. But, in the end, we are all stuck here for now, in life, enduring... the good and the bad. This life is so complicated, and the choices are everywhere, and people call bad things good and good things bad all the time, and it. is. infuriating. That we have in common.

Jesus knows all about it, and somehow ... in a way I cannot fathom ... He chose well. He made the good choices in the face of all that not good. I'll look to Him. I'll submit to His authority; indeed all authority in heaven and on Earth has been given to Him. This world may not ever be safe, but Jesus is good. Today I will choose good, and I can because of Jesus. Amen.