Hi,
There needs to be some thinking outside of the human box here.
- “Man misuses his free will and gets terribly hurt. Therefore God should have interfered.”
Hey, hey hey! Who says that God should have interfered? God created man from nothing out of pure love. No one paid Him for this. No one could. He gave man all kinds of good things and asked man to be loyal to Him by obeying Him. Man proceeded to disobey an infinitely good God anyway. God doesn’t owe man diddly. We can’t blame God for man’s sin. It is man who owes God—big time! Such big time that only God could have made up for the transgression. And He did!
- “Man is faced with the choice of adopting God’s will or doing his own thing. God knows the answer because He is omniscient. He has also determined that everyone who is not for Him is going to hell. Therefore God deliberately and callously knows that the people He is creating are doomed to a most terrible punishment.”
Here we go blaming God for man’s sin again. Because I have seen rain clouds forming before it actually began to rain doesn’t mean that I caused the rain. God gave man life and existence—not a minor thing! Man turned on God and defies Him. Man owed Him gratitude—not betrayal. Man deserves hell, but God has mercy one him.
- “God deliberately created Jesus, his own Son, knowing that He would suffer the most terrible death known to man. Nothing can excuse the sheer barbarity of this.” Nonsense! The only thing that excuses such sheer arrogance is naiveté.
God the Father did not create Jesus. Jesus is God and always has existed. Only creatures are created. He is eternally begotten of the Father. This is not a minor matter. It is a fundamental dogma and the very core of what we believe as Christians.
Jesus deliberately chose to give His life for us. “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again; this charge I have received from my; Father.” (Jn 10; 17-18)
Our salvation is the result of the love between the Persons of the Holy Trinity and their love for us. It is absolutely necessary to begin with God—not with man. God came first before time and in time–and comes first in importance. After having received life and existence from God’s generosity, man freely chose to betray Him. The Fall is not just a matter of eating a piece of fruit. It is an act of betrayal of infinite dimension because God is infinite. Granted, it is difficult for us to relate to the infinite because we have no experience of anything infinite—except for Good Friday. On Good Friday an infinitely good God, after having taken on a human nature, suffered great physical and psychological torment and actually died on our behalf. Not only does this give us a window into how incapable we are of wrapping our finite minds around such unlimited love, it also gives us some idea of what an immense evil sin is!
It is only in humbly acknowledging such generosity and mercy that man can begin to think straight regarding the significance of the passion and the solution it is to the Fall.
And some wonder why Catholics spend so much energy reflecting on the crucifix!
Fr. Vincent Serpa, O.P.
