Great Love and Great Suffering
You might wonder how, exactly, primitive peoples and pre-Christian
civilizations could’ve had access to God. I believe it was through the universal
and normal transformative journeys of great love and great suffering,*5 which all
individuals have undergone from the beginnings of the human race. Only great
love and great suffering are strong enough to take away our imperial ego’s
protections and open us to authentic experiences of transcendence. The Christ,
especially when twinned with Jesus, is a clear message about universal love and
necessary suffering as the divine pattern—starting with the three persons of the
Trinity, where God is said to be both endlessly outpouring and self-emptying.
Like three revolving buckets on a waterwheel, this process keeps the Flow
flowing eternally—inside and outside of God, and in one positive direction.
Just because you do not have the right word for God does not mean you are
not having the right experience. From the beginning, YHWH let the Jewish
people know that no right word would ever contain God’s infinite mystery. The
God of Israel’s message seems to be, “I am not going to give you any control over
me, or else your need for control will soon extend to everything else.”
Controlling people try to control people, and they do the same with God—but
loving anything always means a certain giving up of control. You tend to create
a God who is just like you—whereas it was supposed to be the other way
around. Did it ever strike you that God gives up control more than anybody in
the universe? God hardly ever holds on to control, if the truth be told. We do.
And God allows this every day in every way. God is so free.
Any kind of authentic God experience will usually feel like love or suffering,
or both. It will connect you to Full Reality at ever-new breadths, and depths
“until God will be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28). Our circles of belonging tend
to either expand or constrict as life goes on. (At least that is what I’ve observed
through working with people as a counselor, spiritual director, and confessor.)
Our patterns of relating, once set, determine the trajectories for our whole lives.
If we are inherently skeptical and suspicious, the focus narrows. If we are
hopeful and trusting, the focus continues to expand.
Let me repeat again a point that has been so clarifying and foundational for
me: The proof that you are a Christian is that you can see Christ everywhere