Who you think God is, God isn’t.
Richard Rohr writes:
Our usual definitions of God depict him as omnipotent, infinite, perfect in every way. Yet if the suffering Jesus is the image and revelation of the invisible God (Col. 1:15), this is totally at odds with all the other philosophical and theological definitions of a supreme being.
Jesus doesn’t fit. Even after two thousand years, it is hard to realize what a revolutionary symbol Jesus is. He basically turned theology upside down. He said, in effect: “Who you think God is, God isn’t.” You can’t know this merely by study or theology or religion, but only through painful encounters with the living God where you feel like you are dying and yet you do not die. Then you experience another kind of life, another kind of freedom.
Christians call this new home the shared life of the risen Christ. It is a different “morphogenetic field,” and only those who live there are equipped to talk about Jesus or the Gospel.
Adapted from Job and the Mystery of Suffering, pp. 25-26
Painting by Frank McCauley
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