WHY DID GOD DO IT?

One has to wonder why on earth God ever decided to come to earth, live on this earth. Look at it this way: God being God, if you have heaven, why mess around with hell? Put something pure into something that is contaminated and you know who wins. Pure becomes tainted with the impure. So why did God do it? Why did God become human?

My very untheological, but I think very human, reason for the Word of God to become flesh was to experience what you and I experience every day. God, being God, never feels pain, never suffers as you and I do. God is, in a real way, above it all. But you and I are in pain, sometimes great pain – physical, mental, spiritual – every day. And from a very human point of view – and remember, I am not talking about a theological point of view – from a very human point of view it certainly was good for God to know, to experience what you and I go through every day.

It is very difficult if not impossible to understand pain is you have never suffered real pain. I have no way of knowing what the pain of childbirth is like because I have never experienced and will never experience it. I know the pain of divorce. Those who have never experienced that pain have no idea, really, what it is all about. Experience is the best, perhaps only, teacher.

But Jesus knew pain and suffering. As an apprentice carpenter he probably gave his thumb a few whacks now and then. Then there was the cross, of course. But Jesus also knew the pain of rejection, the pain of loneliness, the pain of betrayal. He experienced the pettiness of Pilate, the greed of Herod the jealousies of the Scribes and Pharisees. Jesus knows now what pain and suffering, what life on this earth, is all about, truly all about.

Now a good theologian will say that Jesus always knew, being God. Maybe so. But that doesn’t help me much when I am in pain, when I have suffered from my own or another’s sinfulness or stupidity. But from a very human point of view, when I cry out in prayer and in pain to Jesus, deep in my heart I know he knows what I am talking about. He went through it. The fact that on the cross he suffered more pain – physical, mental and spiritual – than I will ever have to endure, that truth also helps me in my daily bouts with selfishness and feeling sorry for myself.

Yes, Jesus gives me through the Holy Spirit, gives all of us the strength to endure whatever pain or suffering or grief that may come our way. He promises to be there with us through it all. Sometimes he simply lessens the pain. Sometimes he removes it. All the time he is there with us. And he understands because, he, too, when he, the Son of God became flesh and pitched his tent among us, he, too, experienced sinfulness and suffering and stupidity first hand.

Jesus didn’t have to do any of that, but I am glad and thankful that he did.