Christ-Shaped & Cross-Framed Friendship (Part 1)
God has blessed us with the community of friends and believers where both hearts and minds are exchanged and shared to face the reality of evil and suffering. God uses friendship to bring healing and reconciliation. A great example is the four friends who brought the paralytic to see Jesus for healing (Mark 2:1-12). They responded to their friend’s suffering and brokenness with practical condolences. Because of their faith, they wrestled with the situation and acted compassionately in solidarity. Not only were evil and suffering absorbed and swallowed up by their faith in action, the paralytic was transformed by Christ. On the other hand, we see how the three friends stood against Job’s flourishing when their understanding remained un-reframed in the presence of evil as Job experienced horrendous inflictions of pain and agony without empathy. The three friends didn’t live with their unanswered questions about Job’s calamity, let alone staying committed and remained in solidarity.
Photo by Jordan Whitt on Unsplash
God’s people have invested in different practices to vanquish the problem of suffering and evil in our world today. While some would avoid suffering and nurture in practices on their own through the use of worldly powers to get rid of pain altogether, a few would take on imitations of suffering and invest in practices that inflict pain upon themselves in hopes to achieve the redemptive work of God (Sunquist 2013, 209). They have distorted understanding of suffering, much less cultivated the right responses toward faithful living. Not only do we need to be faithful to discern how to develop practices that don’t romanticize suffering, we also need friends who can “work out our understanding of what it means to love God in the face of unmerited suffering” (Swinton 2007, 79).
“From Jesus’s incarnation and his active obedience on the cross, not only do we find “practical gestures of redemption,” we see “a theodicy that is embodied and practical” both steering us to live faithfully in the midst of evil and suffering”
As a community, we must invest in practices that reflect a faithful Christology, one that reflects Christ’s incarnation and the suffering on the cross. To batter life’s storms of suffering, we must cultivate Christ-shaped and cross-framed friendships. From Jesus’s incarnation and his active obedience on the cross, not only do we find “practical gestures of redemption,” we see “a theodicy that is embodied and practical” both steering us to live faithfully in the midst of evil and suffering (Swinton 2007, 71).
Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash
In the following blog series, I will share the theodicial significance of friendship and the importance of cultivating practices to reframe the problem of evil. The practice of friendship is vital to help confirm and sustain who we are. Then I will explore and develop different forms of practices which are informed by a faithful Christology with reflection that are shaped by Christ’s incarnation and framed by the cross within the community of friendship. The different forms of reshaped and reframed theodical and Christological practices offer faithful ways which friendship can absorb suffering. Finally, I will offer some practical implementations from my own ministry context.
Sunquist, Scott. 2013. Understanding Christian Mission: Participation in Suffering and Glory. Baker Academic. Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Swinton, John. 2007. Raging with Compassion: Pastoral Responses to the Problem of Evil. Eerdmans. Grand Rapids, Michigan.