The medical staff quietly and somberly removed all the medical lines and devices from the 48-hour-old baby. The baby's mother and father wanted to hold their child for the first time. Removing all the medical devices meant that their child would live only a few moments. Holding your child for the first time should be a joyful occasion. Instead of this moment being a kind of introduction between parent and child it was a goodbye. The baby's body was simply not set up to survive and thrive.
After removing all the medical equipment the little one was wrapped in a blanket and gently handed into the arms of the mother. The room went silent as the mother softly repeated "Mommy and Daddy love you" while she wept. The baby's father wept and kissed his newborn on the forehead. Other family members in the room started to cry as well. Once the little one had passed the family gathered together to pray.
After composing himself, one of the older men in the family offered a prayer that included the line "God you must have needed another angel." When the prayer was over one family member expressed "Maybe this is God's way to remind us to lean on him." The parents did not say much. They sat with their arms around each other and just cried. The family began slowly gathering their things to head home when someone commented, "God has a plan and God is good."
The statements made in the prayer and by the family members would be what Dorothee Solle would classify as "worshiping the executioner." Worshiping the executioner is a term Dorothee Sölle uses in her book Suffering. Before we spell out what she means by worshiping the executioner a little introduction might be in order.
Dorothee Sölle (1929-2003) was a prominent German Lutheran theologian, activist, and academic known for her progressive and political theology. She advocated for social justice, opposing oppression, sexism, antisemitism, and authoritarianism. Sölle's theology emphasized God's suffering alongside humanity and the need to struggle against injustice. She was a professor at the University of Hamburg and Union Theological Seminary in New York. Sölle's influential books include "Theology for Skeptics: Reflections on God", "The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance", and "Against the Wind: Memoir of a Radical Christian" Sölle died of a heart attack in 2003 at age 73.
Most folks have some kind of thought(s) about God or a higher power or some kind of force in the world/universe. It is difficult to operate in life without some sense of the transcendental. It can be hard enough to get out of bed in the morning and face the mundane aspects of living even if you believe God is a reality. Life without a sense of anything beyond us might make us wonder why we should ever get out of bed. We might not be able to articulate in great detail how we think the world works yet we all have some understanding of what life, love, and being a human are to be about. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say."
My concept of God and how the world works was informed, at an early age, by reformed theology. Even if you have never darkened the doors of a church chances are you have been influenced by various concepts of reformed theology. Classical Reformed theology typically depicts God as a sovereign, all-powerful being who is separate from and unaffected by the suffering of His creation. This view emphasizes God's transcendence and the belief that He is not subject to the limitations or experiences of human existence. Christian hymns such as "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God", "Holy, Holy, Holy" or "How Firm a Foundation" all give voice to this kind of reformed theological thinking.
Maybe like me, you have sat through a church service and heard someone talk about the holiness of God. God is holy which within reformed theology means He is beyond us. God stands outside of his creation and is separated from us due to sin. God loves us but maintains some kind of distance or separation. Boil the large concepts of reformed theology down and you get statements like "God is in control" or "God has a plan."
The Reformed tradition also emphasizes the doctrine of divine providence, which holds that God is in complete control of all events and that human suffering is ultimately part of His divine plan. There are a lot of folks (Christian or not) that hold to this view or at least use it as a way to make sense of the hurt and pain in their lives. When you combine the thought that God is in some sense separated from us due to sin with the idea that God is somehow in control of human events then pain and suffering become punitive. That is a concept that Sölle soundly rejects.
When suffering and pain occur in our lives our thoughts and feelings often turn toward wondering what we did to deserve what happened. Perhaps the 48-hour-old baby died because there was a lesson that someone was supposed to learn. What kind of a lunatic takes the life of a baby to teach a life lesson? Why not just teach the person who needs the lesson, the lesson, and leave the baby alone?
If God wanted to teach someone a lesson I believe God could do that without taking the life of a baby or anyone else for that matter. Sölle unflinchingly blasts this concept of “the omnipotence of a heavenly being who decrees suffering” as a manifestation of either “Christian masochism” (the calamities we accept as somehow God’s will) or “Christian sadism” (the calamities we inflict on others in God’s name), or both. There is “no way to combine omnipotence with love.”
The key section of Sölle’s argument is found in chapter two of Suffering, “The Christians’ Apathetic God.” “Apatheia is a Greek word that literally means nonsuffering, freedom from suffering, a creature’s inability to suffer.” The “apathetic” God “fulfills the ideal of one who is physically beyond the reach of external influences and psychologically anesthetized—like things that are dead . . . This apathetic God became the God of the Christians, although he was a contradiction to the biblical God, with his emotions and suffering."
In other words, Sölle is challenging the reformed theological position that God is beyond us and apathetic to our suffering. For Sölle God is primarily a God of love and is not apathetic nor beyond us but actively involved in and affected by the suffering of His creation. Each time we say something like "God is in control" we are denying what is happening and also denying that God in any sense cares about what is happening. We are not voicing our hurt and pain. Instead "God is in control" and nothing else needs to be said. Move along. Bottle it up. We can say "I'm fine" except that we are not.
Similarly, saying "God has a plan" offers no concern for those suffering nor does it offer any insight into how God might be working. We can have the worst day ever and then find ourselves worshiping our exocutioner on Sunday morning because "God has a plan." Instead of talking about our pain and suffering, we might sing "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" all the louder or "Good God Almighty" by David Crowder. We worship our executioner because our suffering must have been deserved. No need to even acknowledge our suffering because in the end we are blessed and others have it worse. No need to incorporate our suffering into our life of faith because suffering is not part of a life of faith.
Yet Sölle sees suffering as a central aspect of the human experience intimately connected to one's faith and relationship with God. She rejects the traditional Christian view of suffering as simply a punishment or trial to be endured, and instead sees it as something that God actively shares in and experiences alongside humanity.
Sölle argues that suffering has "destructive" and "transformative" dimensions. Destructive suffering is paralyzing and debilitating, while transformative suffering can lead to growth, change, and the "birth of something new." She believes that victims of injustice and oppression experience a unique form of suffering that must be acknowledged and responded to with compassion. When we think that God is beyond us all and suffering is punitive then why assist others in their oppression? After all their suffering must somehow be deserved. Perhaps this explains, in part, why some Christians find social programs for those in poverty abhorrent. God has a plan and apparently, that plan includes the suffering of those in poverty because they haven't learned some life lesson or got on board with God's plan.
Importantly, Sölle sees suffering as not just an individual experience, but also as a social and political reality that must be addressed collectively. She insists that Christians take sides with those who suffer and work to abolish the conditions that lead to suffering, such as "war, oppression, violence, and torture."
For Sölle, the role of faith is not to provide easy answers or to view suffering as something to be stoically endured. Rather, she sees faith as a means of finding meaning and purpose within the experience of suffering itself. She portrays God as a "suffering, empathetic being" who experiences and shares in the pain of the human condition.
Sölle is not the first theologian to suggest God suffers with his creation. Jürgen Moltmann views suffering as a choice made by God for the sake of love, saying that “if God were in every respect incapable of suffering, he would also be incapable of love.”1. Old Testament professor Terence Fretheim in his work "The Suffering of God" makes a similar argument when he writes, "Deciding to go with a wicked world come what may, with all of the suffering and evil that will mean for individuals and communities, means for God a continuing grieving of the heart (see Ps 78:40; Eph 4:30). For the sake of the continued life of the world, indeed for the sake of its salvation, God bears that grief and suffering within the divine self (see Isa 43:23-25; Hos 11:8-9). The reader of the New Testament knows that this divine way of being with and for the world is supremely embodied in Jesus the Christ".2
If we think about it, in any relationship where love exists, there also exists suffering. We suffer for the sake of love. We choose our own suffering over the suffering of others. Solle writes, "God suffers alongside humanity and experiences the pain of the human condition. Suffering is not something that God simply allows, but is part of the divine nature." Johann Metz, in his book "The Dangerous Memory of Jesus Christ", comments that the suffering of Jesus on the cross was more than just punishment. The "dangerous memory of the radical love of the Cross" refers to the profound and transformative remembrance of Jesus Christ's suffering, death, and resurrection, which embodies the ultimate expression of self-sacrificial love.
This memory is termed "dangerous" because it challenges and threatens the status quo, confronting societal norms and structures that perpetuate injustice and suffering. It is a memory that those in power, or those who benefit from others' suffering, might wish to suppress or distort because it calls for a radical reevaluation of values and promotes a shift towards empathy, justice, and the alleviation of suffering.3 Sölle reminds her readers that the Gethsemane accounts show Jesus accepting the "cup" of suffering, despite his initial plea to have it taken from him as well as asking his disciples to "keep watch" with him in his moment of being deeply trouble.
Sölle in Suffering, reminds her readers that too often Christians make light of Jesus' suffering in the Garden and on the cross. When talking about Jesus on the cross, Sölle highlights that Christians often point out the salvific sacrifice made and not the radical love of the cross. On the cross, we see an empathetic God who stands in solidarity with those who endure affliction, rather than an all-powerful deity who inflicts or allows suffering. If we forget the Cross, we forget the Resurrection. If we cannot make meaning of suffering then we have no hope.
Sölle suggests that we read too quickly about Christ's despair in Gethsemane. Despite his personal anguish he chose to accept suffering for the sake of love. Sometimes we are the ones accepting the suffering on behalf of others, and sometimes we are the ones who are grateful that someone has accepted suffering on our behalf. In either case, if there were no love, there would not be suffering.
Ultimately, Sölle's theology of suffering challenges the traditional Christian view and presents a more nuanced, socially engaged understanding of the relationship between faith and the human experience of pain and anguish. Her perspective emphasizes the transformative potential of suffering when it is approached with compassion, responsibility, and a commitment to social justice.
1. Moltmann, Jürgen. Jesus Christ for Today’s World. 1st Fortress Press ed.. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994, 44.
2. Terence E. Fretheim, The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2016). 348
3. Johann Baptist Metz, Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology (2007), Chapter 5, “The Dangerous Memory of Jesus Christ,” 88
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