Sadness is logical. Especially for people who care. Who are aware. Who admit to the harsh realities of many in the world. The logical response to so much suffering is to be sad. But good sadness will never stop with the logical.
For just that much could tip the scales of the human experience toward despair. Instead of a healthy “suffering with” type of compassion, it ends up being a “suffering instead of,” it isolates from those people instead of bringing us closer to them.
In our attempt to connect with their pain we enter our own. Only too easily we get locked away in our own suffering and its ensuing coping mechanisms. It doesn’t bring us together and certainly does not offer hope. But it is logical.
So at some point a deal comes our way where we must choose understanding (logic) or peace (hope). Logically hope makes no sense. The odds are against us. Evil is too powerful. The suffering of the world too great. But who made logic king?
And the world of logic gets turned on its head when we really consider the non-rationality of the world from a theological context. Now certainly in today’s world there are those unfamiliar with or in dis-belief of a God beyond the universe.
But let’s consider for a moment the possibility that there may actually be One. Let’s consider the Creator God of the major world religions. This God was before all worlds, un-created, the uncaused cause. By definition the One responsible for this.
Most of the major world religions of the Book (Christianity, Islam, Judaism) do not have a developed concept of a God who interacts with and enters the world He created. In Islam and Judaism God is completely other, distant from the tainted world.
In Christianity, we have the unique concept of a God-man who helps create the world and then enters it, and we have the very unique concept of a God that is One (like Jews and Muslims) and yet three distinct persons.
The Christian-God is uniquely able to “sympathize with our weaknesses” because he became “fully human in every way.” Not to mention this God-man was sent on a mission of what appears like human failure: to become the sacrifice.
Some mis-understandingly think of it as suicide. If he truly was only dying for himself and was not actually somehow a sacrificial lamb who “takes away the sins of the world” than that would be true. Let’s just imagine for a second he maybe was.
The Christian-God is then one “familiar with pain, a man of suffering.” Jesus who knew no sin became sin, to the extent where for a time God dies. Christianity teaches that God died. Too much for most people. A lot of suffering, blood and guts.
And God has to sacrifice His Son, the only way to get back what was lost. Again, too much for most. Why doesn’t God just change His mind? Why does He need all this blood shed? Perhaps it is worth investigating further to shed light on sadness.