Incarnating the Divine

Just a quick thought today.

I used to believe in an evangelical theory of what Jesus came to do, that stipulated that He would save us and heal us and make us prosper if we did and thought the right things.

After spending a few years rethinking my theology, I find it more compelling that Jesus came primarily to identify with our suffering, and to be God With Us, “Immanuel,” instead of coming to help us escape from painful and difficult things.

And the challenge to us is to simply be God incarnate for others, too, following Jesus’ example.

It switched my theology from my own needing to have a good outcome if I’m going to find God acceptable, and from needing God to be the supernatural divine force of good in the world, to instead accepting that a lousy outcome is typically part of life that God probably won’t fix, and accepting that I myself am supposed to be part of God’s incarnated divine force of good in the world, and that if Jesus suffered, I probably will suffer too, and it’s not God’s intent to save me from that suffering, but just like Jesus (see Hebrews 5:8), to mature me and train me by the things I suffer.

It’s informative to realize that, despite His divinity, and His obvious supernatural ability to affect lives around Himself, Jesus never chose to confront the systemic things that caused the oppression or pain in His society. He didn’t miraculously overthrow the Roman government, or destroy the power of the religious elite. He didn’t miraculously end the various diseases that plagued people. He didn’t miraculously fix their food supply problems. The most stunning thing He did, and probably the one that actually got Him killed, was to overturn a lot of tables in the Temple and disrupt an evil economic system in the House of God itself. Why did the Divine choose to allow the oppression and pain and hunger to continue?

In short, I’m confronted by the fact that Jesus tolerated the ugliness of life head on, without trying to globally fix it. And that forces me to confront my own need for a perfect, pain-free life.

That theological shift means that I no longer derive my feelings about God, and my feelings about my own situation, from whether my life is pleasant or happy or prosperous. Instead I’m focused on whether I’m accurately representing God and doing the kinds of things that the Gospels say Jesus did.

It’s been a tough shift for someone who grew up with a prosperity gospel: “If I’m not prospering, if I’m not happy, if I’m not tangibly blessed, I must be doing something wrong.” (A side effect of that theology is believing that if others are struggling, they must be sinning. It’s permission to judge others.)

But prosperity gospel only works when people are mostly prospering. In this season of upheaval, of rending of the fabrics of our society, of upending of a lot of church culture, it fails.

I’ll readily admit it doesn’t solve the theodicy – the problem of evil – for me. If God, then why evil? But Jesus didn’t snap His fingers and take away the Roman oppression in His day. Perhaps God just isn’t in the business of making us happy and prosperous. And maybe my evangelical expectations of God need to change. Maybe that only happens in the eternal Kingdom, and maybe we only get there by incarnating God, a little bit at a time, here on earth with each other.

So let’s focus on personally, individually, doing what Jesus taught us to pray: God’s Kingdom come, God’s will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Every little bit of heaven that we personally incarnate on earth, every time we incarnate the Divine in time and space, the Kingdom expands just a little bit more. Each beautiful act that you do, each time you bring healing, each person you feed, each moment you spend comforting or caring, brings a bit of heaven into that life.

And somehow, that feels more true to Jesus’ example than any doctrine I grew up with: instead of trying to get people out of this life into heaven, Jesus brought heaven into their lives, one human being at a time.