(December 17, 2016 at 9:36 am)Tonus Wrote: This is something that seems creepy to me. It also seems excessive and, in the end, not very useful.
Humans are made in the image of god, which means we can empathize and sympathize with others. We can understand many feelings on some level and share many common experiences, so we are driven to be compassionate when we hear of someone going through a particularly bad experience. We may not have gone through the experience ourselves, but we feel compelled to express that compassion in various ways. [1] We know that there are humans who have risked their lives --and lost them-- in order to spare someone else a particular fate. We know that humans give of their money and time to help people who are poor and hungry. Who have been through the trauma of rape or are feeling suicidal. Who have seen the horrors of war, and so on. Many of the people who volunteer their time and money have not experienced these things, or have not done so on the same level. Yet they are compelled to help.
Why would Jesus need to experience EVERY SINGLE human tragedy in order to understand it, or to act to alleviate it? [2] Was he incapable of empathy or sympathy? [3] Was God just a soulless automaton until he hung on the cross and experienced millions of individual events of suffering and pain? [4] Why wouldn't such a traumatic experience convince him to do something about it right then and there, instead of leaving humanity hanging for almost two thousand years now, during which even more people have suffered the experiences that he now understands on a direct and personal level? [5] Perhaps he was driven mad by the experience? Or perhaps his return to godhood made the whole thing so manageable that he was able to shake it off? [6] Even a single traumatic experience can completely ruin a person. So many all at once would have forced a normal person's brain to shut down for good. [7] Maybe God cannot feel empathy or sympathy for us because his super-brain is impervious to the effects of traumatic human experience? [8]
1) Yes. Our hearts "feel" the pain of others. So in an abstract sense, we "suffer with" them when we are compassionate.
2) He didn't need to do any of it. It is just what he did.
You don't need to physically travel to Syria and experience people's suffering there in order to empathize and feel compassion for the Syrian people. If you did, however, feel so moved by that compassion so as to travel there to provide some sort of help while suffering with them, I don't think you would find that strange at all. I think you might even admire such a person. The person whose compassion moves them to give money to help those in Syria are also commendable, but something tells me that there is something more admirable in the former case.
3) Like you said before, the image of god means the ability to empathize and be compassionate. Not only was he capable of empathy and compassion, but empathy compassion and mercy are what define the relationship between god and humanity. Mercy (which is active compassion which restores what is lacking) is the entire purpose of God becoming human.
4) No. What happened on the cross revealed something about the nature of reality. I.e. God has been with us since the moment of creation, and our sins did not turn him away. Our sins are related to our suffering, but they are not enough to keep god out of our lives. His disposition is to restore any of our lacking either in this life or the next. He has always been with us in a transcendent and abstract way even when we sin, always there calling us back to the good. In Christ however, he now suffers with us as a human in a concrete way. It isn't hidden. We can look at Jesus on the cross and see the reality of God's being so close to humanity that he even suffers what humanity suffers. In other words, how can we know that god is compassionate and merciful toward humanity? Because we can see god himself enduring all human suffering on the cross, swallow it up, and restore humanity to its fullness in the resurrection. That's what we see, anyway.
5) That's the thing. He did do something about it, right there and then. He rose from the dead. That is what awaits us all. He told us that the cross waits for us all in our own ways, but the cross is not the final chapter, and neither is death. Life has the final say, and not merely human life, but a human life which shares in the divine life. That is what awaits us. That is what awaits everyone who knows that god suffers human life in Jesus so that humanity may enjoy god's life in Jesus.
6) Well, that's kind of what happens for Christians. Faith is a real share in the divine life. It gives knowledge of the reality of suffering, redemption, and resurrection. That divine knowledge gives new meaning to suffering and makes it manageable.
7) Maybe even sweat blood! No, seriously though, I think you're right about that.
8) Well that is the thing. God united humanity to "his super-brain". He CAN empathize and sympathize BOTH as God AND as human. As many of the church fathers were fond of saying: God became man so that man might become like god. God became human to suffer with humanity, so that humanity could enjoy divinity with god.
