There have been times in my life where I have wrestled with the question of why an all-powerful God and creator can allow evil, injustice, and cruelty to prevail. How can a God of love and compassion want at the same time suffering?
Some beautiful Renaissance paintings depict Jesus bleeding and hanging from the cross with the Pharisees mocking him with the words: “He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him.” (Matthew 27:42–43). They missed the point.
The key message of Easter
The key message of Easter is one of hope, rebirth, and resurrection after experiencing brokenness, hurt, and suffering.
After the resurrection, Jesus asks the skeptical disciple Thomas to place his hands into the wounds of his hands and his side. Jesus carried his scars and wounds as the visible signs of having transmuted the pain and suffering.
The idea that God is both a God of Light and a God of darkness comes from a simplistic perception of a three-dimensional reality. We have the external world of sensual and material gratification, the dimension of the soul having a human experience, and the divine dimension that encompasses the other two. The Mystics compare the external world of distraction to the darkness of the night, the human experience to the morning of life itself in the striving toward the eternal of midday.
What is soul purpose?
Suffering, pain, and brokenness is that part of life that sculptures us into the human beings we are destined to become. The external world is in a constant cycle of change, impermanence, and movement. Suffering comes essentially from a mindset of attachment to that which was and is no more. Soul purpose finds a connection to that which is aligned to the universal truth.
