Lenten musings.

Vietnam taught me this. I spent January wondering about God, to be honest. I wondered how he could have been present in a place where children were slaughtered and pregnant women poisoned by Agent Orange. I wondered what he would have to say to us Americans, who left museums full of our guilt and got onto our sleek tourist bus and drove easily away. And I wondered why this Buddhist country had grasped forgiveness in a way Christians often fail to do. But this quote hit me, strangely, long after my return. I still believe in God.

"I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the one Nietzsche ridiculed as 'God on the Cross.' In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who is immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples and stood respectfully before the statue of Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered the world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us." John Stott