The Cruciform Employee

On the basis that 1 Peter presents the the cross as a paradigm of Christian existence with special reference to slaves, Howard Marshall offered guidelines for Christian employees to help them live a cruciform (cross-shaped) life. They are summarised in Scot McKnight's NIVAC volume on 1 Peter as follows:

1. All of our social relationships should find a behaviour that is driven by a desire to do God’s will.
2. Our conduct ought to be consistent with the obligations we assume in our relationship to that person and job.
3. Our conduct ought to be determined by that relationship, not by what we think of the personal traits of the employer.
4. When we disregard our relational contract with its obligations, we do disservice to the gospel.
5. If we suffer as a result of our obligations, such suffering is both commendable and Christian; it is not unchristian to suffer! 

McKnight adds: “In a world driven by litigation (which is itself driven by the desire to sustain personal rights), it is hard for us today to see that sometimes it is best not to assert our rights but to endure some kind of social pressure. That is, it might be best for a Christian man to endure the shame of not being promoted or getting a raise, or of a Christian woman of not asserting her equality or fighting for equal pay, because of the gospel!” (175)

• In the business world, Christians should not be known for their assertiveness as much as for their industriousness, their work ethic, their kindness, their loyalty, their fairness, and their honesty…
• In our personal lives we need to suppress the desire to be noticed…
• Another area of life where we need to let the pattern of the cross infiltrate is that of personal finances…A cruciform lifestyle with respect to possessions is found in persons who do not find their greatest pleasure in shopping, who are not motivated to buy more things when they get their paycheck, and who are not using the credit cards well beyond their limits. (177)

He observes: “It may not work – in the short run. But the way of suffering is the divinely intended manner of bringing the greatest victory of God into the world. What really works is what works with God, and what works with God is the cross!” (178)

Whose Side Is God On?

"Recently I was talking to a young couple who walked away unscathed from their car which was completely written-off in a road accident. They were understandably greatly relieved:

'Guess God was watching out for us,' they said.

It's good to be able to join in the sense of relief and thanksgiving. The only problem with this view is that if God is with those people who escape a tragedy, what does that say to those people who don't escape? Does it mean that God has taken side against those who suffer?

One Saturday evening in March 1987 a car ferry, The Herald of Free Enterprise, was leaving the port of Zeebrugge, off the coast of Belgium. It capsized in the darkness. nearly two hundred passengers were drowned.

The following day an able-seaman was interviewed on television. because of a change in rotas he had not been on duty the previous night. He was devastated by the death of so many of his mates and overwhelmed with relief that through a last-minute change in the rotas he had escaped the tragedy.

Trying to find words to describe his sense of relief and good fortune he added,

'I guess God was on my side.'

But if God was on the side of this seaman, does that mean that he took sides against those who drowned and died?"

James Jones, Why Do People Suffer? The Scandal of Pain in God's World (Oxford: Lion Publishing, 1993), 52-53.

God and Pain

If I were God, I'd end all the Pain, says John Dickson in a book whose subtitle is Struggling with Evil, Suffering and Faith (Matthias Media 2001, rev. ed. 2002).

John Dickson loves to doubt (question) everything. This is how he introduces himself. "So, whatever else this book represents, at its heart it is a tribute to doubt."

The last one standing: John Dickson doesn't propose to settle the questions raised. He compares the perspective found in the Bible with alternative perspectives on suffering and suggests that the biblical is the most intriguing and beautiful one on offer.

The alternatives. In Hinduism suffering is a question of balance. Present suffering is pay-back for past evil, quite possibly evil committed in a previous life. It's intellectually satisfying. Everyone gets what they deserve until one's individual karma allows one to escape physical existence altogether and attain nirvana. Emotionally or existentially it is maybe less satisfying.

Buddhism proposes that suffering is an illusion. "Buddha came to believe that our experience of suffering was intimately related to our desire or affection for the things of the world." Remove the desire (e.g., for good health, for a better life) and the suffering (e.g., from bad health or poverty) is gone. "Philosophically, the Buddha's insight is profound. There is little question that our experience of suffering is related to desire. If I desire a full stomach, starvation will feel like suffering; if I desire human intimacy, being widowed will appear to be a tragedy; if I desire wealth, bankruptcy will look like a misfortune, and so on. Remove these desires, and all such feelings dissipate." But can I live this way?

Islamic thought puts emphasis on all events in history, including all suffering, as absolutely determined by the will of God for reasons unknowable, and indeed unquestionable, by us. For the Muslim "the cause of suffering is therefore not to be found in any factor external to God, such as the doctrine of karma in Hinduism or philosophizing about 'desire' in Buddhism, but in the personal activity of the Sovereign God. Suffering thus becomes an opportunity for the faithful to 'submit' (true to the meaning of Muslim) to Allah's indisputable will, and to reaffirm the central creed that Allah is the 'Cause of all causes'."

Within Atheism suffering is natural, "the unhappy by-product of a universe driven only by the random intersection of time and space. Everything that happens in the world - whether good or bad - happens without any design and without any thought of us at all." [The very use of value judgements like "good" or "bad" may be problematic in this view.] Can anyone really live consistently believing this?

Invitation to doubt. "One of the distinguishing things about the Good Book's approach is that it stops short of providing a single, all-governing answer such as that found in Hinduism ('balance') or in Atheism ('natural')." Especially in the Psalms, "the God of the Bible bids us to approach him with our doubts, our fears and our frustrations." It's personal engagement that matters.

The justice of God. A world without pain and suffering could have been created in the form of a Truman Show, God playing dolls-house with the world. "Much of the suffering we experience in the world is a direct result of [our] God-given independence being turned to ill effect, being turned into autonomy. And so we are able to say No to the ways of the Maker: No to justice and peace; No to marital faithfulness; No to sharing resources with the poor; No to equal rights for all; No to daily human kindness." But God pledges justice in a Day of Judgement at the end of history.

The renewal of all things. In the biblical story the disorder of nature is related to human sin, as we are intimately connected with our world and God pledges to renew "the creation damaged by our displacement of God" - the resurrection of Christ demonstrates that God means to renew the physical world.

The wounds of God. Unlike the Aristotelian and Islamic 'Unmoved-Mover' the God presented in the Bible is a 'Deeply-Moved-Mover' who has himself wounds." The God who is in control of all things, who acts behind the scenes in all things, is also the God who willingly suffers. He is the one I can shout at, cry with and find comfort in. His heart, if not all his ways, is clear to me because on the cross he wore it on his sleeve for all to see."

"Christ's death is more than an identification with us. The Bible makes clear it is a substitution for us." From it springs the invitation to mercy through which I can experience the forgiveness of sins now and the renewal of all things then.

What we all believe about death?

Any pastor taking funerals in England is likely to encounter a wide range of beliefs about death and the afterlife, sometimes expressed even within the funeral service itself, in a tribute or a poem. There are poems that claim “I did not die” (Mary Elizabeth Frye) and poems that proclaim “I fall asleep in the full and certain hope / That my slumber shall not be broken” (Samuel Butler).

Given this diversity of beliefs, it has not yet ceased to amaze me to discover that there is one conviction on which everyone seems to unite – a belief that is regularly expressed at our around funerals and never, it seems, contradicted. It is a notion that is not readily compatible with the Christian tradition and yet put forward by Christians as well as non-Christians, religious people as well as agnostics and atheists.

It is the affirmation that a person’s death brings an end to that person’s suffering. (Death does of course usually increase suffering for others but it is widely believed that at least the dead no longer suffer.)

What are the grounds for such a belief? Obviously, if a person suffers from a severe illness, this suffering comes to an end in the absence of a functioning body with which to experience the suffering. In this sense, the suffering has come to an end – like the suffering of the woman abused by her partner once she has left him. But we know of course that such a woman, now protected from the physical blows of her abuser, might still suffer and especially so if she loves her abuser or her children are still with her partner.

We know about mental anguish, depression and all sorts of suffering that has a physical manifestation and even often a physical cause among others but cannot be reduced to physical pain. Why do we believe that such suffering always comes to an end with death?

Is it because you need a body to experience the pain? This would be a good argument. Materialists who believe that when our bodies cease to function, we are gone, extinguished for ever, can affirm that someone’s death does indeed bring an end to that person’s suffering (as well as their joy and everything else).

Indeed, something similar (although ultimately quite different) could be said from within the Christian tradition by those who believe in “soul sleep” (e.g., Martin Luther, as far as I know) or affirm “non-reductive physicalism” (e.g., Joel B. Green).

What puzzles me is that the belief that there is no suffering beyond death is so firmly anchored also among those who assume that the dead still exist and live somewhere. What is the basis for this firm conviction?

Is it that we believe the dead to be “in the hands of God” (or some benevolent force) in a way they were not while they still inhabited mortal bodies?

It never seemed to me wise to query such beliefs in the context of bereavement and funeral. But when we reflect on our mortality in other contexts, e.g. on Ash Wednesday, we may do well to ponder these things. Are our bodies to be blamed for suffering? Is death to be praised for bringing release?

Life is gift. Life is not an entitlement. Life is not an achievement. Life is gift. Sometimes we cannot receive this gift without suffering. Sometimes suffering can be a gift because there are things worse than suffering. Arguably death is one of them. Our hope of freedom from suffering, certainly all unnecessary suffering, should rest in God, the giver of life, not in death, the destroyer of bodies.

Bonhoeffer's Creed

I believe that God can and will generate good out of everything, even out of the worst evil. For that, he needs people who allow that everything that happens fits into a pattern for good.

I believe that God will give us in each state of emergency as much power of resistance as we need. But he will not give in advance, so that we do not rely on ourselves but on him alone. Through such faith all anxiety concerning the future should be overcome.

I believe that even our mistakes and failings are not in vain, and that it is not more difficult for God to cope with these as with our assumed good deeds.

I believe that God is not a timeless fate, but that he waits for and responds to honest prayers and responsible action.

"Bonhoeffer wrote this creed shortly before his execution by the Gestapo, which took place twenty-three days before Germany’s surrender. Death, said Bonhoeffer, is the supreme festival on the road to freedom. If he’s wrong, all is lost. If he’s right, it’s just begun."

Philip Yancey, The Question That Never Goes Away: What is God up to in a world of such tragedy and pain? (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2013), 135-136.

Grief is the place where love and pain converge

The title is a sentence from Philip Yancey, The Question That Never Goes Away: What is God up to in a world of such tragedy and pain? (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2013, 111, immediately following a quotation from Bonhoeffer:

 "Nothing can make up for the absence of someone we love, and it would be wrong to try and find a substitute; we must simply hold out and see it through. That sounds very hard at first, but at the same time it is a great consolation. It remains unfilled, preserves the bonds between us. It is nonsense to say that God fills the gap. God does not fill it, but on the contrary, he keeps it empty and so helps us to keep alive our former communion with each other, even at the cost of pain." (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Martyred Christian [New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1983], 183)

Later on Yancey observes, "When I was writing the book Where is God When It Hurts? I noticed a detail at the end of Job that had always escaped me. After Job goes through his time of trial, the author notes, God meticulously restored double all that he had lost: 14,000 sheep to replace 7,000; 6,000 camels to replace 3,000; 1,000 oxen and donkeys to replace 500. There is, however, one exception. Job lost seven sons and three daughters, and in the restoration he got seven sons and three daughters - the same number as before, not double. A human being cannot be replaced, like sheep or cattle." (123-124)

The Question That Never Goes Away

Heavenly Father,
whose children suffered at the hands of Herod,
though they had done no wrong:
by the suffering of your Son
and by the innocence of our lives
frustrate all evil designs
and establish your reign of justice and peace;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.


Philip Yancey, The Question That Never Goes Away: What is God up to in a world of such tragedy and pain? (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2013) has the following quotes:

Miroslav Volf: Those who observe suffering are tempted to reject God; those who experience it often cannot give up on God, their solace and their agony...You can protest against the evil of the world only if you believe in a good God. Otherwise the protest doesn’t make sense.(Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace ([Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005], 190-91

Ingmar Bergman: You were born without purpose, you live without meaning, living is its own meaning. When you die, you are extinguished. (The Magic Lantern: An Autobiography [New York: Viking Penguin, 1988], 204)

and having asked for many years "Where is God when it hurts?" now also asks: "Where is no-God when it hurts?"

"Only a suffering God can answer whether this planet is worth the cost. I have a clue to the answer, though, after talking to families who lost a son or daughter. If you ask them - 'These six or seven years you had with your child, were they worth the pain you feel now?' - you will hear a decisive Yes. As the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote after the death of a young friend, ''Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.' Perhaps God feels the same way about fallen creation?" (109)