“If only I had some courage.”

The other day I was sitting in my back yard reading about the problem of suffering in the world. Most authors Christian and non, ancient or modern, see this one issue as the single greatest challenge to Christianity.

 

The question of logic goes, If God is all good, all powerful, all knowing, and all present, how can he allow humans to undergo such suffering within his world. The Christian authors came up with really good arguments about the existence of a real choice, a real Satan, and a fallen world.

As I was pondered what I had read, I got up from my patio chair to pull a few weeds in my backyard. My little girl Kassie helped me. I would pull the weeds and hand them to her. She would then take them over to the green waste bin and get up on her tippy toes to drop them in. She is quite the helper.

 

Then one time I reached down into the ivy to pull up some weeds and accidentally grabbed some dead berry bushes that contained some very nasty thorns. The thorns were so bad that I could not grab them anywhere without pricking my fingers. 

Only two weeks after Easter, I thought of how these thorns were probably just like the cruel crown of thorns that the Roman soldiers pressed onto Jesus head. Then it struck me. These thorns grow naturally because of the curse of Genesis 3.  

It says:

 

To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, ….

 

Basically, God tells them that because they disobeyed and ate the fruit the earth would be cursed. It will no longer effortlessly produce fruit, but in order to gain a crop humans must work the ground with toil, and by the sweat of our brows. Consequently, from that moment on, all fruit would be tainted by thorns.

 

When Jesus was on the earth he never tried to argue the logical dilemma of the curse and the goodness of God. The Jews have always maintained that YHWH is all loving and all powerful and yet he still allows the mystery of suffering to remain.

 

Instead of fine sounding arguments, Jesus silenced all need for quarrel by carrying the full brunt of the curse at his death. And the crown of thorns turned out to be more than a cruel mockery to Jesus title as King of the Jews. In divine irony, Jesus crown of thorns have become an everlasting symbol echoing back to the Genesis 3 curse. His crown cries out “this king has come to bare the curse of all creation on his bloody, sweaty brow.”

 

Jesus did not need to argue the logic of how God could be loving, and bring suffering. Instead in one amazing act of love he showed how the father allowed humans to receive the consequences of their choice, and then paid for that very choice by the sacrifice of his own sinless son.

 

What a glorious crown! A symbol on his head of the curse he paid for. How amazing are these thorns! Thank you Jesus for these thorns!