God's Problem (12 page)

Christians eventually, of course, came to think that this passage
was
referring to their messiah, Jesus. I’ll say a few words about that in a moment. For now, the question is what Second Isaiah might have meant in its own historical context. If this passage is referring to “my servant, Israel,” what does it all mean?

Like the other prophets, Second Isaiah believed that sin requires a punishment. Israel, the servant of God, exiled to Babylon, had suffered horribly at the hands of its oppressors. This suffering brought an atonement. Just as an animal sacrificed in the Temple had brought atonement for sin, so too had exiled Israel. It had suffered for the transgressions of others. Using a metaphor in which Israel is identified as an individual, a “servant of the L
ORD
,” Second Isaiah indicates that the exiled people have suffered vicariously for others. The nation can therefore be forgiven, restored to a right relationship with God, and returned to the promised land.
⁹
The logic of this passage, in other words, is rooted in the classical understanding of suffering, that sin requires a punishment and that suffering comes because of disobedience.

The Christian Understanding of Atonement

Even though Second Isaiah was speaking to Israel in exile, to show that the punishment they had received from God was sufficient to bring a reconciliation between God and his people, later Christians thought that his words about the suffering servant were to be taken messianically, as a reference to the crucifixion of Jesus. It is important to remember that when Christians told the stories about Jesus’ crucifixion, and when later Gospel writers described what transpired at the crucifixion, they were doing so with passages like Isaiah 53 (and Psalm 22, for example) in mind. The descriptions in those passages of one who suffers came to color how the Christians told their stories of Jesus’ passion. Thus, the suffering servant, originally thought to be Israel, was silent “like a lamb” during his sufferings (Isa. 53:7), and Jesus was shown as silent throughout his trial. The suffering servant was “numbered with the transgressors” (53:12), and Jesus was crucified between two evildoers. The servant was “despised and rejected by others” (53:3), and Jesus was rejected by his people and mocked by the Roman soldiers. The servant “was wounded for our transgressions” (53:5), and Jesus’ death was
thought to bring atonement. The servant “made his tomb…with the rich” (53:9), and Jesus was thought to have been buried by a rich man, Joseph of Arimathea. The servant was thought to be vindicated after his suffering, so that the Lord would “prolong his days” (53:10), and Jesus was said to have been raised from the dead. It is no accident that the crucifixion accounts of the New Testament sound so much like Isaiah 53—the authors of these accounts were thinking of the suffering servant of Isaiah when writing their accounts.

There is one particularly important implication for our study: the classical view of the relationship of sin and suffering is not simply found throughout the pages of the Hebrew Bible. It is central to the understanding of the New Testament as well. Why is it that Jesus has to suffer and die? Because God has to punish sin. Second Isaiah provided the early Christians with a scheme for understanding Jesus’ horrible passion and death: this was suffering undertaken for the sake of others. It was through the death of Jesus that others could be made right with God. Jesus was in fact a sacrifice for sin.

I have already mentioned that this is the view expressed in the New Testament book of Hebrews, a book that tries to show that the religion based on Jesus is far superior to the religion of Judaism, in every way. For this author, Jesus is superior to Moses who gave the Law to the Jews (Heb. 3); he is superior to Joshua who conquered the promised land (Heb. 3); he is superior to the priests who offer sacrifices in the temple (Heb. 4–5); and most notably, he is superior to the sacrifices themselves (Heb. 9–10). Jesus’ death is seen as the perfect sacrifice, the sacrifice that took away the need for all other (Jewish) sacrifices, in that it brought perfect holiness (or “sanctification”) to those who accepted it: “It is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (10:10); for “Christ offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins” (10:12). Implicit here is the idea that the suffering of one
substitutes for the suffering of others, an atonement made vicariously for those who deserve to fall under the wrath of God.

The apostle Paul, writing some decades earlier than the anonymous author of Hebrews (whom later Christian readers mistakenly assumed was Paul), had a roughly similar view. As Paul states in his first letter to the Corinthians, “I handed over to you as of first importance what in turn I had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3). Paul is somewhat more expansive in his letter to the Romans, where he indicates that the “wrath of God” (Rom. 1:18) has come upon all people because all have sinned, but that Christ himself brought an atonement by shedding his blood for others:

For Paul there is a relatively simple formula for how God provides eternal salvation for his people: sin leads to punishment; Christ took the punishment upon himself; therefore, Christ’s death can atone for the sins of others.

This entire view of atonement is rooted in the classical understanding of suffering: sin requires suffering as punishment. Otherwise, God could simply forgive people whenever he wished, and there would be no reason for Christ to die. The Christian doctrine of atonement, and salvation for eternal life, is rooted in the prophetic view that people suffer because God is punishing them for disobedience.

Nowhere is this view of atonement more graphically portrayed than in Mark, the first of the Gospels to be written. There is little to suggest that the anonymous author of Mark’s Gospel had actually read the writings of the apostle Paul—who was writing about
twenty years before Mark itself appeared—but in many ways Mark’s view of the importance of Jesus’ death reflects a Pauline understanding of atonement. As Jesus himself is recorded as teaching his disciples in Mark: “The son of man [i.e., Jesus himself] did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Here is the doctrine of one life being given for another, right out of Second Isaiah.

Later in Mark, Jesus interprets his death as an atoning sacrifice for sin. Before he is arrested he has a final meal with his disciples. This appears to be a Passover meal—that is, the annual meal celebrated by Jews to commemorate the events of the exodus under Moses, many centuries earlier. Jews annually would (and still do) have a special meal on Passover with symbolic foods to recall their deliverance by God: they would eat a lamb to recall the lambs killed the night that the angel of death “passed over” the houses of the Israelites en route to killing the firstborn children of the Egyptians; they would eat bitter herbs to recall their bitter slavery in Egypt; they would eat unleavened bread to recall that they had to escape from Pharaoh’s people quickly, without having time even to make bread with leaven; they would drink several cups of wine.

At this meal, according to Mark, Jesus took the symbolic foods of the meal and instilled yet further significance in them. He took the bread and broke it, saying, “This is my body.” Then he took the cup of wine and said, “This is my blood of the covenant that is poured out for many” (Mark 14:22–24). In other words, Jesus’ body, like the bread, had to be broken; and his blood had to be shed. This was not suffering that he himself deserved as a punishment for his own sin. It was for the sake of others.

Other Instances of the Classical View in the New Testament

The Christian doctrine of the atonement is thus based on a kind of transformation of the classical view of why there is suffering in the world. According to the prophets, suffering here and now, in this
life, comes to those who disobey God. Some later Jews and most later Christians came to think that suffering for sin would come not in this life but in the afterlife. We will be exploring the reasons for this transformation in chapter 8. For now, it is enough to observe that the atonement brought by Christ’s death was thought by Christians to remove the need to suffer eternal torment in the afterlife as a punishment for sin. Christ had taken the punishment upon himself.

There are other reflections of the prophetic view of suffering in the New Testament, even in passages that do not speak about atonement. These too, however, are largely about what happens to a person after death. Nowhere is the teaching of future punishment more graphic than in Jesus’ account of the judgment of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25. Some scholars take this passage, which is found only in Matthew, as one of Jesus’ parables; others think it is an actual prediction of what will take place at the end of time. In either case, Jesus is speaking about what will happen when the great cosmic judge of the earth, whom he calls the Son of Man, “comes in his glory with his angels” (Matt. 25:31). All the nations of earth will be gathered before him, and he will separate them into two groups, with the “sheep” at his right hand and the “goats” at his left. To the sheep, the mighty king (Son of Man) will say, “Come, you who are blessed of my Father! Inherit the kingdom that has been prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” And why will these people come into God’s blessed kingdom? The Lord tells them: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a foreigner and you welcomed me, naked and you gave me something to wear, sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me” (Matt. 25:34–35). But the blessed ones are confused, because they don’t remember doing such things for the great king. He tells them, “Truly I say to you, in so far as you did these things for the least of these my brothers, you did them for me.” In other words, righteous acts of kindness done for others who are suffering will bring eternal reward.

And failing to act righteously toward others will bring eternal punishment. The king then speaks to the “goats” and tells them: “Get away from me, you who are cursed, to the eternal fire that has been prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink; I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me something to wear, sick and in prison and you did not visit me” (Matt. 25:41–43). These people are equally perplexed: they too do not remember seeing the Lord in need. But he tells them, “Truly I say to you, in so far as you did not do these things to the least of these, neither did you do them for me.” And so, Jesus indicates, those who have failed to behave righteously toward others in need “will go away to eternal punishment” (Matt. 25:26).

Eternal punishment. This is suffering in extremis. Baking in fire that never ends, forever and ever. Why do people suffer eternal torment? Because they sinned. Here is the prophetic view recast as a doctrine of the afterlife. God causes suffering because people disobey him.

A Tentative Evaluation

And so, as we have seen, the classical view of suffering permeates much of the Bible. It is found in the prophets, the book of Proverbs, the historical books of the Hebrew Bible, and in parts of the New Testament. In most of the Hebrew Bible, the view is thought to apply in the present life, in the here and now. Those individuals, groups, or nations that obey God and do his will, thrive; those who do not, suffer. They suffer because God is punishing them for their sins. The New Testament authors often portray this punishment as eternal, with no chance of remission. For most of the writers of the Hebrew Bible, especially the prophets, the suffering is meant as an incentive for repentance. If people return to God and do what is right, he will relinquish the punishment, relieve the pain and suf
fering, and restore people to health and prosperity. The good times will roll.

Still, there are the unfortunate historical realities. These predictions of future success and happiness never did come to fulfillment. Many people in ancient Israel did return to God, did abandon their worship of idols, did strive to follow God’s laws, did keep their part of the covenant. But suffering never ceased and the utopian kingdom never arrived.

The English word
utopia
is interesting. It comes from two Greek words that mean “good place.” But if a different etymology is used, it can also mean “no place.” The creators of the English term had this irony in mind: utopia is that perfect place that, in fact, does not exist. The utopian kingdom in which there is no more pain, misery, and suffering is nowhere to be found. That was certainly true of ancient Israel. Despite returns to God, despite godly rulers, despite attempts to be the people of God, Israel continued to experience famine, drought, pestilence, war, and destruction. Just on the military front, after the nation was overrun by the Assyrians, there came the Babylonians. After them came the Persians. And then the Greeks. Then the Egyptians. Then the Syrians. And then the Romans. One after another, the great empires of the world overwhelmed and absorbed tiny Israel, leading to one political setback, one military defeat, one social nightmare after another.

In no small measure, that is why the classical prophetic answer to the problem of suffering came to seem empty and dissatisfying to so many later authors of ancient Israel, who took implicitly or explicitly contrary views (Job, Ecclesiastes, Daniel, and so on, as we will see). In another sense, the question raised by the ancient prophets is the question raised by millions of religious people over the ages. The question was rooted in a firmly held belief that God had called Israel and intervened on its behalf by delivering it from its dire suffering under slavery in Egypt. But if God intervened before to help us, why doesn’t he help us now? Could it be that he himself is the reason we are suffering? Could it be that we have offended him?
How can we return to his good favor, so that our misery will end? The prophets and other biblical writers, of course, were not stating a general religious principle that was to be accepted as true for all times and places. They were speaking to a specific time and place. But readers over the years have sometimes extracted a universal principle from these writings and insisted that suffering comes because God is punishing us for our sin.