It's all so clear to me right now. I can see it all. I know why Christ is so important for a full relationship with God. I can see what it is all about. I get the power of God's vulnerability. What is the purpose of the universe? Why are we here? These questions dissolve for me in the questions of time and eternity. God is Eternity receiving that which is created in time. Value is recognized as value because goodness is recognized as eternal. Meaning is significance. One could, I suppose, say that the purpose of the Universe is for God to continue to grow Himself. God takes new forms and new attainments of value and adds that to His experience, and His very being.
This journey of personal growth is only possible, however, if God makes Himself vulnerable to the world. Only a humble God seeks to grow. Only a humble God accounts Himself broken so that others get the privilege of adding to His very life. God must give the universe creativity if the universe is to create new forms and expressions of the good. Yet granting self-creative power is by its very nature self-limiting. Freedom does not create evil, but it does create the possibility for evil. God knows He risks suffering in creating. Yet he does it anyways.
Everything we do is visited upon Jesus Christ. That man, nailed to a cross, is all of reality driven into the life of God. Every moment, every choice, every experience is filled with a deep significance because every moment is visited upon God in some way, shape or form. Why do we need a relationship with Jesus Christ? In order to be fully human. In order to know what the universe is offering us. It is not enough to know of the suffering of God. You must experience, you must see it. It must break your ego, at least momentarily. Here in this man is the entirety of creation laid bare.
God is beyond good and evil, because good and evil are merely human descriptions of the life of God. Evil is both nothingness and the pain of God. It is nothingness, because no evil experience is retained by God's memory. The torturer and murderer feel joy in their acts. This joy is fleeting and without meaning. It passes into utter void. Yet the one that is hurt is not alone in their hurt. God shares in their pain. That moment is retained in the mind of God forever. Sin is the suffering of God. Virtue is the joy of God. Jesus Christ is knowledge of God. God is revealed in Jesus Christ. God is the eternalizing of the moment. The Kingdom of God is God. Or, rather, God is the Kingdom of God. Whitehead knew exactly what he was talking about.
Would Whitehead's observation about God as 'the co-sufferer who understands' be possible if not for Jesus Christ? Whitehead didn't think so. Of course he saw no ontological difference between Jesus and any other person, but he did see an important epistemological difference. But doesn't epistemology track ontology? In science it does. Scientists are apt to think that what they know is the case is close to what is, in fact, going on.
Man my head is cluttered.
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