Today. Who are you and where are you today? Yes, life is a journey. Yes, there’s a destination, but what happens along the road matters more than where you end up. It’s about a process instead of a product. That’s why my life today is all about discovering play. If you want to embrace this adventure, you need to start with three questions:

1. Where do I think I’m going? This is your believed destination. It’s where you think you’re going right now. Odds are, this will change. But that doesn’t matter. You just need to know where you think you’re going so you can answer the next two questions.
2. What do I need to do to get there? If your believed destination is your final destination, then what do you need to do today to move in that direction? What do you need to say yes to? More importantly, what do you have to say no to? What do you need to learn? Who do you need to spend time with?
3. How far can I go today? This is the most important question. It’s also the most painful and demands the most honesty. It insists you admit that this journey will have a tomorrow. And a day after that. Most likely, it requires many days after that. Yes, you want the payoff now, but that’s not how this works. Instead, in time, you will discover that they true reward is in the journey and the process. So, instead of wistfully dreaming of something off in the distance, this is the question you need to focus on.

What does it look like to answer this question? Truthfully? Honestly? Brutally?

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In response to my Good Friday post, my friend, Pastor Dion Garrett, added the following commentary on Facebook, “We have to read the OT sacrificial system through Jesus. Not the other way around. Jesus reveals the Father. Important read.”

While I said nothing about the OT sacrificial system in my original post, I appreciate Dion making the connection. Why? Because in pop-Christian thought, Jesus’ crucifixion is bound to a variety of sacrificial images from the Hebrew Bible. Moreover, pop-theology forces these images into a narrative of an offering that pays the price for sin. This is true even though these amalgamations taken in their original context present immediate flaws. As two examples, the Passover Lamb was not a sacrifice for sin and the scapegoat on the Day of Atonement wasn’t killed.

So, how should Christians make sense of the OT sacrificial system?

How should Christians make sense of the OT sacrificial system? Click To Tweet

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The God That Failed is a 1949 book featuring six essays on the authors “conversion to and subsequent disillusionment with communism.” In 1991, Metallica released a song by the same title. The lyrics explore the grief of a son who lost his mother to cancer because she refused to seek medical attention but trusted that god would heal her. When she died, that god became the god that failed.

While these examples involve belief in a failed system or being which is ultimately declared the god that failed, there is another God that failed … a God whose failure the church continually seeks to justify in what I see as the world’s most prevalent and damaging, yet unrecognized theodicy.

For those not familiar with the term, a theodicy is an attempt to create space for the belief in God/god. For example, the most popular theodicy attempts to explain the question the goodness of a God who permits evil. Oddly, there is nothing that undermines the divinity defended more than the theodicy itself because it takes something beyond comprehension and makes it both comfortable and accessible (for more on theodicy, I suggest Placher’s, The Domestication of Transcendence.).

So who is this god that failed at the heart this ultimate theodicy? Who is the God that failed who the church seeks to continually justify? Christ crucified.

Who is the God that failed who the church seeks to continually justify? Christ crucified. Click To Tweet

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How, in light of what I wrote about Good Friday, do I understand Easter? In other words, according to the model I grew up with, the resurrection evidenced God’s acceptance of Jesus’ sacrifice for sin. However, if the crucifixion isn’t God punishing Jesus, but is Jesus taking our violence, hatred, and anger upon himself, and leaving them in the grave, what is Easter supposed to mean?

I argue that different biblucal authors have different perspectives. While they all hold to the broader perspective outlined above, they each have a different nuance. In this post, I explore the synoptic Gospel accounts. I’m not including John because it is at the core of reframing God’s glory in Friday’s post. If you want, you can read a more expansive version of this post in Chapter 2 of my dissertation, Re-Storying God: Re-Imagining the God of the Bible and Re-Enchanting Our Neo-Secular Selves.

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