'I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the One Nietzche ridiculed as "God on the Cross". In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who is immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in many different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world and I have had to turn away. And in my imagination I have turned instead to that lonely twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs, wretched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God forsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside His immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of His. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross which symbolizes divine suffering. "the cross of Christ is Gods self-justification in such a world'. P.T Forsyth cited in John Scott's Cross of Christ.
|'ve read a few quotes of Forsyth's shall have to read him.
God Bless
Stephen <><
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