Faith and suffering…

…The Mind in Pain by James Mumford. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Paradoxically, I find that reading about the abandonment of Christ can be profoundly reassuring. Why? Because here, as Calvin highlights, is a precedent. Clearly, there is an utterly unique phenomenon at play in the Passion narrative: the Son of God who takes away the sin of the world, who carries the curse, and therefore upon whom the Father cannot look. Nevertheless, at the level of experience, it is profoundly comforting to learn that Christ has been to a place “pitched past pitch of grief.” He too has suffered the darkest possible night.