Sunday, November 6, 2011

Chapter 54: Chutes and Ladders

Which comes first – forgiveness or sacrifice? Is it because of forgiveness that Christ sacrificed Himself and died for our sins or is it because He made this sacrifice that we are forgiven? Or both?

As of late, I am more and more cognizant of the controversy of the Shroud. If there is only one truth... there is only one truth. Likely none of us fully knows it.

When we entangle ourselves in the morality game of chutes and ladders, striving to climb above each other's understanding and knowing, claiming our way is what is true...down the chute we go.

Your way, my way, every way the highway. There is only one way, God's way, and when we profess to know it, take ownership over it, leverage it for our own purposes...I'm guessing we are just being ridiculous.

God's truth is at once singular and abundant. Our interpretations of it are many and we each tend towards claiming ours is the only answer. But there is no need to function in scarcity where truth is concerned if the one truth is the abundance of God's love.

All this wrangling over the image on the Shroud and how it got there and if it is real or fake is our wrangling. Nothing in any of it poses any genuine threat because we cannot render threats against the Almighty, no matter how powerful we think we are.

The questions I ask come out of the freedom to explore that the fiction of my existence affords. Perhaps we are all fictitious characters in God's story of the truth about the Shroud. Perhaps He created the Shroud as a storyboard upon which we can sketch out our doubts and fears about suffering, forgiveness, salvation and the unknown.

How apropos that the Shroud should induce so much doubt. Even those who believe it is real possibly, at some point, have had moments of doubt and fear that they will be proven wrong.

To fully trust the love of God, perhaps we need this cloth as a place to reconcile our doubts and fears. The level playing field is the mystery – the fact that no one knows for certain how the image got onto the cloth.

Those who say it is a fake are perhaps so doubtful and fearful of the perfect love of God that the Shroud becomes their crutch of disbelief, their desired “I told you so” with which they can challenge the faith of those who believe it is real.

It may be that, for all of us, the cloth evokes our deepest fears regarding the possibility of suffering as punishment. But if God's perfect love is abundant, then Christ's suffering drives away any doubts we may harbor about forgiveness and any fears that haunt us where suffering and death are concerned.

Perhaps in the serene suffering and sacrifice recorded on the image on the Shroud we witness God's perfect love.