God Squad: Jesus' resurrection the ultimate sign of divine love

Q: This probably isn't your bailiwick, but maybe you and Father Tom Hartman talked about it. Did God feel pain (not literally) as he watched his son being tortured and crucified? — Anonymous

A: What a wonderful and difficult question. Tommy, my former God Squad partner, and I did talk about it and this is what he taught me. Because God is not a person, it is wrong to ascribe human emotions like pain to God. It is called anthropopathism. However, Tommy felt, and I agreed, that God feels a kind of love that is not human but is real and infinitely compassionate. Therefore, it makes sense that God felt pain at the torture and death of Jesus. Pain and love. Pain because of the torture and death Jesus had to undergo to make his sacrifice real, but also love that Jesus was willing to suffer for the sins of humanity. For Christians, Jesus' resurrection is the ultimate sign of that divine love.

Also, Tommy taught me that since Jesus came to Earth precisely to suffer and die, no blame for his death is appropriate or fair given his divinely ordained sacrificial mission. That did not make it easy for Jesus or God, but it made it necessary.

There is a text from the Hebrew Bible in Genesis, Chapter 22, that I then shared with Tommy that has similar theological conflicts. It is God's command to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac to prove his faith. Abraham had to believe two contradictory things: that God wanted him to sacrifice his innocent son and that God would never make him go through with such an abominable command. If he believed that God would never make him do it, he does not pass the test. If he believed that God would make him do it, then God is a monster. The life of faith is filled with such tests. Only God knows how we score on such tests. Our job is to be willing to sacrifice for God and to believe that such sacrifices cause God as much pain as they cause us.

Q: I don't understand the biblical statement that "God created man in God's image." That makes no sense to me at all! It cannot mean physically, because God seems to be a spirit, and not a defined physical being. I do not believe it could possibly mean spiritually because, while mankind is capable of wonderful acts of kindness and self-sacrifice, mankind is also capable of horrific acts of violence and cruelty. What does that biblical phrase mean? I would really appreciate an answer. Thank you. — P

A: Another wonderful question. I wrote a children's book called "Does God Have a Big Toe?" And the answer is no; God does not have a big toe, though we have big toes and we are made in the image of God. God is not a human being though for some Christians Jesus is an exception to that rule.

What it means to be made in the image of God is that we have free will to make choices about our lives. We can know the difference between good and evil. We are aware of the moral good. It means that we must care for one another, that we must strive to pursue justice in the world, that we too must fill the world with life, that we must feed the hungry among us, that we should rest on the Sabbath, that when we kill an innocent person we are killing the image of God in this world, and that we must see every other human being as an image of God.

We learn this from an old Jewish story of how the great sage Rabbi Nachman of Berditchev was walking along the street with his disciples when he stopped and asked, "Who is that across the street?" One of them said, "Rebbe, that is just Moshele, the water drawer. That is nobody." The Rabbi chastised them and said, "You are not my students until you can say about any person you see walking on the street, 'There goes the image of God.' " And that is what it means to be made in the image of God.