City of a Suffering God

By Josh Valley

September 24, 2018

Facing the astonishing violence that has rocked Canada’s largest city this year, chaplain Josh Valley turns to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s evocation of the God who not only loves us but suffers with us.

So, when we see God and our calling as Christians through the lens of what’s called “Bonhoeffer’s theology from below,” we will be able to respond with a sense of deep compassion (albeit despair and outrage must sometimes come first) to the woundedness and loneliness that lurks beneath the surface of violent and evil events like mass shootings, and increase in gang violence, and yes, even heinous crimes that see innocents mowed down by a deranged man behind the wheel of a rental van Bonhoeffer is saying, if we are paying attention, that there is wisdom in seeing God and our common life as he describes it here, especially events in Toronto and elsewhere that can be seen as a tragic spectacle Bonhoeffer believed that the suffering and living God can heal our woundedness and restore our sense of belonging in the Divine Community that we call Trinity, the Christ-community we call the Church, as well as the human community we call society

Read more...