o lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. His glory is the cross; his death is his hour of power. The theology of the cross sees the glory of God hidden under the suffering and death of the Son of God. The cross of Christ is the starting point and the focal point for all theological thinking, comprehending the visible and manifest things of God through Christ's suffering and his cross. Centered in the cross of Christ, the theology of the cross is uniquely positioned to deal with suffering and death.
The theology of glory calls suffering "evil" and the absence of suffering it calls "good." It sees suffering and death as defeat and loss, a failure on God's part to be a decent deity. It sees the sufferer and says, "There but for the grace of God go I." The theology of the cross sees things as they are and names them for what they are-sin and death, grace and mercy, body and blood. It sees in suffering and death the hidden hand of God at work in, with, and under all things. It sees the sufferer and says, "There by the grace of God goes he."
This question arises from a theology of glory. It adopts the categories of good and evil and assumes a person has the ability infallibly to discern the difference between the two. Bad things ought to happen to bad people and good things to good people, if an almighty, merciful, and respectable God runs the cosmos. But bad things routinely happen to good people, and good things to bad people. So the theology of glory concludes that something is wrong with God. The Creator is placed on trial by the creature. The clay judges the divine Potter's handiwork and finds it to be less than acceptable. God has dropped the ball, and so explanations are demanded.
In the Bible, bad things happen to good people (as in the book of Job), good things happen to bad people (as with the wealthy man in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus [Luke 16:19-31]), and many things happen for no apparent reason at all except that the work of God may be manifest (as with the man born blind [John 9:1-3]).
A few days after the terrorism of September 11th, some attempted to explain our national tragedy in moralistic terms: This was God's judgment on the nation for its immorality. Bad things happen to bad nations. Bad things happened; therefore, our nation must be bad-or, at least, certain elements in this nation must be bad, for which we must all suffer.
But does God operate this way, quid pro quo, this punishment for that evil? Most who suffered had little to do with the bad morals for which God was supposedly punishing the nation. We need to recall that God was willing even to let the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah off the hook for the sake of ten righteous men (see Gen. 18:32). One wonders, in retrospect, what would have happened if Abraham had gone down to one righteous man, which is where God eventually ended in reconciling the wicked world to himself for the sake of his righteous Son.
Consider the classic sufferer Job. The Book of Job is a biblical burr under the saddle of such cause-and-effect theology. Bad things happened to Job, not because he was bad, but because he was good. Job was the kind of man to whom good things ought to happen. By God's own testimony, he was "blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil." Yet he lost health, wealth, and family for no good reason. We readers alone are privy to the secret that these terrible events happened because God and the devil were having a little tte--tte over the basis of Job's faithfulness. Job's friends-Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar-were quintessential theologians of glory, interpreting his suffering as evidence of divine displeasure and urging their suffering friend to get right with God so that God would get right with him. But that offered Job no real comfort.
Even when God finally broke through in a rhetorical whirlwind (see Job 38-40), no explanations were forthcoming. Job never learned why he suffered. Were God to have ventured an explanation, Job would not have understood. God is God; Job is not God-and that's good enough for 