For a Little While

Now God did not subject the coming world, about which we are speaking, to angels. But someone has testified somewhere,

‘What are human beings that you are mindful of them,

or mortals, that you care for them?

You have made them for a little while lower than the angels;

you have crowned them with glory and honour,

subjecting all things under their feet.’

Now in subjecting all things to them, God left nothing outside their control. As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to them, but we do see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honour because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings.

-Hebrews 2:5-10

I struggle with the omnipotence of God – or rather with the notion of God’s omnipotence. How can there be judgment against human beings in light of this omnipotence? If we aren’t fully in control of our fates – as another’s omnipotence implies – then how can we face judgment? Must we not be absolutely responsible for judgment to be fair and good?

Furthermore, I can see perfectly clearly there are those who do make choices to be evil, knowing full well the suffering they cause others, and who are fully capable of choosing good instead. I’m not talking about people with mental deficiencies or handicaps or extreme ailments that would cause them to feel they have no choice in the matter. Surely choices made knowing full well the extent of suffering they cause, purely for selfish reasons, are choices that people are responsible for. But what of the suffering they cause the victims of that choice? What does that say of the omnipotence of God?

I think in this passage there is a hint of an answer to these questions. Our Lord has brought salvation to us through suffering. As we live in a fallen world, one in which evil is clearly present, temptations abound, and life isn’t always fair, suffering is an inevitable part of life. But what of those who truly seek to do good and avoid causing suffering to others? What of those who sincerely seek the good, the will of the Father, etc. and yet suffer themselves? Or suffer even because of that seeking? How does an omnipotent God allow such suffering? These are important questions.

All things will be subject to man in the world to come, the writer says. But this hasn’t happened yet, although for one man, the pioneer of our salvation, it has. And, significantly, it has happened through suffering. I get the faintest hint of this omnipotence of the Father through notions of how we endure that suffering. What depths do we seek within ourselves in terms of how we respond to that suffering? For me, this is the key to the sense of salvation noted here in Hebrews, and also to my questions about God’s omnipotence, about the Father in heaven.

I have known people in my life who have suffered greatly. There is a film about an Armenian woman who is a survivor of genocide, a witness to horrible suffering and murder of those whom she loved. The film is called, “I Will Not Be Sad in This World.” As a woman in her 90s, she loves beauty, especially the beauty she creates in her garden. I believe that this internal depth, below even the suffering, is the soul’s answer to God’s call. Her capacity to love and to create beauty is a response to suffering which continues to love God (for after all, Beauty is one of the names of God).

I think this depth of relationship to God through suffering tells us about salvation and omnipotence: that no matter what we go through – even horrible suffering in childhood – there is a depth in us from which we can respond to life that clings to the good, the true and the beautiful, and to relationship with that omnipotent God, who has made for us a place with the Son who suffered so that he calls us brothers and sisters. So that, in our suffering, we too can receive the glory of that kingdom. We too become a part of the salvation of the world, of which He is captain.