Today is “Good Friday.”
I remain curious and somewhat concerned about what we each might think is good about it.
Many of us were handed crucifixion theologies that ascribe exclusively to a substitutionary theory of atonement. In that framework, when the question “what can be done about sin?” was posed to the most all-powerful, all-knowing, omnipresent being in the universe, the only answer he/she/they could come up with was, “maybe murder?”
What does it do to a people (and to a planet) when we are spiritually socialized to respect, to revere, and yes, to repeat violence? It is inconceivably difficult (if not impossible) to teach and to believe that “God is love” if God’s best application of that virtue was to develop a transactional system of earning eternal “in-group” status, one only possible if innocents are offered up and destroyed.
Is it any wonder, then, that so many Christians feel comfortable with the public objectification and eradication of precious human bodies, so long as they can write a narrative in which the end justifies the means? What type of “faith” is born of such cruelty? Unfortunately, we have centuries of answers to this question.
What, then, do we understand to be “good” about this Friday?
Perhaps a look at alternative theories can help answer that question.
Other Ways of Seeing
I remember being underwhelmed by the Easter story as a child. The notion that Jesus would die for me paled in comparison to the idea that he would come near to me—to live in a body like mine, and in a world like mine, both so full of beauty and tragedy. As it turns out, then and now, I am drawn to what has been referred to as the Franciscan view of atonement. It holds that Jesus was always God’s “plan A,” sent to earth not to change God’s mind about us (after our spectacular fall from Grace), but rather to change our minds about God.
Like so many elements of so-called Christian education, atonement theories that do not support the mission and motivations of those in power often remain nothing more than privileged pontifications. They stay behind seminary doors, left in those stuffy rooms and never passed on to the rest of us out here in the wilderness of human existence.
What would it mean if Good Friday were used to reflect on the ways God continues to be altogether different from who we thought God would be?
What would it change if, rather than viewing humans as so colossally sinful that, even before we were born, we were bad enough to be responsible for extinguishing the divine, we instead viewed God as so colossally kind that big, expansive, small, and ordinary acts of connection were all God ever entered into our world to do?
What could it be like down here if God were free to love far outside the boundaries of our lusts, lethargies, and other human limitations—never imprisoned (and therefore disempowered) by a contract that demanded a death to assuage divine wrath?
I think it could change everything.
God With Us As We Wait
So what if, for today, we practiced sober reflection and gratitude—not for a violent “Plan B” salvation strategy after we went and ruined everything with the sins of curiosity and desire, but for the ongoing untethering from the idea that God could only love us if we were content, obedient, and covered in someone else’s blood?
What if we also practiced bearing the actual, ugly truth: that Jesus died not because we are all sinners, but because when powerless and powerful masses join together in search of a common enemy to blame for their pain, they will always find one?
And what if, on this Good Friday, we reminded one another that today, and every day, to be in the story of God is not to be saved from the agonies of this world, but to have the promise of something unexpected just around the corner, and someone with us as we wait?
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Kerri Fisher is Clinical Associate Professor and the Associate Dean for Community and Action at Baylor University’s Diana R. Garland School of Social Work.