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The book of Job is my favorite in the Old Testament. It is brutally honest. It provides no easy answers. It concludes, leaving us with life as unfathomable mystery and that we cannot possibly understand it. It admits that even though there may be meaning, we aren’t privy to it. This is life as I experience it.
The crucifixion illustrates this even more graphically. Looking back, Paul says that God emptied himself of himself and became a man. As a human being, God experiences the absence of God. God has forsaken himself. Jesus, not only God as a human being, but Jesus as a human being, actually a human being, experiences the apparent meaninglessness of life accompanied by the forsakenness of God. Jesus, fully God and fully man, both conjoined together experience the very real absence of God.
This is the Jesus I identify with because it is the fullest identification with and liberation of humanity.
