Summary Of Jesus Falls The Third Time By Malcolm Guite

“How can there be a God in a world full of suffering?” This question, left unanswered, is enough to turn a potential believer or one of weak faith away from Christianity. The suffering of the world cannot be denied, especially living in a time preceded by the bloodiest century in human history. Furthermore, there is no simple, neat answer to account for the presence of pain, misery, and death within the world, while also accounting for the limitless power of a God. Malcolm Guite provides a reassuring poem in response to this issue, entitled “Jesus falls the third time,” central to his collection of poetry, Sounding the Seasons, in he describes the suffering of mankind and Christ.

The opening line the poem is thus, “Jesus weeps with you and with you he will stay.” The use of “you,” directly addresses the reader. The reader could be anyone who comes across the poem, and Guite cannot be sure who would and who would not read his poem, so the poem must refer to everyone, to not exclude any possible audiences. Guite is contending that Jesus weeps with everyone, that is, all of humanity. So, the question is: why is Jesus weeping? The poem goes on to describe the

suffering of the reader. He describes the “long descent through darkness and depression from which there seems to be no rising,” and almost wishing for a defeat, that is, death. Jesus is weeping with humanity because humanity is suffering. It doesn’t take a theologian to understand that Jesus is God, and therefore, Jesus could stop all suffering, including his own. However, he does not. In his ministry, he does not vanquish disease, poverty, and war. He ministers, performs miracles, and then goes to the cross, bearing the sin of the world, and dies. We are not to believe Christ is not in control because he suffers, but the poem expresses how we should take comfort because Christ chooses to suffer with us.
Augustine on Suffering
Augustine of Hippo, like many Christians today, could not simply dismiss the issue of suffering. A fourth century philosopher who converted to Christianity from Paganism at the age of 31, Augustine discussed the presence of suffering and evil in the world in his work, Enchiridion. His work still resonates with theologians today as an explanation for the coexistence of a loving God and a fallen world. He claims that evil cannot exist without good, and that the presence of evil in the world creates a greater good.
Augustine beings his argument referencing Genesis: God created all things and declared them good. Everything in creation is good. Therefore, he argues, evil cannot be a “thing,” because it is not good. Since it is not good or a thing, God could not have created it. Evil, rather than being something in itself, is rather the absence of good, like how a shadow is not something of its own, but is merely an obstruction of light. Similar to shadow’s dependence upon the light for its existence, evil depends upon good for its own existence. Good can exist without evil, just as angels and God do, but evil, not being a thing of itself and merely being an obstruction of good, cannot exist without the presence of good.
Knowing that goodness can exist without evil, one may ask, “then why is there evil, if good can exist without it?” Greg Koukl summarized Augustine’s answer, “since all that God made is good, even those things which appear evil only appear that way because of a limited context or perspective. When viewed as a whole, that which appears to be evil ultimately contributes to the greater good.” Christians often illustrate this concept with the image of a sunset. If one were to take a picture of the sunset, and to crop out all but a portion of a dark cloud, then viewers of the photo would believe the picture was dark, and not understand its purpose. This viewer would lack the context of the dark image, as they have no way of seeing the entire picture. If one were to see the image in its entirety, they would understand the purpose of the darker portions of the picture, which were essential for the image of the breathtaking sunset.
Augustine believed that the evil and suffering in the world contribute to goodness. The most important commandments, according to Jesus, are to love God and one another. The greatest acts of love are not possible without sin. There would be no compassion without suffering, no mercy without offence, and no forgiveness without wrongdoing. The love God has for us is expressed with his mercy and forgiveness. It is because of the fallen world that people learn to love despite one another’s faults, and it is with this sort of love that mankind becomes more Godly, for this is the love God has for man. His mercy and forgiveness, though man sins against him every day, are infinite.
Suffering as Part of the Human Condition
Suffering was not always present in the world. In the beginning, Adam and Eve lived in Eden, a beautiful garden where they lived in unity with God. There was no sin, sickness, hatred, pain, war or death. However, there was never a day in which there was no free will. God told Adam, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will surely die.” If Adam did not have the choice to eat from the tree, committing the original sin, then God would have no reason to tell Adam not to. When Adam ate the fruit, he was cast from the garden, condemning humanity with him.
“Suffering was never God’s intention for the world,” says John Berry, editor and chief of Bible Study magazine.

“Humans made the choice to allow suffering to enter the world.” By eating the apple, Adam made a conscious choice to go against the will of God, and it was this choice that cast mankind from the garden, and rebellious choices of the like made by his descendants that allow suffering to continue in the world. Mchanon, a Puritan minister says on the matter, “When men are regenerated, they have the capacity to choose good or evil. The will was corrupted as a result of original sin, which envelops all of humanity in a mass damnation, unless otherwise rescued by Christ.” Man’s free will, a good gift from God, has been corrupted, and without Christ, acting in perfect submission, there is no

redemption.
“Simply because we are human, we suffer,” contends Mary Craig in her article on human suffering. She argues that if God intervened with mankind’s decisions, then free will would be meaningless, “and we would be no more than robots. The price of our freedom is pain and suffering, a price that must be paid.” Man removes God and His goodness from their lives when making choices, and it is those choices that lead to war and destruction, she argues, not a sadistic God. Men repeatedly make such choices, for it is in their nature since the original sin, as Paul tells the Romans, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
In this fallen world, where suffering and sin are a reality of the human condition, Guite is correct in assuming that his readers have all suffered, and have reached low points in their lives in which they felt like they could not go on: “He stumbles beside you when the doubt/ That always haunts you cuts you down at last/ And takes away the hope that drove you on.” This doubt becomes most prevalent in man’s darkest hours. When Jesus separated from God to become a man on earth, and in this felt the distance from God that men feel. It is this feeling of distance from God that exacerbates suffering, and takes away feelings of hope. However, the hope is Christ himself, who has stumbled and fallen with men, but has risen, and so we will rise with Him.