When I am angry or when I am feeling self-righteous, I rarely have a problem with putting my thoughts on paper or on the computer monitor and firing them off into the ether. If I say so myself I've done some spectacular writing when really mad!
 
But when I am not feeling this kind of passion, it is more difficult -- especially when the questions that come to mind are likely to invite disagreement or controversy. I desire neither.
 
Most of us are familiar enough with the story of creation in Genesis that if I were to mention that we are made in "the imagte and likeness of God" just about everyone would recognize the statement. Yet, it sometimes seems to me that each generation has to struggle with the desire to make
God conform to OUR image. How often have you heard people say things like this:  "How can a supposedly good God permit the evil I see in the world? How could an infinitely good and loving God send His Son to earth, to die a horrible death, all to repay some kind of debt that His justice supposedly demands. Why, such a God is not "God" -- He is a monster!"

We also want this God of ours to conform to our logic and reasoning. In scholarly circles (and in an increasingly large share of the reading public, one reads about the "resurrection event." I'm sorry, scholars, but that sounds more like a headline on an ad to get me to go to the big discount store to shop for "Easter candy" than a name for the greatest sign humanity may ever have that God loves us. . 

I'm just old enough to remember the pre-Vatican II Catholic Church. Certainly the good sisters and lay religion teachers were formed in those pre-counciliar times, and it never occurred to me to question Fall/Redemption theology. It never occurred to me to question that a "perfect Victim" was needed in order to triumph over sin. I was able to accept the notion that the scandal of the cross was a difficult thing for Jewish Christians to accept, and that it helped people understand the victory and glory of the Resurrection even more fully.
 
With as open a mind and heart as I can manage, I'm trying to picture God "sending His Son" to die. I can't get there. I know that in His human nature, Jesus had to conform His will to that of the Father. In the garden that (Thursday?) evening he even prayed that there might be a way out of what was in store. The submission of His human will to the will of the Father is heroic. I always understood that in His Divine nature, He and the Father are One. As I always looked at it, "God" did not "send" anybody anywhere. God submitted to the greatest expression or consequence of sin -- crucifixion and death. A cursed death -- a death that in the Jewish milieu was social, physical and spiritual -- truly the abyss. In this I always saw His willingness to bear the anti-merit of sin and also to show humankind just what sin ultimately means -- it would "kill God" if such a thing was possible -- it certainly kills the soul, metaphorically speaking.
 
Did He have to die? We all know that He did. The authorities, religious and secular, were never going to let any sort of "kingdom of heaven" evolve. That little group would have most likely never even been a footnote in Jewish history -- and what Jewish history would ever have been written after the two revolts, the destruction of the temple and the diaspora? Oh, I'm sure God would have had something at hand. Does this death make sense? To the child inside me, it never had to. When the adult in me starts to get insecure about it, "my ways are not your ways; my thoughts are not your thoughts" rises out of the depths of my heart in a whisper I'm sure can be heard by anyone who happens to be near me.
 
I learned about the resurrection as a child and never stopped accepting it as a child. I do not "like" it when I read terms like "the resurrection event" or "when his followers experienced what they interpreted as the Lord being present..." because, for me, it is an equivocation -- it allows wiggle room. It changes the empty tomb and sightings by Mary Magdalene and others to pious tales that convey a lovely myth -- while leaving the "resurrection" as a mental or "spiritual" experience -- an "interpretation" of "something" -- that they were all willing do die for.(!)
 
I believe, and I accept, and I sing for joy when I remember that He is Risen. I am challenged to learn to love my fellow humankind -- a challenge that, at times, has proven difficult! And I believe, and accept without trying to completely understand, that my God asks nothing of me that He has not taken unto Himself, including the agonies and utter loneliness of the Passion. Were He to ask sacrifice of me without having led and shown me the way, and prepared me for it.... perhaps there would be the monster.