God’s Grief

If God is our divine Parent and we human beings are His children, then surely God must feel great sadness of heart over His children’s bondage, degradation and rebellion. Thus, religious traditions that revere a personal, compassionate God recognize God to have an aspect of sorrow. In Christianity, Jesus’ Passion has regularly represented the suffering of God, as the Father is one with His Son. Although the biblical witness to God’s grief is sometimes eclipsed by the Aristotelian conception that perfection requires that God be impassible, contemporary theologians are affirming that the Creator also suffers. In Mahayana Buddhism, the compassion of Shakyamuni and the commiseration of the bodhisattvas for human suffering stems from the heart of the cosmic Buddha who is the Father of all humanity.

For Father Moon, to know God means to experience God’s painful and grieving heart: broken at the Fall, sorrowful that His children continue to live in darkness, tortured by the power and arrogance of evil that holds His children in thrall, and agonized at the thorny path that His saints must walk as they strive to fulfill the providence and attain liberation. By attaining such knowledge, we can become compassionate ourselves, and persevering in the struggle to liberate humanity.