Strong #moltmann vibes in this meme!
Where was god in the lynching of #GeorgeFlyod? Moltmann would answer, that Jesus was there suffering with George Flyod, calling out "I can't breathe" and "mom, I"m scared" with him.
Jesus most likely died from asphyxiation, because crucifixion causes the victim to suffocate slowly. And Jesus called out with his last breathe, my god, my god, why have you forsaken me?
In Jurgen Moltmann's book The Crucified God, he retells a story from Elie Wiesel's book Night, where a child is hung on the gallows in a Nazi concentration camp before a crowd of Jewish prisoners.
The fall does not kill the child, because the child's body weight isn't great enough to break the child's neck. So the child is left hanging and suffocating to death. And a Jewish prisoner calls out, where is god? as the child hangs dying.
Moltmann wrote: "A shattering expression of the theologia crucis (Theology of the Cross) which is suggested in the rabbinic theology of God’s humiliation of himself is to be found in Night, a book written by E. Wiesel, a survivor of Auschwitz: ..."
"... The SS hanged two Jewish men and a youth in front of the whole camp. The men died quickly, but the death throes of the youth lasted for half an hour. ‘Where is God? Where is he?’ someone asked behind me. As the youth still hung in torment in the noose after a long time..."
"...I heard the man call again, ‘Where is God now?’ And I heard a voice in myself answer: ‘Where is he? He is here. He is hanging there on the gallows . . .’ Any other answer would be blasphemy. ..."
"...There cannot be any other Christian answer to the question of this torment. To speak here of a God who could not suffer would make God a demon. To speak here of an absolute God would make God an annihilating nothingness. ...."
"... To speak here of an indifferent God would condemn men to indifference. " - Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, p. 5
George Floyd's lynching is a modern repetition of this very same story that has happened before our very eyes. Although George Floyd was not lynched on a tree, like Jesus, nevertheless, George Floyd died in the same process as lynching, and in the same way as Jesus on the cross.
As we witnessed the death of George Floyd, we also witnessed the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, in the same event.
Also read, James H. Cone's The Cross and the Lynching Tree
(It also utilizes Moltmann's polemic).
amzn.to/2KmIVfV
(It also utilizes Moltmann's polemic).
amzn.to/2KmIVfV
