This hymn \u201cFriday Morning\u201d by Sydney Carter is controversial. May it serve as a meditation on the extraordinary (dare I say divine?) irony of the crucifixion, so central to the Christian faith.<\/p>\n
FRIDAY MORNING<\/p>\n
It was on a Friday morning that they took me from the cell
\n and I saw they had a carpenter to crucify as well
\n You can blame it on to Pilate
\n You can blame it on the Jews
\n You can blame it on the Devil
\n But it\u2019s God that I accuse
\n It\u2019s God they ought to crucify instead of you and me
\n I said to the carpenter, a-hanging on the tree<\/p>\n
You can blame it on to Adam
\n You can blame it on to Eve
\n You can blame it on the apple,
\n but that I can\u2019t believe
\n It was God that made the Devil
\n And the woman and the man
\n And there wouldn\u2019t be an apple
\n If it wasn\u2019t in the plan
\n It\u2019s God they ought to crucify instead of you and me
\n I said to the carpenter, a-hanging on the tree<\/p>\n
Now Barabbas was a killer
\n And they let Barabbas go
\n But you are being crucified
\n For nothing that I know
\n And God is up in Heaven
\n and He doesn\u2019t do a thing
\n With a million angels watching
\n and they never move a wing
\n It\u2019s God they ought to crucify instead of you and me
\n I said to the carpenter, a-hanging on the tree<\/p>\n
To hell with Jehovah
\n To the carpenter I said
\n I wish that a carpenter
\n had made the world instead
\n Goodbye and good luck to you
\n our ways they will divide
\n Remember me in heaven
\n The man you hung beside
\n It\u2019s God they ought to crucify instead of you and me
\n I said to the carpenter, a-hanging on the tree<\/p>\n
The problem of suffering and evil is perhaps the strongest objection to the existence of the Christian God, a God who is simultaneously proclaimed to all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good. There is unjust suffering in the world. A good God would want to remedy the injustice. A wise God would know how to do it. An all-powerful God would be able to intervene however he wanted. So whence suffering? Whence evil? How did it ever arise, and why doesn\u2019t God do anything about it?<\/p>\n
About a year ago, we held a friendly debate within these ivy-covered walls of Harvard College on the problem of suffering and evil. Harvard College Faith and Action and the Harvard Community of Humanists, Atheists, and Agnostics represented opposite viewpoints on this most difficult of theological problems. Philosophical arguments were advanced and rebuttals ventured. But it seems to me that even the most philosophically rigorous response to the problem of suffering cannot help but feel hollow.<\/p>\n
That is why I am sharing this hymn. Much like the Grand Inquisitor passage from The Brothers Karamazov, it is highly ambiguous as to whether or how this solves the problem. (I, for one, consider the Grand Inquisitor passage to be an extremely profound refutation of the problem of suffering; atheists who read it tend to think quite the opposite.) I don\u2019t think this ambiguity is a bad thing. I think it is an honest means of communication, and entirely commensurate to the nature of the problem. Life is highly ambiguous. Our stories often have two sides. The story of the cross, as presented in the hymn \u201cFriday Morning,\u201d is such a story. Which prisoner do you think is the narrator in this song? How are we meant to understand his accusations? I wonder what Jesus would have said. I wonder if it might it have been, \u201cOh my son. If only you knew.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This hymn \u201cFriday Morning\u201d by Sydney Carter is controversial. May it serve as a meditation on the extraordinary (dare I say divine?) irony of the crucifixion, so central to the Christian faith. FRIDAY MORNING It was on a Friday morning that they took me from the cell and I saw they had a carpenter to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4753,92,632,633,2035,1127,1152,106,1153],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5450"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}