Heck with the cross; the Nativity is foolishness enough!

I concluded a previous post with the following question,

How is it that Mary picks up her son to suckle and coo to him, when He should pick us up to suckle and coo to us?

It struck me rather suddenly while I was typing that in, and it's stuck in my mind ever since.

St. Paul writes somewhere that the cross is a stumbling block for the Jews and foolishness for the Gentiles. That second phrase means more to me than the first, because the Gentiles—in the person of the philosophical Greeks, say—prized wisdom so highly, just as our Western culture today prizes rationalism so highly. (This is where I raise my own hand sheepishly.)

Indeed, I've struggled quite a bit with doubts these last few months. There is no particular reason for it, no emotional or physical crisis, no loss in the family, no lack of religious observance or of prayer—indeed, I'd been praying a little more, and I'd like to think a little better. (This is thanks in no small part to my wife and son.) The only bad things that have happened are those things that I read happening to people in far off lands, suffering barbarities that are mere abstractions on paper, but that fill the soul with dread. It's precisely these barbarities which don't "make sense", so to speak.

Hence the question I posed, and the observation of St. Paul, hold such a prominent position in my mind.

The only resolution I can come to is that if God exists—which, despite all these struggles, I do not doubt, and if God is good, and if God loves us, then our understanding of goodness and love and even of God is truly skewed. While I've always been somewhat aware of that, it is none the less astounding (to say nothing of humbling) to witness it firsthand.

So much suffering of the world's suffering is unmerited and unearned. Some creatures must suffer, and usually suffer rather agonizingly, so that other creatures may live. (I know that I am not the first to look at this, let alone the first to think about this.) Among humans, selfishness (exemplified by the phrase "I deserve") holds pride of place. Yet so much of what passes for religion these days either ignores this completely, or attempts to explain this away while holding forth hope that a Santa Claus God will wipe the tears away from our selfish eyes.

Hey, it appeals to me, too. But not a single Christian holiday celebrates any such event, or anything resembling it, even. Instead, Christians celebrate Christmas and Easter, occasions when human beings gathered the helpless Son of God into their arms and tended to him. You might argue that Easter concludes with the resurrection, wherein Christ triumphs over death and rises to new and everlasting life. Correct: Christ triumphs over death and rises to new and everlasting life. But he doesn't then gather up his broken, helpless disciples and wipe the tears from their eyes. He visits them occasionally for a while, and finally he departs for good, more or less. "Do not hold on to me," he tells Mary Magdalene, and "Have you no faith?" he tells the apostles. He leaves them to face a world that is no less savage and no less rooted in suffering than it was before.

Again I struck by the question. How is it that Mary picks up the Son of God to suckle and coo to him, when "common sense" dictates that He should pick us up to suckle and coo to us?