A God with Scars
Jared Ayers
4 min read ⭑
I’m often asked by thoughtful friends who are skeptical of Christianity how I could believe in God, given the horrors of the world. How on earth could a God worth believing in explain the Holocaust, the Rohingya genocide or the COVID-19 pandemic?
I don’t have all the answers.
On the one hand, many people experience or read about the cruelties we inflict upon one another, or have inflicted upon us by merciless Mother Nature, and conclude that there must not be a good God out there. I understand this choice, though for me it raises more quandaries than it solves.
On the other, many religious and spiritual traditions have sought to address this in different ways. Many spiritualities claim that God, or the divine, feels compassion for the pain of the world. But here’s where Christianity dares what no one else does. Only the Christian gospel claims that, to mend the world God made, God enters it and experiences its very worst. Christians, then, don’t claim to know why every terrible thing happens. But we do uniquely believe that the God of the universe has actually experienced the worst of life from the inside. So even though we can’t know why we suffer heartbreak, pain, tears, tragedy and death, we can know that we are never alone in them.
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The book of Hebrews, in the New Testament, discusses this dynamic by describing Jesus as humanity’s High Priest. In most traditions, a priest is someone who stands between people and God (or the gods) and speaks to one for the other. Jesus, being both fully God and fully human, Hebrews says, is our once-for-all Priest. The author writes that “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.” In Jesus, God knows what human pain, weakness, exhaustion, sorrow and suffering are. In fact, when you comprehend the immensity of the humiliation the Creator underwent in experiencing a solitary human life, you realize that all of Jesus’ life was suffering, not just the end of it. Theologian John Calvin, in a Christmastime sermon he preached on Jesus’ family fleeing Herod and living as refugees in Egypt, said that “Christ, having just been born, begins to be crucified for us, both in himself and in his members.” The shadow of Golgotha loomed all the way back through Jesus’ life, right to the manger. All the life he experienced for us was a cross — from the first day to the last.
In my early years as a pastor, I got to know a student I’ll call Sonya. Sonya, when my wife and I met her, was a high school sophomore; she was quiet, observant, intelligent. She was an honors student and loved by her friends. But as we got to know her, we realized that her life outside school and church was hell.
Sonya’s father had attempted suicide on multiple occasions, and eventually, he did end his own life. Her father’s death plunged Sonya, understandably, into a deep, black grief. My wife and I spent the next months accompanying her, as best we could, through her journey of loss and sorrow and confusion and anger. We tried to listen, open our home and our lives to her, and be around as much as possible. And over time, Sonya made it through. Her friends loved her. She got wise, caring help. And we sought to be a faithful pastoral presence to her as best we could.
“You can trust a God with scars”
I’ll never forget once asking Sonya, as she was beginning to emerge from the fog of grief, about how it was that she still considered herself a Christian.
“Sonya, I’ve seen people walk away from faith over a lot less than what you’ve gone through. How are you still a Christian?”
“Well,” she began, “there have been a few things. Friends have been a lifeline. Counseling has helped. Learning to pray from the Psalms, to express the sadness and anger — that’s helped too. And . . .” she trailed off, looking past me.
“What else?” I pressed.
“Well,” she continued, “I noticed something else, too. I’ve been reading the stories of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection in the Gospels, and I noticed something.”
“What’s that?”
“What I noticed was that, even after Jesus rose from the dead and all that, when he appeared to the disciples, he still had the scars. He still had the marks of going through all the pain and death.”
“That’s true, he did,” I agreed, not sure where she was going.
“When I realized that, I thought to myself, Sonya, you can trust a God with scars.”
This, really, is what the Incarnation means: You can trust a God with scars.
Jared Ayers, a pastor for more than two decades, currently serves as a senior minister at First Presbyterian Church in North Palm Beach, Florida, and as an adjunct faculty member at Palm Beach Atlantic University. Jared is married to Monica, and they’ve been graced with two sons and a daughter. His book, You Can Trust a God with Scars, releases in September 2025.
Adapted from “You Can Trust a God with Scars” by Jared Ayers. Copyright © 2025. Used by permission of NavPress.
