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I wrote this blog post about Christ on the cross for Tuesday of holy week precisely so people could have a few days to read it & digest it before the weekend. My goal is to equip believers to speak well and hear correctly as we come to the cross. http://scriptoriumdaily.com/godforsaken-for-us/
What I'm recommending is some self-policing of our language. The reasons go pretty deep (major doctrines are involved), & the background is stark (classic doctrine versus recent deviations), but for most people it's a fairly minor adjustment to how we talk about the cross.
When teaching about Christ's cry, "My God, why have you forsaken me," stick to the given terms (God) rather than shifting to Father-Son terms. Partly because the latter aren't in the key text, & partly to keep the focus on where the action is.
The action is on the cross, where the Son has taken human nature as his own & is atoning for its sin. It's unhelpful to divert attention to the eternal Trinity, & misleading to suggest God's being & identity hang in the balance. The "forsaken location" is down here, not in there:
Some people have asked me about hymns & childrens' Bibles written in the last few decades that make this move of directing our attention to the cross as a Father-Son relation breach. Probably they aren't instances of false teaching, but of a tone or tendency that needs guidance.
Here's what I mean: If I'm worshiping in a church that regularly teaches a sound, biblically orthodox doctrine of God, w/prayers & sung worship that extend & reinforce it, I can sing "the Father turns his face away" with no danger of thinking the Trinity is coming apart.
(There's no way Townend was thinking the Trinity came apart, or could come apart. He was picking up, & elevating in his art, the way Christians talked in the early 90s. Hey, wouldn't it be wicked awesome if we could all hear that kind of talk as "so 90s," that is, a bit dated?)
A well-nourished Christian mind will easily make the adjustment, subliminally filing a line like that under "atonement" rather than "statements about the being of God." What will help most is if teachers stop using phrases that point to inner-trinitarian negotiation here.
And that's what I'm hoping for. Not perfect pitch, doctrinal gotchas at church, or constantly anxious language-policing: Just steady, consistent, nourishing, biblical, orthodox, classical ways of speaking to each other about God and the gospel.
