“God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross,” he wrote. “He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. [The Bible] … makes quite clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering. … The Bible directs man to God’s powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering God can help.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Suffering God: The Rise of a New Orthodoxy by Ronald Goetz

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1033