One day a great storm devastated an isolated village. Only one man and his small family survived. They decided to look for food and water in a nearby forest that, strangely, seemed untouched by the storm.
After days of hunting and gathering, they came upon a quaint, tidy cabin made of logs.
“What a wonder,” the man’s wife said. “A place where we can live away from the wild animals and the night frost.”
“It’s a little far from water, though,” the man said. “We’ll stay here for a few days while I scout out a better location where we can build our own house.”
A few days passed as the little family busied themselves with the necessities of survival. Early the first of the week, the man set out to scout for a place near a stream or river. Surprisingly, he returned in a matter of moments.
“Why did you come back so soon? Did you forget something?” his wife asked. “Are you hurt? Are we in danger?”
“Not at all,” the man replied. “I found a source of water, so there’s no need to look for a better place.”
“A stream we overlooked?”
“No. A well. It’s fairly new, as if someone dug it recently.”
“What good fortune! Unless they are planning to come back. Do you think someone owns this land? Maybe we should try to find out who built the cabin and dug the well. We could offer to rent from him. Maybe someday buy.”
“That would be a good plan,” her husband answered. “But I don’t think anyone actually does own the land, the cabin, or the well. We should just enjoy what nature has provided.”
When winter came, the man could no longer hunt as he had before, and his wife and children had no berries or nuts or roots to gather. The food that they had dried for the cold months became scarce.
After a particularly fierce storm, the man made his way to the well. There, off to one side, dug into the side of a small knoll, he discovered a cave. Carefully he peered inside. Hanging from meat hooks just inside the entrance were several boar carcasses. The cave was apparently a smoke house that they simply had overlooked.
Gratefully he took down the nearest slab of meat and returned to the cabin.
A day or two later he found a barn with a milk cow inside. Still another day he came upon a small silo filled with grain.
All winter his small family lived on the meat, milk, and grain from these outbuildings. Surprisingly, when they were low on meat, another wild boar appeared in the smoke house, along with a bin of roots and another of spices. They had all they wanted to live by.
One day as spring approached, the man’s oldest asked, “Daddy, where does the food come from?”
The man puffed out his chest and smiled. “I find it for you, my son.”
“But when we first came to the cabin, I didn’t see a smoke house or a barn or a well. No silo either.”
“I guess we didn’t look closely,” his mother said.
“Or perhaps we didn’t know the area well enough to know where to look or what to look for,” the man added. “Or maybe the things just happened. The storm might have caused them to form.”
“And the animals?” the boy asked.
“They may have wandered in to get out of the cold,” his mother said.
“I’m glad the cow wandered into the barn and not the smoke house,” the boy said. “I like her milk.”
Up on a hill overlooking his forest strode the king of the land with several of his attendants.
“How long do you want us to provide meat for the little family, Sire,” one of the servants asked.
“As long as they need it,” his royal majesty said. “They’re bound to realize soon that they have sheltered on my land, that I’ve supplied them with what they need. If not, I’ll send one of you to tell them.”
“I’ll go,” the prince said. “Surely they’ll recognize the royal robe and the crown. I’ll tell then you’ve been watching over them since they entered the forest, and that they can stay as long as they would like. I’m sure they’ll be happy to learn they are not alone, that you are generous and kind and that they have nothing to worry about.”
But the little family wasn’t glad. They didn’t know this king, they said, and they weren’t about to take the word of a so-called prince, that somebody else owned this land. Hadn’t they lived there now for six months? By right the place was theirs. They weren’t going to pay tribute or follow some imaginary king’s rules. Why, he’d probably say the man could only hunt certain animals and had to give away a portion of the milk.
When the prince turned his back, the man picked up the nearby pitchfork, and made his plan.
As you may (or may not) remember, I am doing a series of Thanks posts, sort of in protest to the fact that Thanksgiving here in the US is being squeezed out amid the candy and costumes of Halloween and the presents and lights, carols, nativity scenes, and Santas of Christmas.
I actually love Thanksgiving. It’s a holiday that hasn’t been overly commercialized. It can’t be confused with any other holiday, the way Memorial Day, Independence Day, Veterans’ Day, and Flag Day can be confused with each other. But the greatest plus is that the origins of the holiday have a spiritual foundation. The Thanks in Thanksgiving, is directed to God. And that fact gives me a good reason to love this particular day above other celebrations.
So, today, I am particularly grateful for the kindness of the Lord. A particular verse from the Bible came to mind when I thought of God’s kindness:
But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:4-5)
Clearly, God’s kindness is connected to His work of salvation—something another verse of Scripture spells out:
Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? (Romans 2:4)
So, yes, God’s kindness and love save us, but a great part of the process is His kindness leading us to repentance.
Repentance?
Isn’t that connected to an awareness of our sin? I mean, how can someone repent if they don’t actually think there is something in their life for which they need to regret, to be remorseful about, to wish were different in regard to their actions and/or character? I mean, are people who can only see their strengths ever going to repent?
No.
And that’s actually the human condition. We want to think better of ourselves than we are, but when we can’t avoid the problems, we tend to blame others. It’s society’s fault. I didn’t get a good education. My parents didn’t love me the way I needed them to. It was the snake who deceived me. The wife You gave me tempted me.
All those things are true or might be. But that doesn’t change the facts: whatever the conditions, we gave in and sinned. We made the decision to do what we knew we should not do. We stand guilty. Condemned.
And it is the kindness of God that brings us to that point. Kindness. Because once we’re aware of our need to repent, we can repent. We don’t need to hide any more, to blame others, to carry the guilt.
God’s kindness brings us to the place where we can deal with sin once and for all. Not through works we do. But by accepting the washing, the cleansing, the being made new provided by God.
God is actually kind in so many other ways. He is kind to give us friends and family, jobs and meaningful activity, churches and Bibles, homes and entertainment. But His kindness is greatest when it leads us to Him. Because nothing is more important. Our lives in the here and now are, as James says, a vapor. The Psalmist and Isaiah talk about our lives being like a flower—here today, and tomorrow gone with the wind or the scorching sun.
But only the here and now part. The eternal part of our lives stretches out before us. Nothing could be more important than that we live that eternal part with God our Savior. So how kind of God to invest so much into directing us to repentance for our sin.
He could ignore our need for repentance and make sure that these brief moments are nothing but pleasure-filled. I mean, it isn’t comfortable to think about our sin, to admit that we are the ones responsible, that we have gone our own way and ended up in a mess of our own making. But God’s kindness won’t let us delude ourselves into thinking that we’re OK in spite of our sin.
He is too kind to let us live in that delusion. He’d rather lead us to repentance.
Back in the first century, some of the new converts to The Way, were starting to get antsy. I mean, Jesus said He’d be back, but so far, nothing had changed. Wasn’t that a sign that they’d simply believed a lie?
The same accusation gets thrown out today, more likely from atheists, though: If there really is a god, where is he? Why hasn’t he showed himself? Didn’t he say he was coming?
The truth is, God specifically said in His word that He was not delaying His return as some people think, but He is actually waiting.
Waiting? Waiting for what?
For the completion of the Church. He’s been waiting for us and for any people who come to Christ after us:
The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. (2 Peter 2:9)
Some people see God as intolerant and impatient, but the opposite is actually true, as Paul clearly stated in Romans:
Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? (Rom. 2:4)
If the problem is not God’s, then it must be us people. Paul makes that clear, too:
But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who WILL RENDER TO EACH PERSON ACCORDING TO HIS DEEDS (Rom. 2:5-6; emphasis mine; all caps indicate a quotations of an Old Testament passage)
It’s really silly for people to point the finger at God and say that the mess we’re in is His fault. Suffering, for example, or evil, death, hell. God’s fault, they say. He’s too cruel to be believed.
But these kinds of indictments against God are actually a sign that we are getting closer and closer to the end, to the judgment. Scripture makes it clear that as we move further from God we will flip the script and call evil, good, and good, evil. So our good and holy God? With more and more frequency people say that He is the opposite of who He actually is.
It’s bad enough that what psychology—not religion or theology, though those disciplines undoubtedly concurred—used to call deviant sex, is now legalized, protected, celebrated, promoted. Evil, good.
Or how about the strange idea that a person can simply decide what sex they are. Never mind that there are all these physical gender markers. Never mind that once upon a time feminism faulted society for creating gender attributes. Now a person can simply declare that they “feel” like a male or like a female, never mind what gender they actually are. Never mind that they mutilate their bodies in order to become who they feel like they are. This too is nothing but the script turned on its head.
I haven’t mentioned abortion or sex trafficking or pornography or greed (it’s just business) or anxiety or addictions or any number of issues that are no longer sin. They have either become good or they are a sickness, out of our control—certainly not sin.
At different times when God was going to bring judgment on a place, He waited until “the fullness of time”—until sin had become the operating system that dictated the cultural behavior and beliefs. Nothing’s changed.
God is in the process of giving Western 21st century culture exactly want we want—enough rope to hang ourselves. Which is good news and bad news. It’s good news because it means those who God’s been waiting for are almost all in the fold. It’s bad news because we are surrounded by the sins of a culture that no longer believes in sin.
Our job is cut out for us, I think. As long as God delays His coming, He’s showing His patience and His kindness toward those who need to repent because “[He] desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4)”
That’s the God Christians serve, not the false caricature thrown out by those who don’t know Him.
I think perhaps the most harmful idea about God is that He’s sort of like a kindly, somewhat doddering, grandfather with a long white beard, waiting to give out presents to people who ask.
This false image is not only damaging as it is, it opens up a lot of people to anger who expect God to be this way but instead find Him to say no to their requests and to be quite engaged, in control, and not at all doddering.
I’m not sure where the idea of “grandfather god” came from, how it got started. I think it’s a fairly recent concept, though I don’t think Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel painting of God in the act of creating did anything to dissuade people from seeing God in this benevolent, passive, aged way.
I find it hard to imagine, though, that the people in the 1700s listening to preachers like Jonathan Edwards who preached “fire and brimstone” sermons such as “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” would conceive of God as a kindly grandfather. They understood from the sermons they heard on Sunday and those they listened to during revival meetings, that God’s judgment of sinners was anything but kindly.
In reaction to this focus on God’s judgment, I believe Christendom began to focus on God’s love rather than on His wrath. Hence, the script flipped to this kinder, gentler God who loves the world. The natural outgrowth of this emphasis was a redefining of God’s image. He was not angry; He was loving. He was not eager to judge; He was eager to save. He was not a kill-joy; He was willing, even desirous, of showering His people with good gifts.
The problem actually is the focus, the over-emphasis of one of God’s traits to the exclusion of the others. And to be honest, grandfather god, while accurately identifying some of God’s attributes, neglects others so that the overall concept of God is drastically distorted.
As you would expect the preachers of Jonathan Edwards’s day knew nothing of “grandfather god.” Here’s a flavor of Edwards’s famous sermon:
II. They deserve to be cast into hell; so that divine justice never stands in the way, it makes no objection against God’s using his power at any moment to destroy them. Yea, on the contrary, justice calls aloud for an infinite punishment of their sins. Divine justice says of the tree that brings forth such grapes of Sodom, “Cut it down; why cumbreth it the ground” (Luke 13:7). The sword of divine justice is every moment brandished over their heads, and ’tis nothing but the hand of arbitrary mercy, and God’s mere will, that holds it back.
III. They are already under a sentence of condemnation to hell. They don’t only justly deserve to be cast down thither; but the sentence of the law of God, that eternal and immutable rule of righteousness that God has fixed between him and mankind, is gone out against them, and stands against them; so that they are bound over already to hell. John 3:18, “He that believeth not is condemned already.” So that every unconverted man properly belongs to hell; that is his place; from thence he is.” (excerpt from Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” as posed by Yale.edu)
What I find interesting—though I haven’t read much of the sermon at all—is that I see nothing so far that doesn’t square with Scripture.
So which is true about God? Is He angry or is He a kindly grandfather?
Again, I’ll say, the problem is that both these perspectives are incomplete. God is kind, loving, merciful but He is also just and uncompromising and angry at sin.
The thing is, in this era of grandfather god, we don’t like to hear those things about God that contradict our image of universal benevolence.
But actually God is universally benevolent. He sends rain on the just and the unjust. He mercifully withholds His wrath from deserving sinners so that we have a chance to accept His free gift of grace. And it is His kindness and love for mankind that prompts His offer of salvation.
The mistake we make today, I believe, is speaking only of the traits that we like, that we’re happy about, and sort of mumbling under our breath that yes, God hates sin. Honestly? It’s even hard for me to write these truths. If feels a little foreign and I’m afraid someone will misunderstand. After all, we humans don’t have the holiness that God does which mitigates His traits we can only understand as negative.
In truth, God’s wrath is no more negative than His love is. His wrath is directed at rebellion and the cause of death which haunts the human race, and in fact all of creation. God hates death. He hates the sin that caused it. His plan is to bring it to an end. But the truth is, some will resist His love, His kindness, His mercy, His grace. As a result, they align themselves with that which God hates.
The best analogy is not a new one. Sin is like a cancer that will take a person’s life unless it is attacked aggressively, excised, dealt with ruthlessly. Should a doctor be benevolent toward the cancer? Or toward his patient?
To be benevolent toward the one is to be wrathful toward the other.
In short, God is both, kindly and angry. But grandfather? No. That doesn’t fit. God dwells in inexpressible light.
Time we retired the idea of grandfather god and look at Almighty God as He has revealed Himself—and that means we need to look at more than the qualities we find easy to talk about.
I had a conversation once with an atheist woman who proclaimed that everything in the universe is random and any patterning we think we see is actually a trick of the mind that determines disorder must be placed in some understandable pattern.
That in itself sounds very ordered to me. I mean, do all humans do this?
I bring up order because one of the things creation teaches us about God is that He is an ordered, and ordering, God. He does not subscribe to chaos.
Take, for example just one procedure that occurs within our cells: Protein Synthesis. Here’s the short explanation of what this is:
Protein synthesis is one of the most fundamental biological processes by which individual cells build their specific proteins. Within the process are involved both DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and different in their function ribonucleic acids (RNA). The process is initiated in the cell’s nucleus, where specific enzymes unwind the needed section of DNA, which makes the DNA in this region accessible and a RNA copy can be made. This RNA molecule then moves from the nucleus to the cell cytoplasm, where the actual the process of protein synthesis take place. (“What Is Protein Synthesis?”; emphasis mine)
Here’s one short animation of what this process looks like (only a 2:15 video in length).
I’m not a scientist, but one thing strikes me as I read about protein synthesis: this process occurs within the cells, every one of the cells, in the human body. And not just in some human bodies. In every human body.
To explain the process, scientists use words like code and sequence and engineered and rules and translated. None of those elements sounds anything like “random” or “by chance” to me. There is order and purpose and achievement, even at the microscopic level of the cell.
Which makes me aware of something else that creation teaches about God: He cares for the details. God didn’t throw spaghetti on the wall to see if something stuck. He cared and cares for the particulars, down to the microscopic and beyond. Because one story I saw said that we aren’t finished with the discovery of what makes up a cell. As our microscopes become more sophisticated and capable, we most likely will see even smaller “machines” that simply, with all practicality, couldn’t randomly come into being.
Something else that I learn about God from creation: He loves beauty. Places that no one has gone to for thousands of years, are nevertheless beautiful. We might be talking about the remotest part of the sea or out in deep space. The beauty which we uncover has existed since creation, even though no human until recent times had any idea of the existence of such rich colors and shapes and textures and interplay between light and shadow.
Another thing I see in creation, and therefore in God, is purpose. Atheists are fond of saying that creation is very inefficient, that there are extra organs or unnecessary appendages, for this species or that. And yet, humans are just beginning to understand the ecosystem and the delicate interplay of one element with another. I suspect the same is true within a particular species—each is simply a confined ecosystem with each member functioning for the benefit of the whole, even though we humans don’t yet know what all those functions are.
Take for example, the human appendix. For years people have believed it to be a do-nothing organ, something that can be removed or left in at the will of the individual. But not so fast. Some medical professionals now believe the appendix might do something important:
The function of the appendix is unknown. One theory is that the appendix acts as a storehouse for good bacteria, “rebooting” the digestive system after diarrheal illnesses.
Essentially, the jury’s still out, but tonsils, also once thought to be superfluous, have proved to have a significant job:
The point is simple: though we can live without these organs, they still have a purpose. After all, we can live without a leg or without our eyes or without a finger, but that fact does not prove that a leg, eyes, or finger has no purpose.
Another thing I learn about God by looking at creation is His might. I’ve seen the might of nature when I was hiking in the mountains in the winter. Well, hiking isn’t quite right. We were on cross country skies or on snowshoes. But the point is, navigating the snowy hillsides was hard work. We got tired and wet, and then the afternoon gloom started to set in. Suddenly I realized how frail we were, how vulnerable, how easy it would be for the simple elements of snow and cold to conquer us.
I learned the same thing when I, who don’t swim well, went body surfing at a place that had giant sets of waves. They weren’t breaking close to shore though, and I was quickly out further than I was comfortable with. And then the big waves came. They would break right on top of me, and crush me if I didn’t dive down and let the water absorb the power. So I did. I’d done it at other times. But this time I could feel the wave shake me as it rumbled over top. When it was over, I resurfaced, only to see another wave coming. Down I went. This took place countless times, and the last time, I thought, I’m out of energy. I can’t fight this water any more. I realized how frail, how fragile I am as a human up against . . . water. Just water. The power of the waves that God has created.
I could go on about God’s grandeur clearly visible in the mountains or His kindness to make a world where we humans have all we need to live in comfort. And even in the places where the climate is one extreme or the other, there are still polar bears or camels, fish or oases. By God’s grace and kindness we still have what we need to live.
And what about the infinity of God we see in space? Or His unsearchable nature? It’s hard for me to stop, but I wonder what others see of God by looking at creation. After all, Romans tells us His imprint is there.
Some time ago I saw a humorous depiction of what Man expects in life versus what God gives us, similar to the one I recreated above(though I don’t remember the captions).
I suspect the point, besides the humor, was to show how we believe our way with God will be easy, free of suffering and hardship, when, in fact, God never promised such a thing.
When I saw the original, I laughed, but then I thought, How unlike God. My thinking was that the picture, not identifying any reason why God would take us into rough terrain, makes Him seem arbitrary and cruel, even masochistic, as if He’s yanking our chain simply to see us suffer.
But also, the first panel shows Man in the most positive light. Yes, he expects an easy path, but he’s steadily moving forward, growing, improving, reaching toward that final destination.
Actually, I don’t think either panel captures reality clearly. First, the truth about Humankind is that we wander, take wrong turns, leave the path, go our own way. We aren’t focused on moving further up and further in as we should be.
The above diagram is a more accurate depiction of the path we take. But there’s another version.
God, because of our waywardness and because of His love for us, directs us back to Himself.
That’s it. Like a loving Father, He spanks our hands or puts us in time out or grounds us or takes away our cell phone or car keys or whatever it takes to move us away from our willfulness because He loves us too much to see us go the wrong way. He is most definitely not capricious and He is NOT cruel.
But His kindness and mercy mean He will sometimes withhold the rain or let the Philistines conquer the land or keep us in the wilderness because He wants us to know Him, follow Him, trust Him, love Him instead of going our own way.
– – – – –
My apologies to any actual artists! 😉 This post is an edited version of one that appeared here in May 2014.
One of my favorite blogs is InsanityBytes. Recently a commenter there said he was “appalled” at “the deity himself.”
This is typical of those who claim God doesn’t exist. I’m not sure why they find it necessary to declare God to be “destructive” even as they say He doesn’t exist.
However, that tactic is true to the leading atheists of the day, men like Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens who referred to God as a tyrant.
Since these atheists don’t believe there is any evidence that God exists, I’m not sure it’s worthwhile to refute the appalling, destructive, tyrant accusations. But perhaps someone uncertain about what they believe might be alerted to the error of this thinking.
As an aside, I also want to mention that “no evidence that God exists” argument is circular in nature. One line of thinking goes like this. Christians can’t prove that God even exists. They say that Jesus came to earth as God in the flesh, but all they have to support that idea is His followers. They say His resurrection from the dead is evidence of His divinity, but nobody has been raised from the dead before, so why should we believe this unrepeatable event? And again, documentation. Evidence. Followers don’t count. So called eyewitnesses don’t count. Changed lives don’t count. In fact, everything you present as evidence doesn’t count because it presupposes the supernatural. And the supernatural doesn’t exist.
So, in reality the atheist has formed his position by saying, God doesn’t exist because the supernatural doesn’t exist.
Further, he dismisses one time events such as the virgin birth and Christ’s resurrection from the dead because they are impossible by natural law. Christians agree. Yes, those things are impossible naturally, but God can do the impossible. The atheist is left with only one option: deny that these miraculous events took place. Deny the book that records them. Mock and belittle people that believe them.
Back in February 2012, I wrote a response to those who leveled accusations against God that He is actually malevolent instead of good and kind and merciful. I thought it might be worth posting revised and an edited version of it today.
One argument against the “a good God wouldn’t do that” accusation leveled by atheists and some progressives against the God of the Bible is that God isn’t guilty of condoning sinful acts or thoughts or wishes simply because those appear in the Bible.
But what about the acts God not only condones but orders which seem unduly harsh, even cruel? Most often those making this accusation have in mind something like God’s command to Saul to wipe out all the Amalekites.
For someone who thinks suicide bombers or Jeffrey Dahmer or Pol Pot should not face judgment for their acts against their fellow man, I have no answer. For those who believe it’s right to hold people accountable for the harm they perpetrate, then it’s simply a matter of looking at history to understand God’s command.
The Amalekites were the terrorists of the day—a people who harassed Israel on their way out of Egypt, sniping at the stragglers who were “faint and weary.” We can surmise the people under attack, those at the back of the company, would be the elderly, the sick, and perhaps the young. For this act, which was also connected to their dismissal of God’s authority over them (see Deut. 25:18-19), they were judged.
They had some two hundred years to repent, make amends with Israel, turn to God and forsake their idols, before God brought judgment. In fact God showed great restraint and patience in dealing with them. But they did not turn from their wicked ways, so they received God’s judgment.
There are two primary reasons God gives for judging a people: 1) they are oppressing others; 2) they have taken a stand against Him.
Psalm 146:7-9 illustrates the former.
[God] executes justice for the oppressed;
[God] gives food to the hungry.
The LORD sets the prisoners free.
The LORD opens the eyes of the blind;
The LORD raises up those who are bowed down;
The LORD loves the righteous;
The LORD protects the strangers;
He supports the fatherless and the widow,
But He thwarts the way of the wicked.
Clearly God is for the oppressed, which means He stands against the oppressor. For this, people today judge Him. In part it’s in ignorance, but it’s also an assumption–Man is good, so these ancient peoples were innocent victims of a God wanting to wipe them out.
They were not innocent.
Of course, none of us is innocent. None of us deserves to live, and in fact we won’t keep living. We will pay with our lives for the guilt that clings to us. Apart from God’s mercy, we will also pay with our souls. (But thanks be to God who sent His Son to rescue us).
Which brings up the second reason God judges people: He repays those who hate Him (see Deut. 7:10). Their hatred is most often shown in their idol worship, but also in their treatment of other people—orphans, widows, strangers on one hand and God’s people on the other.
Interestingly, God most often gives those who are against Him what they want. He lets them experience the consequences of their own actions:
Behold, the wicked man conceives evil and is pregnant with mischief and gives birth to lies. He makes a pit, digging it out, and falls into the hole that he has made. His mischief returns upon his own head (Ps. 7:14-16a, English Standard Version – emphasis added)
The bottom line, I believe, is this: those who hate God can’t accept the fact that He is their judge. They don’t want a judge, any judge, but particularly one who is righteous, as the Bible reveals God to be. See the following, for example:
“God is a righteous judge” – Psalm 7:11a
“In righteousness He judges and wages war” – Rev. 19:11b
“[Christ] kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously” – 1 Peter 2:23b
“For I, the LORD, love justice . . . and I will faithfully give them their recompense” – Isaiah 61:8a
Those of us who accept God as the one who rightly and righteously judges all He has made, trust His judgment.
Of course, God’s judgment gets muddled with pain and suffering. Suffice it to say for the sake of this discussion, that not all pain, suffering, and death is a particular judgment handed down by God. Job’s children, for example, didn’t die as a result of God’s judgment.
So the question, is God kind and merciful or harsh and cruel, hinges upon the understanding of Him as a just judge. Someone being oppressed who He rescues, someone lost who He finds, sees Him clearly as abundantly kind and merciful.
Atheists are eager to dismantle the framework of Christianity and to deconstruct the Bible. Sadly, it seems some in the self-styled “Progressive Christians” crowd aren’t far behind.
One point in particular has come through in various on-line discussions by those who don’t believe in God as He revealed Himself in the Bible–the God of the Old Testament is too wrathful, too vengeful to really be God. My God wouldn’t do that or say that, is a statement I’ve seen more than once.
Often a verse in Psalm 137 gets pulled out as evidence that God is too horrible to worship or that the Bible is inconsistent and can’t possibly be taken at face value or that God had to have repented of such a heinous attitude because it isn’t in line with how He showed Himself through Jesus in the New Testament.
In all honesty, the verse is horrible. Writing about the Babylonians who took Judah into captivity and razed the temple and the walls of Jerusalem and its homes and businesses, the psalmist said
O daughter of Babylon, you devastated one,
How blessed will be the one who repays you
With the recompense with which you have repaid us.
How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones
Against the rock. (Psalm 137:8-9)
Shocking!
That last verse in particular seems out of place in a book centered on God’s work of reconciliation and forgiveness achieved through Jesus.
As I’ve pondered this Psalm and particularly verse nine, a couple things have come to mind. First, I am reminded of some of the heinous things that came to light after 9/11–people parading through the streets of cities in the Middle East, cheering the deaths of several thousand people they considered the enemy; beheadings; hundreds upon hundreds of people unassociated with fighting, blown up as they went about living life; rulers firing upon their own people; hundreds of bodies discovered in mass graves.
All these rather gruesome modern day events make it clear that nothing has changed in the law of revenge in the Middle East from the time of the Old Testament.
Back then, God initiated the “eye for an eye” principle–one capable of stopping blood feuds before they got started. Particularly, God said sons weren’t to die to pay for the sins of their father. Such laws were necessary because people held grudges and sought to get even when they’d been wronged.
Today, nearly seventy years after the Jewish state came into being, certain countries in the Middle East have the stated objective of wiping out that nation. Simply put, they want revenge on their enemy.
To put this into perspective, a comparable situation would be England determined to wipe out the fledgling United States seventy years after the Revolutionary War–somewhere around 1850 when the US and England were becoming key trading partners. Or Mexico, seventy years after the end of the Mexican-American War–right around World War I–determining to retake the land they had ceded in the peace treaty.
My point? The Middle Eastern worldview is different from the worldview in the West.
Couple that fact with this: the Bible was written by people, inspired by God. However, God’s authorship does not mean He condoned everything recorded in those pages.
Jacob’s son Judah slept with his daughter-in-law, thinking she was a prostitute. The men in a city of the tribe of Benjamin gang raped a woman, killing her, and this led to war with the other eleven tribes. Samson, a judge of Israel, picked a Philistine to be his wife. David, the man after God’s own heart, committed adultery and murder.
The Bible records all these events and more, not as a list of things God’s children today are supposed to emulate, but as part of the grand scheme, the big picture, the overarching story showing us who God is, why we have a broken relationship with Him, and how He went about fixing it.
Psalm 137:9 is no more a statement of God’s desires than the verses that tell about Eve’s deception and Adam’s disobedience.
Let me pull some threads together. The Middle East had a culture of revenge, and in fact, much of what’s happened in the last ten-plus years would indicate that this worldview is still in place. The psalmist who wrote Psalm 137:9 wrote from that worldview. As such, the verse is not an indication that God condoned the get-even mentality.
Here in the West we have a different worldview, informed by two thousand years of Biblical teaching to love our enemies, pray for those who misuse and abuse us, refrain from vengeance, refuse to curse but give a blessing instead.
Those “nicer than God” proponents, then, are simply reflecting a Biblical worldview, whether they recognize it and embrace it, or not.
They claim God is someone he is not based on a verse or verses taken out of context, and they claim for themselves teaching He brought into the world, normalized through centuries of Church influence, so that today even atheists believe loving our neighbor is a good thing, that mistreating the weakest and most vulnerable in society is wrong, and that enemies ought to be given trials and treated humanely rather than tortured.
Surprise, atheists and progressives! You’ve embraced a Biblical worldview–the one which has shaped Western thought. You just didn’t know it. You thought you were nicer than God, but who enabled you to learn what “nice” meant? God Himself in the instruction that shaped the philosophical underpinnings of Western society for generations.
Of all the things we talk about at Christmas, my guess is that the constancy of God is not high on the list. But maybe it should be.
First, what do I mean by “constancy”? Nothing tricky. I’m not trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat here. I mean just what the good ol’ Oxford American Dictionary has to say about the word: “the quality of being faithful and dependable.
• the quality of being enduring and unchanging”
Second, we need to understand who we’re talking about. “Christ” is another word for “Messiah,” the one promised by God. And in fact, Jesus and His followers identified Him as the Christ. But more than that, they proclaimed Him to be the Son of God. And more. They stated that He “existed in the form of God,” that in Him “all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form,” that He “is the head over all rule and authority.”
We could write it like this: Messiah=Christ=Jesus=Son of God=God. Consequently, in declaring the constancy of Christ, it’s really another way of saying the constancy of God.
God, though a triune being, is One in purpose, One in essence, One in nature. In other words, we can’t divide God and say, well, the Father is like xyz but the Son is like abc. No. Jesus Himself stipulated, if you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.
There are several reasons why the constancy of Christ matters. First, some “progressive Christians” and atheists claim that the God of the Old Testament was all kinds of evil things: misogynist, genocidal, selfish, and more. But Jesus, they say, was better. The supposed Christians imagine that God learned from His mistakes, or that the writers of the Old Testament got it wrong, or some other inane explanation. Because, you see, they like Jesus; they just can’t stomach His Father.
Enter the constancy of Christ.
“Jesus is the same yesterday, and today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). What God reveals about Himself in the Old Testament is true about Jesus and what Jesus said about Himself in the New Testament is true about the Father. There is no “good cop, bad cop” here.
Here’s the important point: Jesus self-identifies in John 10 as “the good shepherd.” Good. He doesn’t do evil. In fact, James says, “God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone” (1:13b) and, “Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow” (1:17).
In other words, God is all about good. He’s also holy and pure, spotless and unblemished. All that adds up to the fact that God isn’t anything like the description put out by those who oppose Him or who criticize Him.
The problem largely stems from God’s authority and His sovereignty and His omniscience. These are traits His opponents don’t recognize. Instead, they want to be the ones in charge, and they want to depend on their own finite knowledge. Consequently, they want to judge God. They want to determine that the people who died in the flood, for instance, were innocent, and not the guilty, wayward, wicked people the Bible describes.
More than that, they want to deny the fact that “the wages of sin is death” and that “there is none righteous, no not one.” This is somehow a horrible thing to tell people, even though the nightly news confers the truth of it, and as yet no one in modern times has escaped death.
Ironically I had a crisis of doubt in my life when I was in my 30s or so, and it centered on the goodness of God. I looked around at the things that were going on in the world, in the lives of people close to me, and I asked, right out loud, “Are you good, God? Are you really good?”
All this came to a head when I drove past a convalescent hospital where an old woman sat on the sidewalk out front, alone in a wheelchair.
God didn’t tell me that of course He was good, how could I ask such a thing. He didn’t bring Scripture to mind that told me He was good. Instead, He spoke into my spirit: “You think you’re sad about these hurting people? I know each one by name.”
In other words, because God is good, the evil and pain and suffering of this world grieves His heart. Sin did this, not God. Sin made a mess of the world, not God. Sin brings retribution down on those who run from God.
And that’s precisely what we can see in Jesus:
For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
Jesus didn’t bring judgment because that was already in place—the wages of sin didn’t start when Jesus showed up. It’s right there in the genealogy of Genesis 5:
So . . . Adam lived . . ., and he died. Seth lived . . ., and he died. Enosh lived . . ., and he died. Kenan lived . . ., and he died. Mahalalel lived . . ., and he died. Jared lived . . ., and he died.
On it goes with the exception of Enoch, demonstrating the truth about sin. It leads to death.
But Jesus came to set us free from the “slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” He did this because He is good, He is love, He is merciful, He is compassionate, He is kind.
“But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us.”
And here’s the startling fact: salvation was something God planned before the foundation of the world.
So, no, He hasn’t changed. And Jesus isn’t a different iteration of the Father. In fact, we can count on the constancy of Christ.
My guess is that most Christians think of knowing the Lord as a process. We don’t become Christians and instantaneously know everything there is to know about God. Instead, like any relationship, there’s the initial getting-to-know-you phase, followed by increased closeness, depending on how much you invest in the relationship.
But for the purposes of this post, I’m thinking about the process of “first contact,” if you will (hey, I’m a speculative fiction writer—wouldn’t you expect a little Star Trek now and then? 😉 ). More accurately, I’m referring to that which brings us to the table to sign the peace accords.
The truth is, until that moment, we are essentially at war with God. Oh, we might ignore Him, even say that He died or that he never existed, but that’s just a passive-aggressive way of fighting Him.
People also fight Him by pretending to be on His side, then doing whatever they wish. Some treat Him like an extension of their own wishes. Others treat Him like a distant and invisible version of Santa Claus. Another group of people crowd Him into a room of other “special people” who they’ll ask for favors. These might be ancestors or saints or gods or idols.
None of these people actually know the Lord. They may think they do, but they are only familiar with a false idea of God, not the real Person. In short, they will not have a point at which they came to know the Lord. They’ve never sat down with Him to ink out that peace treaty—the one that says we have peace with God because Jesus paid all the reparations we owed.
That coming to know the Lord process might have some surprises in it. I suspect most of us think about coming to God because of His kindness and His love. There’s even a passage of Scripture that says as much:
But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior (Titus 3:4-6)
Plus we know we’re saved by grace, and that God loved the world so He sent His Son. Love motivated God, and so we associate His love with our salvation. As we should.
But knowing the Lord isn’t always about us opening our eyes one day and saying, See how He loves me. I want to know Him too.
In fact, we, being sinful people, are often on the run. We’re more like The Fugitive than we are Daniel. Daniel was so obedient, even as a young man, and careful to do what He knew would please the Lord. By the time we meet him in the pages of Scripture, though, he already knew the Lord.
Now Paul, he was more like we are. He thought he knew God and was frantically killing people to prove it.
Or Peter. He knew the Lord, even made a public declaration of it. Well, in front of others who knew the Lord. Except, when circumstances turned inconvenient, even scary, He loudly proclaimed he most certainly did NOT know the Lord. So there. And here’s a few curse words to prove it.
But there came a day when the Holy Spirit filled Peter’s heart and changed him. Just as there was a day on the Damascus road when Paul met the living Christ and became a new person.
Were these happy encounters, full of sweetness and light?
Lots of Light, yes. But sweetness?
Paul saw Light, and it blinded him. For three days.
Peter encountered God in fire.
In various places of Scripture God is called the consuming fire. Moses met Him in a burning bush. The people of Israel experienced Him as a pillar of fire every night for forty years while they trekked through the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land. The Tabernacle, from time to time, was filled with the fire of God—His Shekinah glory.
Further, God pursued some of his saints to bring them into relationship with Him. I already mentioned Moses. He spent forty years trying to do God’s work his way; then another forty, determined to stay as far from God as possible. When God met him in that burning bush, Moses still resisted God’s call. Yes, he was on holy ground, he got that, but that didn’t mean he was planning to do what the Holy One called him to do.
Jacob was a runner too. He finally met God in a wrestling match.
Then there was Jonah. Talk about a runner! He had to nearly drown, then get eaten by a specially prepared fish God sent his way before he finally gave in and gave up.
Nothing is more adversarial, though, than God’s treatment of the various nations He sent messages to via His prophets. Take Judah, or Israel, or Edom, or a number of others in the neighborhood. God wanted them to know Him, so he sent His judgment on them.
Clearly they were not strangers to God. The problem was, they knew Him and turned their backs on Him. So He sent famine or pestilence or war. At every turn, He wanted the people to turn to Him. But they remained stubborn. Here’s a sample: “Thus I will execute judgments on Moab, and they will know that I am the LORD” (Ezekiel 25:11). And here’s another: “Thus I will execute judgments on Egypt, / And they will know that I am the LORD” (Ezekiel 30:19).
Judgment. It’s God’s way of pursuing people, not giving up on them when they turn their backs. The cool thing is, after the judgment comes restoration. For example, He judged Judah, but promised them a remnant and a return and a Messiah.
“Then they will know that I am the LORD their God because I made them go into exile among the nations, and then gathered them again to their own land; and I will leave none of them there any longer.” (Ezekiel 39:28)
I’ve mentioned “The Hound Of Heaven” before, a poem by Francis Thompson. The author, as it turns out, knew of what He wrote.
The poem follows in it’s entirety (emphases are mine; it’s long, but it is worth reading—if not now, maybe another day).
I FLED Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet—
‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’
I pleaded, outlaw-wise,
By many a hearted casement, curtained red,
Trellised with intertwining charities; (For, though I knew His love Who followèd,
Yet was I sore adread
Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside).
But, if one little casement parted wide,
The gust of His approach would clash it to.
Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.
Across the margent of the world I fled,
And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,
Smiting for shelter on their clangèd bars;
Fretted to dulcet jars
And silvern chatter the pale ports o’ the moon.
I said to Dawn: Be sudden—to Eve: Be soon;
With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over
From this tremendous Lover—
Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see!
I tempted all His servitors, but to find
My own betrayal in their constancy,
In faith to Him their fickleness to me,
Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit.
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue;
Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.
But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,
The long savannahs of the blue;
Or whether, Thunder-driven,
They clanged his chariot ’thwart a heaven,
Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o’ their feet:— Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
Still with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
Came on the following Feet,
And a Voice above their beat—
‘Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me.’
I sought no more that after which I strayed
In face of man or maid;
But still within the little children’s eyes
Seems something, something that replies,
They at least are for me, surely for me!
I turned me to them very wistfully;
But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair
With dawning answers there,
Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.
‘Come then, ye other children, Nature’s—share
With me’ (said I) ‘your delicate fellowship;
Let me greet you lip to lip,
Let me twine with you caresses,
Wantoning
With our Lady-Mother’s vagrant tresses,
Banqueting
With her in her wind-walled palace,
Underneath her azured daïs,
Quaffing, as your taintless way is,
From a chalice
Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring.’
So it was done:
I in their delicate fellowship was one—
Drew the bolt of Nature’s secrecies.
I knew all the swift importings
On the wilful face of skies;
I knew how the clouds arise
Spumèd of the wild sea-snortings;
All that’s born or dies
Rose and drooped with; made them shapers
Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine;
With them joyed and was bereaven.
I was heavy with the even,
When she lit her glimmering tapers
Round the day’s dead sanctities.
I laughed in the morning’s eyes.
I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,
Heaven and I wept together,
And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine;
Against the red throb of its sunset-heart
I laid my own to beat,
And share commingling heat;
But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.
In vain my tears were wet on Heaven’s grey cheek.
For ah! we know not what each other says,
These things and I; in sound I speak—
Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.
Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth;
Let her, if she would owe me,
Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me
The breasts o’ her tenderness:
Never did any milk of hers once bless
My thirsting mouth. Nigh and nigh draws the chase,
With unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy;
And past those noisèd Feet
A voice comes yet more fleet—
‘Lo! naught contents thee, who content’st not Me!’
Naked I wait Thy love’s uplifted stroke!
My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me,
And smitten me to my knee;
I am defenceless utterly.
I slept, methinks, and woke,
And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.
In the rash lustihead of my young powers,
I shook the pillaring hours
And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,
I stand amid the dust o’ the mounded years—
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.
Yea, faileth now even dream
The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist;
Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist
I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,
Are yielding; cords of all too weak account
For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed.
Ah! is Thy love indeed
A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed,
Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?
Ah! must—
Designer infinite!—
Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it?
My freshness spent its wavering shower i’ the dust;
And now my heart is as a broken fount,
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever
From the dank thoughts that shiver
Upon the sighful branches of my mind.
Such is; what is to be?
The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?
I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds;
Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity;
Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then
Round the half-glimpsèd turrets slowly wash again.
But not ere him who summoneth
I first have seen, enwound
With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned;
His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.
Whether man’s heart or life it be which yields
Thee harvest, must Thy harvest-fields
Be dunged with rotten death?
Now of that long pursuit
Comes on at hand the bruit;
That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:
‘And is thy earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard?
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me! Strange, piteous, futile thing!
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught’ (He said),
‘And human love needs human meriting:
How hast thou merited—
Of all man’s clotted clay the dingiest clot?
Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save Me, save only Me?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms.
All which thy child’s mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:
Rise, clasp My hand, and come!’
Halts by me that footfall:
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
‘Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.’
Writing fiction is problematic. Most people who decide to write a novel have already been writing most of their lives. Some have had success in school. Others have developed their writing skills through blogging or in some other Internet capacity. … Continue reading →
RT @PatriciaHeaton: For those of you who are Christians and who feel disappointed or despairing of the election results, it is a blessing t… 4 months ago
Of all the things we talk about at Christmas, my guess is that the constancy of God is not high on the list. But maybe it should be.
My guess is that most Christians think of knowing the Lord as a process. We don’t become Christians and instantaneously know everything there is to know about God. Instead, like any relationship, there’s the initial getting-to-know-you phase, followed by increased closeness, depending on how much you invest in the relationship.
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A Christian Worldview of Fiction 