How does one reconcile the loving God with this other God who is capable of committing acts of violence that we would normally want to attribute to the devil?
Today I was reading 'The Character of God Controversy' by Steve Wohlberg and Chris Lewis, and I found the following quote; "...God's wrath is not a counterpoint to His love but rather an expression of it. Could it be that God hates sin less because it offends His nature ... than because it distorts our perceptions and separates those He loves from Him?" (pg 12 - actually this is in the foreword, I only just started reading the book. And yes, I do read all the forewords and introductions.) This quote started me thinking along interesting lines and I have the following offering to try to explain what I now think is not a dichotomy at all, but rather that the Wrath of God is an expression of the Love of God. This passage is in the form of an analogy not a Bible study and I would be interested in your thoughts about where the analogy breaks down or could be improved.
A love triangle; the Girl, the Good Guy who loves the Girl, and the Bad Guy who the Girl thinks she loves.
All the Good Guy wants to do is spend time with the Girl, to shower her with gifts, to keep her safe, make her happy and love her. And he can't. Because, the Girl is enamoured, bewitched and infatuated with the Bad Guy.
The Bad Guy uses and abuses her, beats her, steals her stuff, and generally makes life miserable, except for when he doesn't. Sometimes he is utterly charming, and he makes such hope-filled promises, he knows just how to manipulate her, he has his finger on her hopes, her dreams and her fears. Telling her lies about the Good Guy he destroys her trust and installs fear in its place.
Is it any wonder that the Good Guy hates the Bad Guy? Wants to destroy him? Wants to wipe away the memory of him?
Now lets broaden the picture ...
The Good Guy is the Ruler of the Region and the Bad Guy is his Prime Minister. The Good Guy knows that the Bad Guy has been embezzling from the treasury and fermenting rebellion. The Good Guy knows that for the health of the kingdom he must remove the Bad Guy and punish him, make an example of the Bad Guy and all his supporters.
Now the Good guy has a dilemma, if he acts against the Bad Guy the Girl will be caught up with the supporters and have to be punished, confirming for her all the lies the Bad Guy has told. He needs the Girl to come to him first, of her own free will, out of love, then he can deal to the Bad Guy. So he waits, he deals with the worst crimes, the ones he can not, must not leave to continue and he ignores the others. Waiting for the Bad Guy to make a mistake, to expose himself to the Girl in a way that she can not excuse. And he woos the Girl, attempts to teach her to trust, to recognise his love, to release the fear.
The Girl, she sees the acts of love and favour and she appreciates them, but she also sees the punishments and they confuse her, worry her, scare her. She knows she must decide, eventually, but being either ignorant of the full picture or refusing to believe the evidence she does perceive, she has no idea of the urgency of the situation.
The analogy should be fairly obvious, the Good Guy is God and the Bad Guy is the Devil. The Girl is you, and I, and every other human on this planet.
And now I'm going to stretch the analogy just a little further;
As a friend of the Girl you have a number of options;
- Tell her the Good Guy, the King, loves her unconditionally, that it doesn't matter what happens when he finally acts against the Bad Guy he will forgive her of anything, so "don't worry you can have them both, stay with the Bad Guy as long as you want. All those other punishments? the wrath of the king? Don't worry it won't effect you."
- Tell her that the Bad Guy is evil and the King will destroy him! And he'll destroy her too, just like he destroyed X, Y and Z, unless she straightens up and does the right thing, otherwise you too will encounter the wrath of the King.
- Point out the love and care of the Good Guy, expose the hurt and lies of the Bad Guy, discuss that justice insist that she will share the fate of the Bad Guy for crimes she has committed under the Bad Guys influence, while mercy promises pardon. Through reason and evidence build trust and love for the Good guy, show her that the Wrath of the King is an expression of the King's love for her and his misery at being separated from her and misrepresented to her.
What would you tell her?
I've been thinking about all this quite a lot and one thing I've realised is that I've had an error in my thinking. Basically I thought that everything that happens in the world is Gods will. Either directly ordered by Him or allowed by Him which amounts to the same thing. It's not one of those ideas I had ever crystallised into words until this week, more an unspoken underlying assumption. When I did put it into words I realised how wrong that idea is.
ReplyDeleteFor starters Adam and Eve eating the fruit was not Gods will, it went directly against Gods expressed will. He said 'don't eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and they did. And from then on in there are hundred, thousands, millions of things that have occurred that are not God's will, but He has to allow them because He refuses to violate our free will and therefore puts constraints on Himself, which of course is the whole point of prayer, to remove those constraints in situations we pray about - and to bring us closer to God!!
Now given that not everything that happens is God's will then we can only 'blame' Him for the things He directly orders, and there are a lot less of those. The VERY horrible things He is forced to allow are dreadful but not His fault. And often not the fault of the victims either, rather the blame falls on evil people following the lead of the devil - whether they know it or not.
Hence we must pray without ceasing for each other, asking God to work in our own lives and in the lives of our friends and families.