Today's "thought" comes from Tim
Keller's bestselling book, "The Reason for God - Belief in an Age of
Skepticism." Keller, if you know him, is a deep thinker who
filters all he sees through a solid Gospel grid. Alongside Ravi
Zacharias, Os Guiness, D. A. Carson, and a few others, he ranks as one of
the most astute Christian apologists and preachers of our day. Most anything he has written is well worth
your time in reading, including the above mentioned book.This particular thought addresses the common complaint of many non-Christians that, "If God is a God of Judgment He Can't be a God of love." In fact, that is the heading for this particular subsection of the chapter dealing with God's more unpopular characteristics -- His justice, judgment and wrath. It is well worth the minute or two it will take you to read it. It really is rather profound. Enjoy.
"In
Christianity God is both a God of love and of justice. Many people struggle
with this. They believe that a loving God can't be a judging God. Like most
other Christian ministers in our society, I have asked literally thousands of
times, "How can a God of love be also a God filled with wrath and anger?
If He is loving and perfect, he should forgive and accept everyone. He
shouldn't get angry."
I always
start my response by pointing out that all loving persons are sometimes filled
with wrath, not just despite, but because of, their love. If you love a person
and see someone ruining them -- even they themselves -- you get angry. As Becky
Pippert puts it in her book
"Hope Has It's Reasons":
"Think how we feel
when we see someone we love ravaged by unwise actions or relationships.
Do we respond with benign tolerance as we might
toward strangers? Far from it... Anger isn't the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of
hate is indifference... God's wrath is not a cranky explosion, but his settled opposition to the
cancer...which is eating out the insides of
the human race he loves with his whole being."
The
Bible says that God's wrath flows from his love and delight in his creation. He
is angry at evil and injustice because it is destroying its peace and
integrity. "The Lord is righteous in all his ways and loving toward all he
has made... The Lord watches over those who love him, but all the wicked he
will destroy" (Psalm 145:17-20). It is at this point that many
people complain that those who believe in a God of judgment will not approach
enemies with a desire to reconcile with them. If you believe in a God who
smites evildoers, you may think it perfectly justified to do some of the
smiting yourself.
Yale
theologian Miroslav Volf, a Croatian who has seen the violence in the Balkans,
does not see the doctrine of God's judgment that way. He writes:
If God were not
angry at injustice and deception and did not make a final end to violence
-- that God would not be worthy of worship... The only means
to prohibiting all recourse to violence by ourselves is to insist that violence is
legitimate only when it comes from God...My thesis that the practice of non-violence requires a
belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many... in the West... [But] it takes the
quiet of a suburban home for the birth of the thesis that human non-violence [results from
the belief in] God's refusal to judge. In a sun-scorched land, soaked in the blood
of the innocent, it will invariably die...
[with] other unpleasant captivities of the
liberal mind."
In this fascinating passage Volf reasons that it is the lack of belief in a God of vengeance that "secretly nourishes violence." The human impulse to make perpetrators of violence pay for their crimes is almost an overwhelming one. It cannot possibly be overcome with platitudes like, "Now don't you see that violence won't solve anything?" If you have seen your home burned down and your relatives killed and raped, such talk is laughable -- and it shows no concern for justice. Yet victims of violence are drawn to go far beyond justice into the vengeance that says, "You put out one of my eyes, so I will put out both of yours." They are pulled inexorably into an endless cycle of vengeance, of strikes and counter-strikes, nurtured and justified by the memory of terrible wrongs.
Can
our passion for justice be honored in a way that does not nurture our desire
for blood vengeance? Volf says the best resource for this is the belief in the
concept of God's divine justice. If I don't believe that there is a God who
will eventually put all things right, I will take up the sword and will be
sucked into the endless vortex of retaliation. Only if I am sure there is a God
who will right all wrongs and settle all accounts perfectly, do I find the
power to refrain."
In the context of
that verse it is both sincere love (v. 9) bolstered by the belief that
God is a God of justice who will one day right all wrongs, that gives people
the power to refrain from feeling the strong urge to right them
themselves. It's not just love alone that restrains retaliation. It
is love combined with the assurance that God will one day
(and not always in this lifetime) right all wrongs. As many of you can attest: If we don't believe God will avenge all
evil, we will feel the nearly irresistible need or compulsion to avenge it
ourselves. That is, when we let go of belief in a God of justice and wrath
-- in the face of terrible violence and injustice -- we will seek to execute
that justice, judgment and wrath ourselves. It is only the assurance that God
will do it, as Paul points out, that frees us from the deep inner compulsion to
do it ourselves.
Thank God we can
trust Him to avenge such things -- as His Word assures us He will -- or
this world would be an even more violent place to live.
With prayers for the
blessing of God upon your day, Pastor Jeff
