DISDAIN FOR A JUST AND RIGHTEOUS GOD

Although we have the worship impulse, many find the idea of a punitive God of justice and righteousness deeply unsettling. We tend to regard Him as a cosmic watchdog, who interferes with our autonomy with threats of punishment, and we are right. If you don’t see God this way, just read the prophets of Israel:

·       [Israel’s] princes in her midst are like wolves tearing the prey, shedding blood, destroying lives to get dishonest gain. And her prophets have smeared whitewash for them, seeing false visions and divining lies for them, saying, “Thus says the Lord GOD,” when the LORD has not spoken. The people of the land have practiced extortion and committed robbery. They have oppressed the poor and needy, and have extorted from the sojourner without justice. (Ezekiel 22:27-29 ESV)

The Hebrew Scriptures are filled with these denunciations, even of God’s own people. These are such an offense that it should be no surprise that Israel persecuted all of her prophets, even though they continued to inquire of them and regarded their books as the very Words of God. What an anomaly among the religions of the world!

However, if we are His family and are confident of His mercy, we see Him in an entirely different way. For one thing, we are grateful for His stern judgments. Why? We know how easy it is to embrace sin. Its temptations are so alluring and seem, at the time, so innocuous, that it’s all too easy to succumb, even when it is to our detriment. However, His Word clearly alerts us to what is unacceptable. Consequently, we discern that revenge or an affair, which might feel so right, is actually a deadly poison.

Our God will eventually bring justice. I like this because it means that we don’t have to worry about taking revenge. Instead, we can leave it to God to avenge. This enables us to attend to what is far more agreeable – love – while we leave the dirty-work to God.

Hatred and thoughts of revenge can be life-controlling. How then can we resist such impulses unless our minds have been fortified with the objective truths of God! In contrast, Western intellectuals have rejected the idea of objective moral laws because these require a law-Giver. As much as they might want to live a virtuous life, they are convinced that the idea of virtue is simply something we have created. Consequently, it is relative to our society and is evolving.

Can such a flimsy, relative, and changeable moral standard have the guts and substance to stand against our lusts and fears? Hardly! Let me try to illustrate. During the Holocaust one man decided to do the “right” thing and to shelter Jews from the Nazis. However, his wife protested that he was placing their entire family in great jeopardy with his personal, subjective, morally-relative concept of virtue, and she was right. How was he to justify the danger into which he was placing his family? He couldn’t say, “Well this just feels right to me.” The wife could understandably retort, “Well, your self-serving pursuit of virtue feels horrible to the rest of your family.”

Virtue requires more than a subjective need to do good. It requires the authority of God, the Creator, Sustainer, and truth-Giver, to stand behind it. Without the love, truth, and substance, which my Savior provides, I would be no more than a cork bobbing in the waves. Life would be a cruel joke, making promises among a meaningless cacophony of sounds and passing feelings, all claiming to say something of substance.