The Wrath of God

Christians often fall into two camps concerning the wrath of God--those who reject it entirely and those who embrace it with joy. If you listen to many on the left, it would be easy to conclude that Alan Alda was the second incarnation of Christ, the ultimately sensitive male, while many of those on the right, who preach the wrath of God without remorse, paint a portrait of God as one who is very close to a Jekyll and Hyde. These images of God are never easy to harmonize.

For the longest time I tried to be in the first camp because I could not reconcile the wrath of God with the Bible's description of the love of God in Christ Jesus. And the truth is, secretly (and silently), I have always sympathized (though never agreed) with the 2nd century heretic, Marcion, who claimed that the God of the Old Testament was inferior and demonic while the God of the New Testament was superior and a God of love. For anyone who has read the Bible it is not difficult to see why he thought that.

The God of Israel does seem rather evil and capricious at times, commanding the deaths of rebellious children (Dt 21:18-21), adulterers (Lev 20: 10-12), Sabbath-breakers (Ex 31:14) and women who lie about their virginity (Dt 22:20-25) to name a few, while justifying, or at least ignoring, bigamy (Gen 4:19), female oppression, and victims of rape (Dt 22:28-29).

God also seems to lose his patience and his temper at the drop of a hat and without much warning as he did when Moses struck the rock two times instead of one time at Mariah in order to bring forth water. Or like God did with Uzzah when he was carrying the ark of the covenant back to Israel on an oxen cart. When the oxen stumbled Uzzah instinctively reached to stablize the ark and God struck him dead. Apparently no human hands were supposed to touch it.

And maybe worst of all is that God comes across as blood-thirsty and as murderous as any Hitler could be in his continuous commands of genocide concerning the surrounding nations. "Under the ban" is the biblical expression for it--usually the complete destruction of every living thing having to do with an opposing country (Josh 6:17). It all comes under the title of the "wrath of God".

Of course, thank God, there are other ways of interpreting these things without concluding that God is evil but if the truth be told, those answers are not very obvious ones and some of them are not very good either. I have recently concluded again however that if the Bible is to be taken seriously--and it must be by the church-- then God's perplexing wrath cannot be denied or ignored.

There are at least two things that we can conclude from the stories of God's wrath. The first is that God, like C.S. Lewis said of Aslan in the Narnia Chronicles, "is not a tame lion". To be untameable means to be uncontrollable and that makes everyone nervous because Yahweh shatters neat little theologies that define God either too narrowly or too broadly and that, in turn, evokes fear. But fear isn't all bad and the Bible calls fear of God the beginning of wisdom. Maybe it is the beginning of wisdom because we must come to this God as listeners of the Word rather than knowers of the Word and fear often shuts our mouths. Wisdom must listen first and approaching God as untameable means we must always be on guard because God is on the offensive.

Secondly, the stories of God's wrath tell us that because God is uncontrollable, therefore God is also unpredictable and thus in large part, unknowable. Although  I prefer to think that life is unpredictable while God should not be, the Bible won't allow for such facile distinctions. As the Psalmist declared...God shrouded himself in darkness, covering his approach with dark rain clouds.... For Christians however, the truest expression of the nature of God is in the cross of Jesus the Messiah and everything else must be interpreted in light of that wonderfully absurd revelation.

I have to admit that I haven't come to the place where I can embrace the wrath of God as I do the love of God and I am not sure that is the proper response anyway. But to the degree that Scripture gives us images of God, that is, pictures of God to compare with one another, then the image of God's wrath, especially in the Old Testament, must be continually held up next to the image of God's dying and undying love in the cross of Jesus Christ In the New Testament.