Recently I heard a very well known Christian author and pastor talk about being criticized for claiming that God hates sinners. He went on to quote Psalm 5 and insinuate that perhaps he didn’t even speak strongly enough, “You hate all evildoers… the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.” Knowing his reputation as a sensitive and humble man, and seeing it there in black and white in everyone’s favorite Old Testament song book, I decided to hear him out, and thus began another attempt at understanding the complex emotional life of God.
If you grew up going to church like me, you may have grown up with a very one-dimensional view of God. Maybe that’s the church’s fault, or maybe we are just simple creatures that can only focus on one thing at a time. Anyways, I grew up with a very heavy emphasis on the holiness of God. And, to be honest, prided myself in being one of the faithful few who could bear the uncomfortable truth of a God who was holy, unflinching in his pursuit of justice, and consequently, angry with the world. Of course, I was also taught that God is loving, merciful, gracious, compassionate, and caring, but I had a hard time seeing both of those sides of God at the same time. One of the two, I thought, had to supersede the other. At the end of the day, at his core, God was either a holy God who had a secondary sense of love, or a loving God who cared about holiness as long as it didn't mean anyone got hurt. Based on what I could see at the time, I came to the conclusion that in the end, holiness triumphed over love. And I held to that view for a long time, because it made God a little easier to understand and helped me understand my place in the world a little better.
I just about had all this figured out when I met a man named Ken. To this day, I’d have to say that Ken is the most openly loving person I've ever met. On multiple occasions, within minutes of meeting someone for the first time, he would have them in tears just by virtue of him loving them so freely and indiscriminately. Something about this resonated with my soul on a deep level as if to say, “This is what you were made to be.” At the same time, it threw a wrench in my well-oiled theological machine and I knew that if Ken was right, I was wrong- super wrong. Was it possible that God really loved people that much and that freely? Or worse, if Ken was only a branch off the tree, that his love was only a small sample of God's? And how was it possible that I was so far off course, if we were reading the same Bible and believing in the same Jesus? After much wrestling, I came to the conclusion that Ken was right, and that God was indeed that loving. But I also realized that I was not altogether wrong, and that God was still angry at sinners. Very angry. But how? Why? Who was the God I had been believing in, and who was the real God? Was the God who brought plagues on the land of Egypt the same God who said “forgive them” to the people who were putting him to death on a cross?
It was at this point that I made a very important connection. Somehow along the path of life, holiness in my mind had become synonymous with a stern, exacting old man who is always suspicious of people having fun (I always picture inspector Javert from Les Miserables). When, however, I began asking Jesus, “What is at the heart of holiness?” I got a very different answer, and discovered that I was not the first to wrestle with this question. As one man phrased it, “Of all the things in the law (the old testament definition of holiness par excellence), what is the most important?” “Love,” Jesus responded, “To love God with all your heart, mind soul and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.” Now, if I’m reading my Bible right, and God is no hypocrite, that means that God loves himself with all his heart, mind, soul, and strength- his entire being- and that he loves his smaller, less impressive neighbors, as himself (in other words with all his heart, mind, soul, and strength- his entire being). Holiness and love were not against each other, they were one in the same thing. At the heart of God’s perfection, justice, purity, righteous anger and all the other attributes I had previously associated with holiness, was a blazing, white-hot love that fueled all of it. And when I saw that, I instantly understood why God was so angry (and yet with a completely different kind of anger than I had previously imagined)- why it could be said that he abhors evildoers, and yet in the same breath prays, ‘Forgive them.’
As difficult as it is to articulate, I will share a very insufficient example from my own life to explain how I am beginning to grapple with this paradoxical internal emotional life God. There is a great organization here in my hometown that fights human trafficking around the world. One of the ways they fund their organization is by running a small thrift store as a side business. Very recently someone broke into one of their containers and stole a bunch of valuable stuff along with all the money they had there. I was furious when I heard about it. Victims of human trafficking are among the most exploited people in this world, and to steal from them is about as low as you can possibly go on the scale of human dignity in my opinion. Whether or not the perpetrator knew who they were stealing from is not the point- the point is that they never gave a thought to who they might be hurting by their actions. They were completely blinded by the heartless and foolish monster of Selfishness. And, at the same time, I felt a compassion for this person. Who in their right mind would do such a thing? What kind of twisted, broken place would somebody have to be in to break into a shipping container of second hand goods? And how many times have I blindly acted out of the same selfishness, and hurt others in ways that I still may not even be aware of? On the one hand, I was furious because I cared deeply about the people that were being hurt by their actions. On the other hand, I know that the perpetrators are themselves caught in a different but still very cruel form of slavery. Then I thought, “If I, never having met these women or these petty criminals, am zealous for justice and at the same time care about their different kinds of suffering, how much must God be, who knit their ligaments and joints together in the womb and feels every subtle ripple of their souls?" And if I can begin to see both sides of the story and realize how complex the situation is, how much more complex must it be for God, who sees every side of every story?
“Behold then, the kindness and severity of God…”
Anyways, the issue is far from resolved, but at least I hope I have moved another step in the right direction. And if not, I at least am certain that the deep inner workings of justice and love in the universe are in better Hands than mine.
Written by Josh, Simi Valley, California
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