Have you ever wondered how it is that someone can say, “God is love,” and in the same breath characterize God as vindictive and cruel? Does that statement seem extreme? Just listen to the conversations around you and you will quickly discover how sometimes Christians purporting a loving God are often proclaiming an image quite the opposite.
In our defense, an attitude of dominance and the violence necessary to maintain it, is so ingrained in our mind-sets that it would take an act of God to change it.
That, of course, has been arranged. The act of God is Jesus.
We read a dark passage in our Bible Talk this week. It was from the book of Zechariah, the minor prophet. Prophets in the Old Testament were assigned to tell the people what God expected of them and what might happen if they disobeyed. Zechariah says that if they don’t straighten up and fly right God is going to do things to them through evil means that I don’t want to repeat in this blog.
God doesn’t do that. God doesn’t act like vindictive people. Many other scriptures say God has a loving and kind nature. God is love (I John 4). It seems unreasonable and naïve and maybe dangerous to leave the answer to all the evil in the world with “God is love.” Can we leave it at that? No, this conversation will go on.
But God did. He left it at that. A statement of love. The statement is Jesus.
I wish Zechariah had met Jesus. He would have said things a little differently. Best to read the Old Testament with Jesus eyes. Much of what it says broke His heart, too, or made Him angry.
Jesus showed us that love is vulnerable. That’s because it cannot be coerced. I really can’t make you love me if you don’t. And if I could, that would be dominance, not love.
The Cross embraced the suffering of us all; the Resurrection revealed that you can’t kill love.
God’s way is not domination, not wiping out the bad people and the innocents in their towns. God calls forth life from the places of death.
Zechariah spoke of the day of the Lord, when God would be King over all the earth. The Psalmist sang that He already is.
I suppose grappling with scriptures is an appropriate context for reading a book about people grappling with God. It’s okay to ask the tough questions sometimes.
Nazarenes believe: The Bible is inerrant in its message of the salvation and revelation of God. (Article 4)