I've been judged by many people in many hypocritical ways, but I suspect nothing compares to being judged like God is judged - by an inaccurate description we've created of Him, by the cramped box we've tried to fit Him in, rather than by His true nature, character, and by the very words He's spoken.
Among the most irksome reasons one can hear for a disbelief in God is, "Bad things happen." Which of course holds no philosophical water, as God's job has never been to keep us happy, or to keep the world healthy and clean. It's not even a Scriptural truth. In fact, before sin entered the world, and we people began turning the planet into, literally, a world of hurt, it was still not God's job to make everything comfortable - it was man to whom He gave the directive to tend the Garden and keep out lying intruders. And we all know how man did with that task.
Nor is God's job to, in a matter of will over will, change the already-made-up mind of the public shooter or the power hungry dictator. It is however among His sovereign duties to judge them for their actions and choices with divine and holy judgment. I realized long ago that if God did not allow bad things into the world - or, rather, allow people to choose to do bad things to each other - He wouldn't be able to give you and I the beautiful and glorious task of doing good things. And if He, in some trump of will, made us all do good all the time, would our good really be good? Wouldn't it be as fleeting as a blink or a breath?
It is not God's job to make people treat each other fairly, or to make sure every exchange and transaction between people is fair - don't tell God, who sent His sinless Son to die for my sins, about what's "fair."
One of God's chores is, I suppose, to keep things running; the weather, biology, time, all of those vast things we humans can't control, try as we might.
But even more vast than those things too lofty for me to comprehend is something even more puzzling to me and my bitterness - love. And God did His job, kept every promise in every prophecy He ever gave the prophets to utter, when He came to this earth in the flesh. He did His job to the fullest when He gave a Savior to be the perfect Atonement, the punishment for the sins of all who would be willing to accept that this Messiah took on Himself the very literal wrath of God, so that we who bemoan the injustices in this world without doing a thing to cure them, would be free from that wrath and given to a life under His grace - even the shooter and the dictator could have the gift of grace and cleansing of evil.
That's God's job. To love us, though we have turned His creation into a smoking, fuming globe of waste. But this job was certainly not something owed to us, definitely not something we deserved. It is a job He gave Himself, because no one else could. And He exemplified His job when He, in human flesh, let His hands be stretched out and nailed to an ugly stake of capital punishment. A part of love is keeping promises - He's promised to return someday, and that you and I who believe will spend eternity with Him, where this love is never approached by the darkness of doubt, of prejudice, of bitterness.
Among the most irksome reasons one can hear for a disbelief in God is, "Bad things happen." Which of course holds no philosophical water, as God's job has never been to keep us happy, or to keep the world healthy and clean. It's not even a Scriptural truth. In fact, before sin entered the world, and we people began turning the planet into, literally, a world of hurt, it was still not God's job to make everything comfortable - it was man to whom He gave the directive to tend the Garden and keep out lying intruders. And we all know how man did with that task.
Nor is God's job to, in a matter of will over will, change the already-made-up mind of the public shooter or the power hungry dictator. It is however among His sovereign duties to judge them for their actions and choices with divine and holy judgment. I realized long ago that if God did not allow bad things into the world - or, rather, allow people to choose to do bad things to each other - He wouldn't be able to give you and I the beautiful and glorious task of doing good things. And if He, in some trump of will, made us all do good all the time, would our good really be good? Wouldn't it be as fleeting as a blink or a breath?
It is not God's job to make people treat each other fairly, or to make sure every exchange and transaction between people is fair - don't tell God, who sent His sinless Son to die for my sins, about what's "fair."
One of God's chores is, I suppose, to keep things running; the weather, biology, time, all of those vast things we humans can't control, try as we might.
But even more vast than those things too lofty for me to comprehend is something even more puzzling to me and my bitterness - love. And God did His job, kept every promise in every prophecy He ever gave the prophets to utter, when He came to this earth in the flesh. He did His job to the fullest when He gave a Savior to be the perfect Atonement, the punishment for the sins of all who would be willing to accept that this Messiah took on Himself the very literal wrath of God, so that we who bemoan the injustices in this world without doing a thing to cure them, would be free from that wrath and given to a life under His grace - even the shooter and the dictator could have the gift of grace and cleansing of evil.
That's God's job. To love us, though we have turned His creation into a smoking, fuming globe of waste. But this job was certainly not something owed to us, definitely not something we deserved. It is a job He gave Himself, because no one else could. And He exemplified His job when He, in human flesh, let His hands be stretched out and nailed to an ugly stake of capital punishment. A part of love is keeping promises - He's promised to return someday, and that you and I who believe will spend eternity with Him, where this love is never approached by the darkness of doubt, of prejudice, of bitterness.
No comments:
Post a Comment