Understanding the Wrath of God
Among the many criticisms that atheists have against religion, one of the most uncomfortable
for Christians is the existence of God’s wrath.
As much as we love to look to Jesus and say that God is loving and merciful, there are
more than enough instances, in the Old Testament and New, of God’s anger leading to punishment,
even eternal condemnation.
[George Carlan]
For atheists, this is an example of cognitive dissonance, of religious people holding contradictory
beliefs.
How can God be all loving and cares for everyone…
when he kills and condemns?
When you read stories like the flood that wiped out all but a few creatures on earth;
what God did to the Egyptian people, most of which had nothing to do with Pharoah’s
sins; how he wiped out entire peoples so that Israel could have land; how he allowed his
own people to be destroyed and sent into slavery a few hundred years after saving them for
slavery, all for, checks notes, not giving him absolute obedience and following without
question… the God of the Old testament seems less of an all-loving God, and more like a
crazy tyrant.
And lest we think that there are two Gods or try to focus only on Jesus, remember his
words to the Pharisees, remember his threats of burning in a fiery Gehenna.
One could definitely argue that Jesus’ wrath was worse than in the Old Testament because
his punishment extended after death.
While atheists may have a number of spurious arguments against religion that are easily
dismissed…
this is not one of them.
This is a legitimate question we have to be able to reconcile in ourselves.
How DO we understand God’s wrath in light of the belief that God is all-loving?
Put another way, how can there be punishment—how can Hell exist—if God is love?
For me, it’s actually a really simple question to answer.
There’s no need for advanced theological degrees or mental gymnastics of interpreting
certain words in certain ways… it comes down to remembering one very simple fact:
God is the SOURCE of all goodness.
Not, “God is a good guy like you and me,” not “God does good things from time to time,”
God is the SOURCE of goodness, the originator of ALL that is good.
God is goodness in God’s very self, meaning that anything and everything that is good
in the world is good precisely because God has made it such and it continues to participate
in God’s goodness.
A helpful analogy some like to use is to think of God as a power plant.
Anything that is hooked up to the cables and receives electricity can work—the lights
illuminate, the wifi sends out its signal.
But these things are never independent of that power.
You can’t decide that you’re not going to pay your electric bill and watch Netflix
on your own in peace—as soon as the cables are disconnected, the power shuts off.
To the extent that we are alive and good and enjoy goodness around us is the result of
our being plugged into the source of Goodness itself.
When we act with generosity sharing what we have with others, indulge in humorous situations
with a laugh, admire a beautiful sunset, experience pleasure—literally anything that is good—we
are experiencing something that God created, that God is a part of, a shadow of God’s
very self.
This is true for things in the outside world, but also of the very nature of ourselves.
If there is something good about us, something we like and are proud of, something that brings
us joy, it exists because—and only because—God created and dwells in us.
And so, what happens when we sin, when we say I don’t want you, I don’t want goodness,
I would prefer to follow my own path and think of myself first”?
Well… the same thing that happens when we say this to our electric company: we get cut
off.
The beauty of God’s love for us is that it respects our free will.
God does not want automated cyborgs that are programmed for perfect obedience—he wants
free thinking, free-loving beings that have a choice—a choice to love and a choice to
walk away.
God created us and gives us life, but he does not make us love him.
That decision is up to us.
But that decision is not without consequences.
If we choose to deny him—the source of Goodness—then the logical conclusion is that he won’t
make us accept his goodness.
He’ll take it back, because we clearly don’t want it.
And so think about what that looks like.
For a thought experiment, think about all the good things about yourself.
Your generosity, sense of humor, friendliness, good looks, wisdom, imagination, whatever
it is you like about yourself.
Now imagine yourself without any of those things.
You decide to cut yourself off from the Goodness grid.
What are you left with?
You’d be left with jealousy, anger, anxiety, selfishness, greed, and a host of other deformed
attributes.
You’d be left as a shadow of yourself, consumed entirely inward, hating everything and everyone,
including yourself.
For how could you not?
There is no more goodness in you, no more presence of God animating your soul.
C.S.
Lewis presents a chilling depiction of this in his book The Great Divorce.
Sort of a poor man’s Dante’s Inferno, he describes a man’s journey from Hell to
Heaven.
Because hell is the absence of Good, a place where God does not exist, he describes a place
where everyone has everything they want but are never satisfied because nothing is ever
real; a place where there are no neighbors, everyone just moves farther and farther apart
so that they never have to interact; where people do nothing but pace back and forth
muttering about ways they’ve been wronged, plotting their revenge.
What I love about the story and the key to the question at hand, is that Hell is not
something inflicted on people by God.
It is not a punishment or direct result of God’s wrath.
As Lewis puts is, Hell is locked from the inside—people exist there because they want
nothing to do with God, and so God honors that decision.
They exist in a place that God does not dwell—a place without Goodness.
As much as some would like to imagine God as a wrathful God in heaven looking down upon
his people ready to smite them—and some people do genuinely like that idea—I don’t
think that can be reconciled with the God of love and mercy we see throughout scripture.
Atheists are right to point out the cognitive dissonance, but I think they are wrong to
believe that our suffering is the result of God’s conscious act of punishing us.
When we look to things like the flood, the plagues, the destruction of peoples, our immediate
reaction may be to accuse God of injustice, to call him a tyrant.
What gave him the right to take so many lives?
As products of a pluralistic society we insist that people be given the right to act and
worship how they like without threat of genocide.
But God is not a human ruler.
God is not about pluralism.
He is the source of all truth and goodness and life.
You can’t just respectfully choose to go your own direction without consequences, to
say, “I think I’ll follow my own moral code, worship my own god.”
When you say no to the power grid, you get your power cut off.
Not as an act of vengeance.
Not because God is angry or jealous… but because this is what you have chosen.
If you don’t want goodness, then you won’t get goodness.
And that doesn’t have to wait until we die.
I think the thing we need to realize, and the point of making this video, is that the
Hell Lewis described in his book doesn’t have to be a future reality alone: it is a
choice that so many of us make on a regular basis, inflicting punishment upon OURSELVES.
When we choose to be greedy, spiteful, lustful, selfish, or anything else against the will
of God, we are bound to experience some level of suffering because sin is its own punishment.
When we sin, we say no to God, we say no to goodness, we dim the power of the house of
our soul ever so slightly, leaving us with less than we had before.
The feelings of remorse, dread, anger, jealousy, envy, hatred, and emptiness that we feel after
doing something wrong are not so much God smiting us as they are the direct result of
dimming the power, as direct as the pain we would feel if we touched the burner on the
stove.
When we choose to turn away from goodness, we are going to be left with evil.
It’s as simple as that.
It’s not wrath…
it’s the natural conclusion to our actions.
Now, as I final note, I will say that I do believe that God admonishes.
Scripture mentions on numerous occasions that God specifically inflicts punishment for certain
people, and that can’t be completely discounted.
I do believe that much of this is metaphorical anthropomorphisms of God, trying to make sense
of natural disasters and human evil, but some of it is surely the work of God.
This is not a problem for me.
Just as a parent corrects their child, so, too, does God correct his children.
Sometimes, this involves pain and suffering, sometimes it means being cut off from the
good things we want, but just as a good parent, it is never purely retributive.
It is never punishment for the sake of pan or suffering, never out of a love for evil.
As the 1 Samuel canticle sings, “He humbles only to exalt us.”
For me, it is not a God that oscillates between love and hatred, one moment caring and the
next moment flying off the handle.
There is only one God, who cannot change; only one ever-present movement of God and
that is love.
He wants nothing more than for us to return to him and so he continues to chase after
us, continues to show us mercy, continues to offer us goodness even when we turn it
down.
To the extent that we experience punishment for our actions is not evidence of a mood
swing in God, but rather the natural effect of turning from God.
The fire is warm, but if we turn our back and walk away we will begin to feel cold.
The power plant is working, but if we unplug our devices, nothing will work.
Rather than blame the fire or the power plant, it might be good to ask ourselves the very
embarrassing question, are you sure the device is plugged in?