The subject of God’s judgement has been in the minds of Christians and those of other faiths in these days of Covid-19. I haven’t written at length on this possibly out of a fear of being misunderstood but also conscious of the enormity of the task. The fact is that many people just don’t want to think about judgement in relation to God. In his introduction to his translation of Paul’s Letter to the Romans J.B. Phillips refers to the general assumption that God is ‘a vague easy-going Benevolence.’ In my experience that is not wide of the mark. People want to hear about the love and goodness of God and in their minds that does not sit easily with Him being a God of judgement, even when that judgement rests on those aspects of human behaviour that disturb His relationship with men and women. Here we touch on another hot under the collar issue and that is sin.
I was once told of a colleague addressing a school assembly. For some reason he mentioned sin but with the addendum: ‘Whatever that is.’ That sums up the prevailing attitude not just in society but also sadly in the Church. It’s not just that Christians might disagree about the rights and wrongs of a particular issue. It’s a reluctance to face up to the reality that there are aspects of human behaviour that are out of step with God’s will and meet with His settled opposition. Serious as this is it is merely symptomatic of a deeper malaise which festers at the heart not merely of humankind but Creation itself.
Mention the early chapters of Genesis and there will be the inevitable knee-jerk responses. I heard someone describe them as an invitation to intellectual suicide. But let’s leave the particulars aside and concentrate on the truths revealed. Most relevant to this discussion is what has been described as the ‘Fall’, the disobedience of humankind which created a distance between God and humankind and opened the door to suffering and death, ecological disturbance and broken relationships. (Genesis 3: 16-19) This was no longer the Creation that was good in the eyes of God but in the words of the song a ‘world gone wrong.‘ Read beyond Genesis 3 and you will see the consequences in the lives of men and women. Thousands of years later Jesus opened up the future in the company of some disciples and saw a world scarred by war, famine and earthquake. (Mark 13: 5-8)
This is all because of sin? It’s not an idea that you will hear on Question Time but what you will hear from time to time are voices telling us how deeply our actions are affecting the environment and threatening the very survival of the planet. Here is a recognition that careless actions have consequences that penetrate to the heart of Creation affecting quality of life and ecological balance. This is a Genesis truth that has taken root in the public mind though not perhaps from the preaching of the Church. It seems that God will find a way for His truth to rub up against the inner lives of men and women. Every shadow that falls upon human experience is a consequence of a fundamental disorientation in the human condition. We turn away from God and towards self. Paul explores this in Romans chapter 1. He presents a picture of a world where people have set their hearts against God and are therefore subject to ‘the wrath of God.’
This lets us more deeply into our subject: the judgement of God on humankind. Paul is quite clear in Romans 5: 12-21 that the fall away from God that we see in Adam was reversed in Jesus. He was the One destined to bring us back to God. So if the life, death and resurrection of Jesus was God’s ultimate push to bring humankind back to Himself, it is inevitable that anything that resists that push will meet with His opposition. This is ‘the wrath of God.’ Not the irrational outbursts that we are prone to but His settled opposition to anything that thwarts His good and loving purpose to bring humankind back to Himself.
It is interesting that Paul sees the demonstration of God’s wrath is not to blast humankind off the face of the earth but to give them over to those practices that are in opposition to His will. In other words, he does not interfere with free choice. In His love for humankind it is His desire to have a race of people who freely respond to Him in love. (Romans 1: 18-32)
This is not to say that there are no specific acts of judgement in Scripture. But they are usually directed not at the world but at the people of God. We find this repeatedly in the life of the covenant people of Israel and also in the early life of the Church. It is quite a shock for us to read in 1 Corinthians 11: 30 that the reason for the sickness and death evident in the Corinthian Church is lack of respect and discernment at the Lord’s Table! In his recent paper The Coronavirus Can Any Words Help? Professor Donald Macleod writes:
‘Most of the Bible’s references to the anger of God speak not of his anger against the world, but of his anger against his own people. It is his chosen nation he punishes for their iniquity (Amos 3:2), and those he loves that he reproves and chastens (Rev. 3: 19)’
So we need to be careful when we speak of any event being an act of God’s judgement on the world. I confess that when Covid-19 broke upon us the thought crossed my mind: ‘I wonder if God is fed up giving us hints!’ That was careless thinking. What needs to be remembered is that when God’s judgement falls in Scripture there are prophets and apostles called and appointed by God who interpret those events in this way. We no longer have these people who are undisputedly locked on to the mind of God and can speak into events with the words: ‘Thus says the Lord!’
What we are left with as believers is a catastrophic event which God in His providence has allowed. But there is a vast cloud of witnesses in the Christian tradition who have endured suffering and discovered new experiences of God’s love and goodness and a consequent strengthening of faith. The eighteenth century poet and hymn writer William Cowper endured bouts of mental illness which on occasion drove him to the brink of suicide. However his faith endured memorably expressed in the hymn ‘God moves in a mysterious way . . .’ The final verses are:
‘Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust him for his grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.
Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan his work in vain,
God is his own interpreter,
And he will make it plain.’
What I like about this is the assurance that our immediate experience is not the only reality. The nineteenth century fantasy writer George Macdonald has a character he describes as ‘a butterfly fluttering over the mere surfaces of existence’. Cowper’s faith would not allow him to accept that the world of sight, sound and touch is all we have. The God revealed in Jesus is not the ‘easy-going Benevolence’ beloved of popular religion but a God who steeped Himself in human experience and through a Cross made a path through suffering to make possible a New Humanity which would find its fulfilment in a New Society, the New Jerusalem, where there is no place for anything that causes pain to us - or to Him.
