“Vengeful God… Is that what you really think?”

“Vengeful God… Is that what you really think?”

What is it in this world that shapes and defines your thinking? Do you have your own opinions of things or do you hold onto the opinions of others? How do you interpret what is spoken so that you are able to ‘put-on-the-shelf’, things that are unhelpful or simply untrue?

For some weird reason, we can be drawn into conspiracies and subterfuge that we would not have rationally considered. There are many who believe a UFO landed at Roswell or that governments have been involved in some of the world’s tragedy’s that have occurred in our recent history… Today especially 11/09/13, I am thinking about and re-living again in my mind, the 9/11 tragedy, as a very modern example of human loss mixed with conspiracy. I have no knowledge of the cause or the reasoning behind the act of violence that was carried out on that tragic day, beyond the popular understanding published in the media, but I am aware of the global impact that it made.

I was teaching at the time and some of the students whose parents worked in the City of London, became increasingly perplexed as events went on. It became apparent that a couple of those who attended my school in our small corner of Essex had a parent in Manhattan. It is an understatement for me to state that it was a horrific event, but it created an even greater sense of unrest when the conspiracy theorists suggested that the government had orchestrated this appalling act to increase the population’s paranoia of terrorism.

People demanded answers to the evidence as they saw it; formulating hypotheses to explain what they thought that they knew to be true. I can understand the need for rational answers to an irrational situation particularly as we reflect on the significant loss of life. As I type this, there is a young woman on the TV talking about how she believed in the hidden world of the illuminati. Her belief is that there is a secret society at work behind those who are our elected officials… that these illuminati are in fact orchestrating what goes on in the real world.

Some will always go beyond what has been presented as the truth, believing that there is something more going on than has been mentioned in public. There is a history of conspiracy theories or espionage, centred upon government agencies seemingly hiding the truth from the general public. There is also a popular genre of fictional writing that thrills us by confirming what we secretly believe might be going on behind closed doors!

I do like a good crime thriller or mystery, particularly when it is well written and doesn't give you the answers immediately. I particularly like the problem solving nature through the deductive reasoning of the characters involved in the unfolding storyline… I'm sure that is why Dan Brown has sold so well. As humans, we tend to be naturally inquisitive and want to understand the various contexts from which life evolves.

Life is complicated enough, even without these types of distractions. The interplay of our relationships; the purpose for which we are employed; the ebb and flow of our emotions; life has a sense of balance that is so easily upset when one or all of the elements that make up our psychological and philosophical outlook are up-set by an event that displaces our natural rhythm and routine. We rarely feel that we have attained a state of balance with our purpose in this life and with our sense of belonging; we can sustain life in all of its fullness but sadly, life always seems to demand a more dramatic response.

We all live lives that have woven within them, a rich tapestry of experience and emotion that makes up the fabric of our character and helps to form our personalities. Some of the experiences can be full of joy, warmth and happiness, while other experiences may be tinged with sadness or regret. We can choose to ignore those emotions we fear by suppressing them with gregarious actions, or we can be dominated by them to the point that we are powerless and ineffective. So when we are challenged by the new, we react as well as our subconscious thinking might allow.

If when presented with something new, we always choose to react defensively, however flamboyantly we might want to express it; we may find that we miss out on the truth of what we are being told. The opposite can also be true. We might hear the same thing over and over again to the point that we stop listening. Like many things in life, we do not always take things at face value: sadly, societal change has made us all wary of being taken-in by some form of deceit. Similarly, we do not lay aside our intellectual integrity or our ability to use reason in disseminating what is fact from fiction. So why is it that on receiving the same information, two people can react completely differently? Why is it that what is obvious to one party can be obscured to another?

When it comes to reading the Bible, it is not always easy to reconcile what we read within its pages, with our modern world view. The Bible is difficult to understand at the best of times, and the actions of God and his people can seem incredulous to our post-modern knowledge of ethics and the philosophy of today. Indeed, the Bible opens up many avenues for discussion and study where our world view of God is challenged. It is far too easy to say that you reject the Bible and all that is contained within the 66 books because of something you have read that you didn’t agree with, or with something that someone else has said.

You have to examine the evidence contained in the Bible for yourself, recognising that when we read it, we bring to it, all of the emotion that might hinder our understanding of it! It is like no other book because it is God breathed: “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.” (2 Timothy 2:16-17)

With the Bible, we have a responsibility to accept that the whole of scripture is important to us, even the more difficult passages; these difficult scriptures have a place within it because of what God wants to tell us about himself. Those who reject God because of what they have read in the Bible, choose what they want to believe in much the same way as I have described with the conspiracy writers who believe information to be deliberately hidden, in order to validate their claims. If we read the Bible looking for a way to reject God, we can turn arbitrarily to many random passages and find acts of violence that when taken out of context to the remaining text, can begin to look quite horrific in isolation.

One accusation levelled at stories in the Old Testament by those that reject God, surround the topic of genocide. The act of genocide was a phrase coined to describe where a group of people are systematically destroyed in whole or in part by another group. The perspective of history shows us the depravity of this particular crime particularly through the example of the atrocities dispensed on the Jews of the Holocaust during the Second World War. When we look back at the Old Testament, we can identify on first viewing, a pattern of violence that looks similar to that of genocide. SO HOW DOES THAT WORK?

It is amazing that some feel that they have ‘out-smarted’ God by asking these types of questions – “Surely a loving God wouldn't allow suffering in the world...?” A sort-of ‘Ha, ha – Answer that one if you can!’ However, before we all start accusing God of double standards, let’s remind ourselves that our culture and morality has been shaped by Christian and therefore Jewish morality and justice. God has revealed to all of mankind through the example of justice found in Jewish society, a sense of true justice… that is why we can recognise injustice through the inherent morality that runs through the heart of man. We can see a crime for what it is, if it was indeed men acting with purpose on their own direction. What you find in the Bible is that God was acting justly in accordance with what he had previously set out. (Deut. 7:1-2; 20:16-18).

The violent stories that we can pick out of the Bible are not men acting against another nation as described in the definition of genocide but rather, a nation acting to serve the purposes of God; in apportioning justice as sovereign king, and in honouring his covenant to protect those who call on his name. It is always interesting in matters regarding Gods judgement, that our natural predisposition is to question God’s motives, rather than the conduct of those caught in their sin. Here’s the challenge: are we willing to accept that our discernment for justice is in and of itself, given to us by God? If we can suspend how we process ‘justice’ within our post-modern context for a moment, we might be able to see the bigger story occurring in the text that we find so troubling.

To use examples where God commands the Israelites to completely destroy civilisations in the land that they were entering, as an example of an act of genocide, we are in effect rejecting the sovereignty and justice of God, and take his actions out of context. There is far more evidence in the Bible for a loving and generous God, than there is for a vengeful or even spiteful one – these are human responses to what we read if we have not considered the ‘bigger’ story.

It is very difficult to reconcile our human nature to that of God without his help. God is desperate to nurture and grow his people in faith and in righteousness through their faithful obedience to his will. When we stray from that, God does not stand idly by in judgement, although he could do that! No, God looks for a way to reconcile us to himself. His solution was Jesus. God doesn’t delight in punishing those that disobey him, as some might want us to believe but rather, he desires that we might all repent… in the case of the Canaanites, God waited for over 400 years before he led the Israelites into the promised land.

“When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are about to enter and occupy, he will clear away many nations ahead of you: the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. These seven nations are greater and more numerous than you. When the Lord your God hands these nations over to you and you conquer them, you must completely destroy them. Make no treaties with them and show them no mercy. (Deuteronomy 7:1-2)

I love the story of Jonah and the whale. He is adamant that he isn’t going to travel to Nineveh to tell the people that they have strayed from the law that God had set, and that they must return to God or be judged for their disobedience. Jonah’s gripe was that it was a waste of time for him to travel to Nineveh because he knew that as soon as just one of the Ninevites repented of their actions, God would forgive them and call the total annihilation of their civilisation off!

“O LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.” (Jonah 4:2)

This is in contrast to the story of the Canaanites whom were to be totally removed from the land. We can only surmise from the evidence contained within the Bible that God had given the Canaanites every opportunity to repent of their lifestyle choices. In rejecting God and in pursuing their worship of idols and images created by men, God judged this disobedience punishable by death. To doubt God’s authority and sovereignty to be able to make that judgement is to reject Gods moral and ethical integrity.

We know through reading the Bible stories that the Canaanites had continued to live their lives at enmity with God and his people. If we accept that God is creator and the earth and his inhabitants are his to do as he wills, then we are led to accept his judgement over the affairs of humanity. In this story, we are made aware that the Israelites were charged with protecting their purity as a holy nation and a royal priesthood. This meant that they could not allow any of the practices of the Canaanites to find their way into Jewish life. The Israelites were not going around committing indiscriminate acts of genocide because we find later in the Old Testament that they did not always carry out the will of God… but God knew that anyway.

God knows that evil behaviour corrupts absolutely and that those that lived deceitfully were not going to suddenly turn from their behaviour and be transformed by the messengers that God sent to them. The Canaanites were the opposite of the Ninevites… where God knew that the Ninevites would respond to his prophet Jonah, God knew that the Canaanites would not. God offers grace and mercy to those that repent, but delivers justice and judgement to those that reject him. Rejecting the sovereignty of God and his kingship of our lives means that we reject his protection as king and are left exposed to the evil we find in this world.

To some of us, the idea that God judges us for our sin causes us to question God’s sovereignty because we want to carry on doing what we do, even when we know it is not edifying to ourselves or to others. We are unwilling to enter into his grace because we reject the Holy Spirit convicting our hearts of our wrong doing. Learning to look at our lives through the lens of Gods son Jesus reveals that we are on the wrong pathway; the Holy Spirit encourages us to relinquish our lives to him. So as with the Canaanites, we choose to go our own way, or as with the Ninevites, we can respond to God by repenting and turning away from that which we do wrong. If we do not offer all our nature to God, our new life in Jesus can become corrupted by our old nature.

God’s willingness to forgive us in order that he can save us from ourselves is clear throughout the Bible. In accepting our weaknesses, we can feel as awkward as when we have to say sorry to someone… especially when it isn’t in our nature to do so. We have a mixture of pride and arrogance, perhaps mixed with some obstinance and a sense of shame that we have messed up. Abraham pleaded with God for Sodom and Gomorrah who are the classic cities of the Old Testament who had messed up: First Abraham asked if the Lord would spare the cities if there were fifty righteous people that lived there. The Lord said yes. Abraham persisted in bargaining down the numbers of people, until God agreed not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah if even ten righteous people lived there.

In this conversation between Abraham and God, the grace and mercy of God is revealed… If just ONE righteous man lived in that city, he would have spared ALL of them. I want to include the Bible passage of this account, even though it will make the blog longer to read, so that you can read the text for yourself. Ask God to reveal his heart to you as you read, and contrast this passage with God’s judgment found in the earlier passage from Deuteronomy. How might we perceive the situation in Canaan if, when you read the passage below, it seems at odds with the discourse below:

Then the men got up from their meal and looked out toward Sodom. As they left, Abraham went with them to send them on their way. “Should I hide my plan from Abraham?” the Lord asked. “For Abraham will certainly become a great and mighty nation and all the nations of the earth will be blessed through him. I have singled him out so that he will direct his sons and their families to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just. Then I will do for Abraham all that I have promised.” So the Lord told Abraham, “I have heard a great outcry from Sodom and Gomorrah, because their sin is so flagrant. I am going down to see if their actions are as wicked as I have heard. If not, I want to know.”  The other men turned and headed toward Sodom, but the Lord remained with Abraham. Abraham approached him and said, “Will you sweep away both the righteous and the wicked? Suppose you find fifty righteous people living there in the city—will you still sweep it away and not spare it for their sakes? Surely you wouldn’t do such a thing, destroying the righteous along with the wicked. Why, you would be treating the righteous and the wicked exactly the same! Surely you wouldn’t do that! Should not the Judge of all the earth do what is right?” And the Lord replied, “If I find fifty righteous people in Sodom, I will spare the entire city for their sake.” Then Abraham spoke again. “Since I have begun, let me speak further to my Lord, even though I am but dust and ashes. Suppose there are only forty-five righteous people rather than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?” And the Lord said, “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five righteous people there.” Then Abraham pressed his request further. “Suppose there are only forty?” And the Lord replied, “I will not destroy it for the sake of the forty.” “Please don’t be angry, my Lord,” Abraham pleaded. “Let me speak—suppose only thirty righteous people are found?” And the Lord replied, “I will not destroy it if I find thirty.” Then Abraham said, “Since I have dared to speak to the Lord, let me continue—suppose there are only twenty? And the Lord replied, “Then I will not destroy it for the sake of the twenty.” Finally, Abraham said, “Lord, please don’t be angry with me if I speak one more time: Suppose only ten are found there?” And the Lord replied, “Then I will not destroy it for the sake of the ten.” When the Lord had finished his conversation with Abraham, he went on his way, and Abraham returned to his tent. (Genesis 18:16-33)

This is the God in whom I place my trust… knowing that I am deserving of death, he rescues me. If one righteous person is lost, he will come searching for us: He is the good shepherd: “I am the good shepherd; I know my own sheep, and they know me, just as my Father knows me and I know the Father. So I sacrifice my life for the sheep. I have other sheep, too, that are not in this sheepfold. I must bring them also. They will listen to my voice, and there will be one flock with one shepherd. (John 10: 1-21).

When I hear the call of the good shepherd, how do I answer? Do I remain conflicted as I had always been as a child with my corrupted humanity so dismiss the call of God? Or do I in recognition of the broken man that I am, accept the offer of God as King… as protector… as comforter… as friend… as Lord… and as Saviour? It is for us to choose what we want to accept – God will not force his will on us, but as his creation, we are subject to his judgement for the sins we have already committed and those we will commit in the future. As King, he chooses to offer grace and mercy.

When we read passages in the Old Testament about ‘the Lord smote…’ and we think: ‘this is an angry God seeking vengeance’, we have mistaken the meaning of the text. We are unaware of how tirelessly God has tried to work through the people in order to turn them from their wicked ways. So when we read text such as this one found in 2 Chronicles 14:12: “So the Lord defeated the Ethiopians in the presence of Asa and the army of Judah, and the enemy fled.” - We know that these types of statements come at the end of a period of ‘bringing-to-account’, the error of their ways. This is not the vengeance of the Lord, but the justice of God. Our reading of how God dispenses his justice and his mercy within the pages of the Bible helps us to understand who God is and how he will work through us.

Jesus talks in the Gospel stories about some whom when presented with the truth, would reject him because they think that they know better… be it intellect, science or some other reason. There are many occasions where Jesus talks directly to the religious leaders about their blindness to see the truth of their own nature. The Pharisees particularly, were always seeking ways to trip-Jesus-up, yet on many occasions, he wrong-footed their intentions by revealing God’s true nature.

Jesus said, "For judgement I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind."  Those of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these things and said to Him, "We are not blind too, are we?"… (John 9: 39)

This is the same God that we read about in the Old Testament, challenging all who call on the name of the Lord to truly examine themselves so that they can know the truth. The prophet Ezekiel prophesied in the Old Testament about the world that the Son of Man (Jesus) would experience, 550 years before Jesus was born: "Son of man, you are living among a rebellious people. They have eyes to see but do not see and ears to hear but do not hear, for they are a rebellious people.” (Ezekiel 12:2) God knows our hearts and responds in love to our faithful obedience by giving us direction and purpose for our lives. Jesus was fully aware of our nature because he looks into our hearts… Those truly seeking God will find him because their hearts will be receptive to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who in turn reveals the nature of God and the confliction within our own nature, so that we will be led into his presence.

Let the Holy Spirit guide you as you read through these words of Jesus: “this is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” (John 3:19) "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free.” (Luke 4:18); Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgement to the Son, (John 5:21); and he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man. (John 5:22)

It would be foolish and illogical to reject Jesus because of Bible verses that we read or arguments that we have heard or been given that are taken out of the context in which they were written, or where the text has been isolated to a literal interpretation using the rules of language alone to analyse it. We have to also get into the mind of the writer and indeed, understand the context in which the writer was operating. We can only truly get into the mind of the writer by allowing the Holy Spirit to work through our lack of understanding, and ask him to illuminate the text through the life of Christ.

It is helpful to understand the historical and cultural contexts so that we are not persuaded by the poor reasoning of the conspiracy theorists that try to make incompatible or irregular pieces of the Bible fit together to suit what they wish to believe. Indeed, Jesus compels us to use our minds and our intellectual capabilities to find truth because that is what sustains our understanding of God. A young girl on our Alpha course this week blamed all wars on religion, particularly when she looked at the situation in Syria… arguably; it is fair to say that if religion wasn't there, men would find alternative ways to fight a war.

War is started by religion when fundamentalism replaces faith. Religion is a human construct based in our cultural experiences and traditions – we all operate within our culture, secular, pagan, Muslim, Hindu or otherwise… it is wrong to contextualise war outside of our own reality by suggesting we would not go to war because we are not religious. 

In the UK, members of parliament voted against military action on Syria because of the legacy of the war with Iraq. Time has shown that the reasons behind the war in Baghdad were based on the flimsy evidence of a veiled terrorist threat. This fear obscured other more noble reasons such as the emancipation of the people towards democracy, or the more cynical reason of the securing of the supply of crude oil for use in the West. There is now a deep scepticism within many people in the UK, about the decisions that were made during that time to go to war using what appeared to be limited intelligence gathered by the security services regarding weapons of mass destruction.

We can use religion as a scapegoat for the causes of war but essentially, even within religious observance, man’s miss-placed sense of self-importance within the will of God is dramatically exaggerated... The line between faithful obedience to a loving God is conveniently forgotten in favour of pursuing our own motivations with what man thinks God wants. That is why as Christians, we are called to study the scriptures through the lens of Christ so that we allow him to ‘kill-off’ in us, the desire to corrupt what God has made pure. Again, this is also synonymous with how we can interpret what happened in the Old Testament.

In the Old Testament we see God working through a nation, Israel, but in the New Testament we see God working through the hearts of people, you and me, gently guiding us towards an inner holiness which we learn to express through loving actions… When we study the Old Testament; I mean really study what is going on within the whole text; we can actually see that God is working through the hearts of the men and women within it's pages too. The difference being perhaps, that the Old Testament is written through the lens of the nation of Israel and the way in which they tried to honour their sovereign King Yahweh, while the New Testament is viewed through the lens of Christ who came to fulfil all that had gone before him.

As in many of the Old Testament stories, God is constantly sending his messengers like Ezekiel, to call people to himself… many responded to that call and lived in peace and harmony. Many others rejected God’s call, preferring to live as they saw fit. We neglect to recognise God as Father and King, we also lose the perspective that God is able to judge our actions and has the authority to bring us to account for the things we do. If we reject that God can do this, then we are making a choice to live apart from him. 

From a Christian perspective, we are then left exposed to his wrath because God hates sin. We may be uncomfortable with the idea that God hates sin because it pushes the focus onto the way that we live our lives and the things we chose to do which are outside of God’s will for us. In that moment of reflection, God through the work of his Holy Spirit, offers us a way to find peace through the death and resurrection of his son Jesus.

Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. 
(John 14:6)

So don’t be fooled by the conspiracy stories told about Jesus and the often lazy dismissal of God as the creator and sustainer of our lives. Make the right choice – choose a loving God who is mighty to save us from the darkness of our lives. NOTHING is too big for him – we are all allowed to take the hand of friendship that God offers us and take his cup so that we can drink from the living waters… Do something courageous – ask God into your life, so that the glorious and gracious King can enter in to become the centre.