The Christian faith is built on two crucial concepts concerning the character of God, one is His love, the other is His holiness. So intrinsic are these that they define Him – God is Holy, God is Love. Other than these, I cannot think of the characteristics of God that match these two. That’s not to say they don’t exist, that is to say these two are the chief cornerstone attributes of God.
When people define God as loving there is something wrapped up in a view of love that does not accept obliteration and annihilation. This loving God does not want to see any perish but all come to know Him. This loving God wouldn’t want to hurt those He loves and He loves all people, not just the good ones, which is why He rains on the just and the unjust. This loving God could not possibly tell His followers to love His enemies and then go out and obliterate them. In the eyes of some, this loving God could not do such a thing.
If I were to genuinely embrace this concept of a loving God it would be no surprise to see me sooner or later walk down a road called universalism where everyone’s a winner. Everyone will eventually enter into the eternal Kingdom of God – that’s how a loving God can give men free will and still get all men to love Him.
I’m sure that’s a severe butchering of some definitions of universalism, I’m not pretending to be an expert on the subject. I just have a problem with that concept of a loving God. In fact that concept of a loving God would have to completely ignore the God of the narrative of the Old Testament on which is based the foundation for the God revealed in Jesus Christ in the New Testament. The modern sensibilities need to seriously distort and disfigure God’s Word about Himself to which all the New Testament writers referred and maintained to allow this figure of a loving God to continue.
This concept of a loving God needs to ignore the God of the flood, explain away the God of the Exodus, rationalise the God of the conquest for the Promised Land, reinvent the God of the battles of the nation of Israel, reinterpret the God of the vivid and violent images foretold of the God of vengeance. This concept of God, then, doesn’t really stand up to the Bible. It’s not as though the God of anger, judgement and punishment is reserved for the Old Testament. Some of the graphic and violent images of God can be found right alongside the harmless, bunnified benign images of a gentle Jesus, pathetic and emasculated that some people somehow conjure up. Needless to suggest that however metaphorical and allegorically you take the Jesus in Revelations, he certainly isn’t all that mild at all.
This is not to encourage a gung-ho, conservative, militaristic approach to faith endorsing getting arms to fight for the right to defend the Kingdom of God. This is not the machismo gospel where Jesus is Rambo. This is a belief that the holiness of God necessitates His position as judge in the Final Reckoning. You don’t have to be a seminar-trained theologian of lofty titles and more letters after your name than in it to know that a judgement has to be made on the state of humanity and the humans who have endured it. In as much as some sort of justice is executed this side of mortal existence, there is that sense of a greater balancing that needs to take place to account for the injustices that have occurred on this planet.
Who better to do the judging than a holy God? How loving of this holy God to give plenty of warning of His impending judgement to give people sufficient time to hear the gospel and respond accordingly. How necessary is it for the concept of judgement to hold true that serious consequences – literally the fate worse than death, if that too is to be disposed of – have to be the end result of rejecting the warnings. Now that kind of loving God doesn’t sound like One who will let everyone in eventually at the end of the day.
That kind of loving holy God comes across as Someone to take very seriously when He offers two paths and implores for us to choose life.
Now the nature of the consequence for the rejection of His message has to be significant, on that I can agree on and that is what I believe. Yet some of the things that are related to typical end-time visions I am not so certain about. I am definitely not convinced about the Dante inspired image of hell with the pitchforks and the devil with his horns and the like having difficulty remaining cool because it’s hot in there.
It is something worth getting a position on, however, for the sake of clarity and to reinforce the desperate desire to worship God now and love Him for who He is now. It is not a motivating factor to love God – avoiding hell that is – but it is something to be aware of in getting this narrative that God evidently wants us to be in on.
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
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