A Loving Father or Cosmic Tyrant?

Megalomaniacal; bloodthirsty; homophobic; racist; genocidal. Those are just a few of the attributes Richard Dawkins pins on God in his latest diatribe, The God Delusion, which would be more appropriately titled—to twist Jonathan Edwards’ phrase—God in the Hands of an Angry Atheist.

Among less trenchant skeptics, God is a mythical authoritarian who, at times, behaves more like a capricious bully than a cosmic father-figure. Yet even among Christians, the Yahweh of the Old Testament seems incompatible with the Good Shepherd of the New. As a consequence, some believers avoid the Old Testament altogether or venture only to the comforting passages of the Psalms and Proverbs.

What do we make of the two faces of God? On one side, there is the God of swift justice who executes sentences with sword, plague, and flood; on the other, the God of long-suffering mercy who allows tares and wheat to co-exist. Somehow, the God who swept through Egypt destroying the firstborn seems at odds with Him who said, “Suffer the little children.”

GOD OF JUDGMENT
There is probably no account of God’s justice more chilling than that of Jericho’s conquest. After circling the city seven times and flattening its wall with a trumpet blast, the Israelites put the sword to “every living thing...men, women, young and old, cattle, sheep, and donkeys.” As offensive as that may be to our modern sensibilities, what followed is downright numbing.

Before the Israelites entered Jericho, God commanded that all of the city’s precious metals were to be devoted to him. Despite the divine order, one of Joshua’s men, Achan, was caught red-handed with a few items of contraband. For such an offense, it would seem that a moderate civil penalty would have sufficed. Yet in God’s court of law, Achan was sentenced to be stoned and, there being no court of appeals, was promptly executed.

The Old Testament contains a sizeable list of capital crimes ranging from cursing one’s parents to child sacrifice, but the thought that Achan’s offense warranted the same penalty as murder goes completely against our concept of a punishment befitting the crime. Even more troubling was that Achan’s punishment extended beyond him to his entire family.

The collateral annihilation of “innocents” leaves us speechless. It’s as if God lost control, clearing out a swath of judgment against all those caught in the crosshairs of a divine temper tantrum. And yet this pattern of “indiscriminate” destruction courses throughout history, whether it is the slaughter of the Canaanites by Israel or the killing of Indonesians by a tsunami.

Are these the works of a loving God or of Dawkins’ megalomaniac? Is God the victim of divine schizophrenia or, as skeptics assert, a manmade myth? Interestingly, the answers to those questions start not with how we view God, but how we view ourselves.

THE NATURE OF MAN
Our natural tendency is to think of ourselves as basically good. It’s not that we deny the existence of evil or our own vices; what we resist is the thought that we are inherently evil, that we carry a moral virus inclining us toward wrongdoing and that, from the womb to the grave, we are under a sentence of death. Death, as we see it, is not a consequence of our moral failure, but of the second law of thermodynamics—the inherent principle of nature causing the whole universe to wind down and decay.

Let’s think about that for a moment. A universe “in decay” means that if we could travel back in time, we would find the universe increasingly ordered and pristine. And if we could transport ourselves back to the very beginning, we would find it in the most pristine state imaginable, even perfect. The question is: What upset the original balance and harmony, sending the universe on its downward spiral? According to the Biblical narrative, it was sin.

In one act of rebellion, man introduced an impurity in God’s creation that made decay and death as universal as the quantum potential. It was a matter of cause and effect. Once introduced, corruption spread, infecting everything it touched. Each contamination weakened and degraded its host, making it unable to withstand the diffuse glory of God permeating the cosmos—much less, the full blaze of His presence.

Had God not removed Adam and Eve from the intimacy they enjoyed in the Garden, they would have been consumed in his radiance as surely as dry grass in a blast furnace. From the Garden onward, God moves among his people through theophany: a burning bush, a pillar of fire, a cloud, an angel. The divine camouflage is an act of love and mercy that retards the process of death, allowing the plan of restoration to unfold.

NOTIONS OF JUSTICE
If we take umbrage with the harshness of Yahweh and the capital offenses of the Old Testament, we forget that, ultimately, every transgression deserves the death penalty: “The soul who sins is the one who will die.” Thus, the Old Testament judgments represent a radical reduction in the capital punishments warranted.

In the Church era, while still “dead men walking,” we view the notion of capital offense as a relic of a distant past. So when the child dies of cancer, the earthquake kills thousands, the suicide bomber takes the lives of civilians, or when Achan’s family is stoned, we question God’s justice for executing it, or we question his love for allowing it.

It would help to remember several things here. First is our tendency to consider loss and affliction in this world as meaningless, with no higher purpose in the “now” or the “not yet.” To set the matter straight, the apostle Paul—no stranger to adversity—put it this way: “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”

Next, although we may be innocent with regard to our fellow man, before God we stand guilty and rightly deserve death.

And lastly, God’s mercy is not obligatory. If it was, it wouldn’t be a product of his grace; it would be a right, an entitlement, something to be earned. For example, God was equally just to take the life of Pharaoh’s son, while allowing Joseph Stalin to live to the age of 74. Likewise, God would be equally just in allowing me to be the victim of a drive-by shooting, as he would to let me live to the ripe age of 100. Although each case involves a different measure of God’s mercy, each involves the same punishment: death.

We stumble here because we suppose that when God extends mercy to one person, He is bound to extend it to all in equal measure. It is the error of believing that God’s mercy is infinite; that in the end, all our differences will fade away and we will all unite in His loving embrace. As comforting as that notion is, it is diametrically opposed to the coming judgment taught by Jesus: “There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day.”

A day is coming when God’s mercy toward evil and evil-doers will end. But in the long delay, we have become so used to God’s mercy that his grace no longer amazes us. What amazes us, notes theologian R.C. Sproul, is justice. In The Holiness of God, Sproul recounts an experience that vividly illustrates that point.

Dr. Sproul had given his class of 250 students an assignment with a warning that they would receive an “F” if not turned in on time. On the due date, twenty-five anxious students arrived without their papers and begged for an extension, which Dr. Sproul granted. The next month another assignment was given and, on the appointed date, fifty sheepish students came to class without their papers. After hearing their excuses and pleas for mercy, Sproul relented a second time, stipulating that it would be the last extension he would grant.

Nevertheless, by the third assignment, one hundred students “strolled into the lecture hall utterly unconcerned” that they hadn’t completed the work, telling the professor, “Don’t worry, Prof, we’re working on [our papers]. We’ll have them for you in a couple of days, no sweat.” When Dr. Sproul began recording F’s in his gradebook, the students bellowed, “That’s unfair!”

“You think it’s not fair?”

“Yes.”

“I see. It’s justice you want. If you insist on justice, I’ll not only give you an F for this assignment but for the others you turned in late as well.”

After a period of stunned silence, the students apologized, gladly accepting the “F” for the late assignment. Sproul’s story illustrates that what we really want from God is not justice, but mercy.

Indeed, God tempers his justice with mercy. But His mercy is neither limitless nor egalitarian. If it were, our choices would have no ultimate consequence, leaving our lives devoid of meaning--a condition more easily accomplished in a world of automatons. But thanks to the grace of God, we are not programmed robots, but free-willed beings able to make real choices—choices that count for eternity.

For the world is not a stage of marionettes that, when finished with their performance, are returned to the trap boxes of their owner; it is a richly designed macrocosm in which every person has eternal significance—either towards unending joy or everlasting removal.

In the confusing, tumultuous between time, Paul reminds us that “our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” and then coaches us to “fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” And this from a man who knew all about hardship and loss.

Receiving his divine commission after being struck blind on a dusty road to Damascus, Paul experienced “all the joy” of numerous beatings, shipwrecks, imprisonments, a stoning and, on top of it all, a persistent “thorn.”

So, loving God or cosmic tyrant? For the thorn-afflicted apostle, the Cross settled the matter once and for all: ”But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

Regis Nicoll is a freelance writer and a Centurion of the Wilberforce Forum. His "All Things Examined" column appears on BreakPoint every other Friday. Serving as a men’s ministry leader and worldview teacher in his community, Regis publishes a free weekly commentary to stimulate thought on current issues from a Christian perspective. To be placed on this free e-mail distribution list, e-mail him at: centurion51@aol.com.