Today's post comes from Dan Reich who lives in Paraguay. Dan is a missionary in the very best sense of the word. This year Discovery witnessed Dan's ability to soak in a culture and offer leadership and a gospel word to it. Thanks Dan for taking time to contribute to our conversation. The Bible seems to teach that God loves us so much as to die for us,but is also often angry at his people.
God’s love is seen both throughout the story of human history narrated in the Bible. He is pleased with his creation, calling it good in the book of Genesis, and especially pleased with his creation once humankind was in the picture, calling it all very good in Genesis 1:31.
God’s anger should be understood in the context of His love. Loving parents have certain expectations of their children, and when children openly rebel, there is frustration, anguish, sadness, regret, and… anger.
God made humankind for the purpose of relationship: reflecting God’s loving care to the creation. Humans were to love God and love one another, to care for one another and to care for the creation that God put them in charge of. By and large, throughout the Bible and history since, humans have chosen idols over God, lust over love, and fighting over caring.
God is/was justly angry with humankind, including His chosen people.
Who are God’s people? In a sense all are by way of creation, but starting in Genesis 12 God chooses a man named Abram and his descendents to be “God’s chosen people.” These people receive God’s special attention, a special set of regulations, a special privileged relationship with Himself, and a special mission of revealing God’s love and justice to the other nations.
When they failed to love God, or obey Him, or reflect His justice, or even try… God was justly angry.
When Jesus died on the cross, according to the writing of Paul, God’s just anger for the heaps of corruption, idolatry, injustice, and evil that humans engaged in before and after the crucifixion was satisfied. Jesus was the sacrifice to satisfy God’s anger at his chosen people, but not only for them… also for all people of all nations.
This to me is the crux of a Christian understanding of history. Jesus’ willing sacrifice on the cross satisfied God’s anger and achieved God’s acceptance and forgiveness of humans… that is, those humans willing to recognize their part in the world’s injustice, repent, and believe in Jesus as God’s perfect sacrifice and God’s truly loving nature.
These people in turn become more than just “chosen people.” They are said to have been “adopted as God’s children.” (Ephesians 1)
For those who continue in rebellion and rejection of God, God’s just anger remains on them and on the unjust systems of the world. The Bible talks about an end of time, a judgment, when God’s anger with His rebellious creation will be revealed in its fullness through awful plagues described in the Revelation, last book of the Bible.
So is God loving or not? Is a parent who sharply disciplines a rebellious child loving? Is a society who locks up a repetitive criminal loving, or not? These examples don’t fully cover the dimensions of human evil or of God’s love, but they might give us an idea of the need for God to respond to evil and injustice. Often we see in the Bible that part of God’s just response is anger.
In Paraguay, many people tend to see bad weather, disease, and accidents in the context of God's anger against someone or a group of people. Declaring that a certain disaster was God angrily punishing those involved is walking on thin ice and thin Bíblical support. In Luke 13 Jesus mentions 2 situations, an accident where a tower fell on some people, killing them, and a politically motivated slaughter. He directly denies that those people involved were worse sinners than anyone else and therefore denies that they were punished by God in anger. He then warns people to repent of their own sins or perish.
Can we trust God’s love enough to know that His anger at sin and injustice is well directed and also good?
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