Yesterday, I spent the day landscaping at Greenlife and I think it is safe to say that I sweat more during that time than any other day in my life. There was not a cloud in the sky and, if you ask me, the heat index was approaching somewhere near the 978 degree mark. Needless to say, it was a scorcher. And I am absolutely spent from the energy standpoint. On a lighter note, I had the exciting opportunity to attend two of the three finals games for the College Baseball World Series. Game 2 was fantastic because it was a Longhorn victory. But Wednesday was a dark, dark day for Longhorn baseball. So, in light of that, I have a great idea...we're not going to talk about the game and what happened. Okay? Good. But this video is for the Duhons if they are reading ;-)
This is a really bad transition, but I'm too tired to worry about it. So here we go. One of the lessons that have been impressed upon me lately is my realization of how careless I am in the way I approach God. In reading through the Old Testament, I see God's wrath consuming people after people for their carelessness with Him. I am reading Numbers right now and in chapter sixteen, God uses the earth to swallow up the lives of rebellious Israelites and He sets forth a plague that kills nearly 15,000 rebels before Aaron is able to make atonement for them. The underlying point? God is not to be followed/approached carelessly. But this is a perspective that causes reading the Old Testament to become difficult. As a society, we always focus on the negative. We cannot see past the blood, pain, and suffering. Skeptics love to take away the legitimacy behind the existence of a loving and caring God by pointing at tragedy and screaming, "Where is your God in that?" Because if God were loving, He would never let that happen.
The problem with this idea is that God is not simply loving. He is also just. The Bible makes it clear that we are naturally sinners (Ephesians 2). It is built into our DNA. And God, being just, created hell as a place of eternal separation and punishment for our sins. Because God is completely holy and sin does not belong with Him. But God, in his great and abounding love, has offered us forgiveness and death to our transgressions. Even though our sins are, in effect, murderous to His name, He offers us redemption from them. Moreover, He sent His only Son to die the most horrific and bloody death imaginable so that we might have life. And He did this "while we were still sinners" (Romans 5:8) - while we were His enemies. Now I am not downplaying the pain felt in loss. It is sincere. And if I felt death in a close manner, I too would be prone to questioning God's methods. But the fact that we focus on the negatives of this world to conclude that God, who can function outside of the limits of our world, has not acted lovingly is completely unreasonable. The loss of a pet, resource, relationship, or even the tragedy of the Holocaust does not outweigh or take away the legitimacy of the love God extends (present tense) to us in offering us a relationship with Him that saves us from ETERNAL DAMNATION. September 11th was a terrible tragedy that shook me to the core. We saw death through a raw and uncensored lens and we struggle to find God in that. But how about the thousands of flights God lovingly kept from being hijacked in the years prior to that day? How gracious is He in protecting us? How merciful is He in blessing us? He gets no credit and every single bit of the blame.
I think this is how many people read the Old Testament, myself included. God pours out His wrath and kills many people, yes. But to how many does He extend His grace so they might live? In comparison, death in the Old Testament is a fraction to the life that thrives. But we cannot get past the blood, pain, and suffering. We cannot get past the fact that God punishes. He rescues the Israelites from slavery, delivers them from the hands of death, sets forth a ritualistic method for atonement of sins, provides for every need, and promises them a home in "a land flowing with milk and honey" (Numbers 14:8), and we discount the presence of God's love because He disciplines them for complaining and rebelling in spite of it all? I do not see the logic behind that. For the first time now, I get the other side. I am reading the Old Testament and seeing God's grace even in His wrath.
And that is a beautiful thing.
Peace - C.H.
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