Grief and Wrath
Regardless of what caricature we wish to paint of God, any serious consideration must always include the reality of his wrath and judgment. This is the “dark side” of his mercy and compassion, and it is quite real.
Much has been made about God’s wrath throughout the history of the Church. Sometimes it is used as a spiritual (or literal) club for beating the wayward. Other times it is used as a looming threat for those who may reject Jesus.
Often there is a certain level of sadism in those who bear the message of God’s wrath. Which is perplexing for me, because God himself does not seem to take as much pleasure in wrath as many who claim his name do.
We defy Newton’s Law of Motion. Rather than every action having an equal an opposite reaction, we tend to live out the notion that every action has a greater and more punishing reaction. From the angry yelling and frantic gesturing that occurs when one driver negligently cuts off another; to the absolute and total destruction we collectively wish on those who do violence to us – we want wrath.
This desire, deep inside many of us, is rooted in how we are hardwired. Something inside us longs for things to be right. We have a desire to fix the thing that is broken. We have a desire to restore something that is missing.
The problem with this is that we see ourselves as faultless, and we see the other as faulty. With this belief in mind we believe that we are dispensers of justice, and have some innate authority to punish the wrongdoer. As we dispense our brand of justice we too often root it in vengeance, hatred, anger, and fear.
In the midst of this earthly reality, we interpret God’s wrath to be like our wrath. We assume that he operates in the same way we do. When he sees wrong, particularly wrong done against him, he violently lashes out and destroys. For years, many in the Church have defended, promoted, and claimed God’s wrath, seeing it as similar to the wrath that we perpetuate in our broken world.
The conflict is that the way wrath is often approached is in contrast to the heart of God.
Yes, the wrath of God is real, but it is never done out of spirit of anything other than love. This is why when wrath is dispensed there is a measure of grief in the heart of God. In Genesis 6, God sees how wicked humanity has become and that “every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.”
It is this that causes God to regret his decision to create humans. In this, God was not angry, mad, or ready to rumble. God was deeply troubled. The Hebrew, literally translated, says, “He grieved himself, in his heart.” God sees people who are wicked, and he grieves. It is out of his grief that he sends the floodwaters over the entire earth.
After the flood, Noah makes a sacrifice to God. God says, ““Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.” (Genesis 8.21) I find this interesting. Humans have not changed, but it seems that God makes a departure from the way he chooses to operate in the affairs of humankind.
Walter Brueggeman says in his book Praying the Psalms that what occurred “is a change wrought in the heart of God, who will no longer take vengeance. The move in God’s heart from Genesis 6.5-7 to 8.21 suggests that instead of humankind suffering, God takes the suffering as his own. God resolves to turn the grief in on himself rather than to rage against his creation.”
It is this reality that enables us then to leave wrath, vengeance, and reaction in the hands of God. Brueggeman goes on to reflect that the “possibility of a vengeance-free ethic is rooted in the staggering reality of God. And so we are driven to the crucifixion, in which God has decisively dealt with the reality of evil which must be judged.”
God’s wrath then, comes out of his grief, and ultimately it is turned upon himself as seen in Jesus hanging on a Roman instrument of torture. Which causes me to wonder about the way that we approach wrath, live out wrath, and preach about wrath.
If we, as the people of God, are to speak honestly of God’s wrath we need to hit the pause button and look first at ourselves. We must ask, “Are we grieved for the other?” More importantly we must ask, “Am I willing to take this wrath upon myself?”
It is this way of thinking that allows Paul to speak of blessing those who persecute you. It is this way of thinking that caused Peter to speak of repaying evil with blessing. This is unthinkable for many of us. Which is why we are reminded to not pursue vengeance or wrath on our own. God says, "It's my job to repay and dispense vengeance and wrath, not yours." (Deuteronomy 32.35, my paraphrase)
Perhaps when we speak of the wrath of God we should do so in imitation of God. Rather than speak of the reality of God’s wrath as something coming to the other, we should speak of the reality of wrath as something we are willing to take on ourselves for the liberation of the other.
Rather than speak of God’s wrath as a looming threat directed to _______________________ (put the group that you most despise in the blank) stemming out of his deep reserves of anger, we should speak of wrath as something that comes out of the grief stirred up within our hearts.
I wonder, how would this shape our conversations of God, judgment, wrath, and punishment?