Seriously

This American Life asked Sara Bareilles to imagine what President Obama might be thinking about the 2016 election and Donald Trump, but can’t say publicly. Leslie Odom Jr. performs the song.

All The Grieved World

 One flower rising

casting her stone-strong shadow

o'er all the grieved world

A Vengeful, Angry God?

I was reading Stan's blog (as I still do some days) and had some questions that his posts raise. Stan is very good at raising these questions with his posts. Not so good about answering them or even acknowledging them. But as always, this is not about Stan. It's about the traditional human traditions associated with modern evangelicalism.

Stan was speaking about the notion of an "angry god" and how too many people (i.e., Christians and others who disagree with his tradition's opinions about God) don't take the idea of an angry, vengeful god seriously enough, because, as he is wont to say, "The Bible."

Stan...

So, who makes up this stuff about a God of wrath against sinners? Well, apparently, God does. Apparently it's biblical. Apparently even Jesus believes it.

Look, you can do the happy dance all you want. You can work on fluff and imagine pink unicorns and figure God's not really that miffed about sin and all, but if you do, you do to your own peril because God's Word is quite clear on the subject. Even at the end, it's is Christ who is described as the One who distributes God's wrath.

So you may think that someone is making up this "angry God" stuff and He's really a pussycat, a tame lion. The Bible disagrees and the consequence of being wrong on this topic is nowhere near tolerable. 

This line of thinking always raises questions for me and these questions generally go unanswered.

First of all, we need to be precise and clear when we're talking about God's opinion. When Stan says, "the Bible disagrees," he's implying/outright saying that God in the Bible agrees with and teaches the notion of an angry God.

But it's not that the Bible disagrees. It's that some good number of people have interpreted the Bible to read God describing God's Self as a vengeful angry god. It's the OPINION of those who interpret the Bible thusly that think this way, not the Bible or God's own Self. At least not demonstrably.

Thus, as is often the case with evangelical types, they conflate their opinions with "the Bible" and thus, with "God's Word." I'm fine with them holding their interpretations and opinions, but they should be clear that it IS their opinions, and not the Bible.

Whether or not the Bible teaches that God is rightly understood as vengeful and angry is the question to be answered, not the answer itself.

Question begging and all that.

Secondly, Stan errs in making up a straw man that people paint God as a "pussycat, pink unicorns and not miffed about sin." But very few if any who believe in a God think that way. Everyone (nearly) thinks that God is angry about rape, about child abuse, about war, about murder, about deliberately causing awful harm to people. Of course a good God would rationally be opposed to such behavior, even angry about it.

So, nearly universally, believers are agreed upon that. That's not the question.

The question is, is God TRULY so repulsed by any and all sin that the only just punishment for a just God is for that god to get angry about every little lie, every bit of gossip and "rebellion," and that god gets SO angry that the ONLY punishment suitable for these sins is an eternity of torture.

You see, we don't disagree with the Bible. We learn from the Bible that God is perfectly just and perfectly loving. AND we also see places in the Bible where people describe God (or God describes God's own self) as angry at sin, viciously angry at sin. BOTH teachings are in the Bible.

So, finally, this leads to the question I asked Stan that looks at the notion of a perfectly just God and tries to make sense of biblical teaching and just plain reason, especially as it relates to the evangelical teachings about hell (NOT "the Bible's teachings," NOT "What God hath said...").

My two reasonable questions:
So a good God is angry unto vengeful wrath upon all the sins of a five, nine, 12-year old child and this God's justice demands the most harsh judgment upon this child for all their sins, so much so
that this angry god demands 
an eternity of torturous hell 
upon this young adult for their awful sins of lying, jealousy, stealing two pencils and general selfishness common to people in their first 18 years (and beyond).

A. Can you explain in a rational way how such an extreme (insane?) response is rational, loving or just?

B. Do you at least understand how for many, probably most of us, that sounds like the ravings of a madman, not the response of a just God?

Now, usually, this line of questions go ignored and unanswered, but occasionally some brave evangelical/calvinist will attempt an answer. But that answer is typically,

"Your understanding of the notion of a perfectly just God is not the same as god's understanding..."

Which brings up a third entirely rational question:

C. Says who? Where is the proof for this claim?

The proof, they will say (if they say anything at all), is that there are lines in the Bible that talk about god being angry and vengeful. No one denies that. But there are also lines in the Bible that talk about God being perfectly loving and perfectly just.

Now they will say that we need to reconcile the two extremes. God is vengeful vs God is just. Their answer that I've understood them as saying is that they side on the side of vengeful and explain away the notion of justice (and an eternity in torment/torture for relatively minor sins IS an abomination of justice, as justice is typically understood by humanity) as being a bad understanding on our part. God's sense of justice is just... different than what we normally mean.

Again, Says who?

They are siding on Vengeful but they can never explain why other than just because that's where they side.

The other tact they'll try to take is to say that we "natural humans" don't accurately understand the nature of sin. Even the relatively small "sin" of taking a cookie that doesn't belong to us (for instance) IS A DEVIANT AND GREAT EVIL, because (they say) it is a deliberate and cruel attack on god's sovereignty. It is an attack on God to decide, "I really would like to have this cookie, even if it doesn't belong to me..."

But again, says who? I would wager that most people who would take a cookie (tell a lie, steal a pencil from work) aren't thinking about God, they're just thinking about convenience and being selfish and unthinking. Do they think, "I don't care what God thinks, I SPIT in God's eye and take this cookie anyway!..."? I see no evidence to support such a claim.

So, the idea of them being in open rebellion to God is just not supported, it's an empty claim.

But EVEN IF that were the case... even if the human was selfish and childish and just wanted to satisfy their own sweet tooth (desire for a pencil, the mean wish to gossip about someone...), does that truly warrant an eternity of torture?

If yes, says who? Where is the rational case for this? Because it sounds insanely Un-just... the opposite of justice.

And my final (still unanswered) question was, Even if you ultimately disagree with those who disagree with your hunches about biblical interpretation and an angry god, do you at least understand how crazy it seems to suggest that the 20 year old with a lifetime of typical sins that lead up to that age is "sinful enough" to merit an eternity of torture? Do you understand how un-just this sounds to probably most of the world?

We may never know.