05 September 2019

A Wrath-less God Has Victims

[I]t’s actually the non-angry god who appears morally distasteful, for ‘a non-indignant God would be an accomplice in injustice, deception, and violence.’
Maybe, I can’t help but wonder, we prefer that god, the one who is a passive accomplice to injustice, because, on some subconscious level, that is what we know ourselves to be.

Accomplices to injustice is an important phrase in this. I would connect this insight up with CS Lewis' noticing that wrath is (or at least can be and in God's case is) something driven by love. When we love someone or something, we are affronted, outraged and/or saddened by abuses and disparagement of the object of our love. If we are not affronted or outraged, do we really love? I think probably not. So if we believe God to be love, then something like wrath must be part of God's reaction to wrongs done to beloved creatures (and I know that begs all sorts of philosophical questions around the relationship between time and eternity). 'Beloved creatures' -that would be all of us.

That last line, though, is something to take away and use to reflect on our own being in the world and indeed on God's call.

A Wrath-less God Has Victims (by Jason Micheli):

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