Still Puzzled Over Wrath
I've posed the question to several friends. If God stands outside of time, with equal access to all points in time, and his foreknowledge is infinite, then "what is He mad about?" It just strikes me as odd because anger is by and large reaction, which of course, happens in time in response to an unforeseen event. For God, if we believe He knows all things, there are no unforeseen events.
From our point of view, there's plenty to be mad about. Genocide, unjust war, domestic sexual and emotional abuse, corruption among the powerful and the oppression of the poor, lies and betrayals that destroy families--all of these birth righteous anger that seems justified and necessary. On a personal level, as our own desires are frustrated, anger comes into play, sometimes righteous, sometimes selfish, but there it is. And God's writer Paul said to put anger away, set it aside.
Does justice require fury to carry out its action? Hopefully, as parents administering justice to our children, fury is not required. In our system, furious justice can give way to abuse and new injustices, the punishment and its means far outweighing the crime. We humans are smart enough (in our better moments) to discern this. Surely God is as well.
All this to say that God's anger is not a selfish anger in that His desire for Himself is frustrated by our action and sin.
So again, what is He mad about?
If we say His holy character demands it, that doesn't help me. We are told to grow in character, to put away anger, and to love our enemies, even as we are being persecuted. We are told to be imitators of God, and even He causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust, loving them both. So is perfect character, as exhibited by God, the character that we aspire to imitate, marked by a righteous anger that is the only possible reponse to evil and injustice?
Again, beginning from the premise that He is for us, as in seeking our good, seeking to share His life with us, perhaps His anger comes into play when we miss life. When goodness is lost, when life is destroyed, when love is not received and shared and given its rightful voice and energy. Put another way, we often encourage people to "hate the sin, love the sinner." God must have the ability to separate that which He loves from that which He hates. It is clear that He hates Evil, and that He loves humanity, and that our action does not impact that love one way or another. He must be able to see our sin apart from us. Perhaps any anger He feels He feels on our behalf, because He wants so badly for us to have His life. His life was the point of creation, and it remains all love and glory, and when sin shatters that, perhaps He keens, perhaps He weeps, perhaps He rages, all of it because of loss of what might have been, what might be yet.
So still, God's wrath puzzles me. Not because I think we are beyond that anger, or that we don't deserve anger as a result of our sin, but because He is God. What need does God have of anger? And does it swamp Him, hijack him the way ours does, God's amygdala run amok? I put it absurdly only to make the point.
Obviously, it seems to me, the biblical writers are communicating about God in ways that are apprehensible to us and that give us some means by which to begin to approach Him. He has called us, created us, and longed for us to find the life He created for us. And yet, He is other, and beyond, and Holy. We grasp at straws to speak of Him.
He knows that.
And so, the Incarnation...
