You have, I am sure, run into persons that say, "God can do whatever he wants because he is God" as a defense for God behaving in ways that we would otherwise call sociopathic for humans.
This is often partnered with an accusation: that human "sensibilities" about what is right and wrong are not the same as God's: that his ways are higher than our ways.
Christians believe we know what we know about evil because of what is revealed about the eternal goodness of God in the flesh of Jesus Christ on the cross and by what is inherent in humanity, owing to our being fashioned in the image of our crucified Lord.
The image of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is broken in us but not eradicated or absent—even in the "worst" of us humans.
If that doesn’t help, consider this also: there is now in Jesus Christ a human life that embodies all that God intended for our race, and his brilliant life—not mankind's broken collective aspirations about the good!—is our plumb line.
Christ’s self-sacrificial, co-suffering love is now alone the foundation, the human measure, of what is good and what is evil.
If Jesus would never do something, then by reason, revelation, and experience—grounded in the human and divine life revealed in fullness at Golgotha—we know that God would never do that something. We only know God as the one who is nailed to that tree.
If Jesus would never do x, we should never do x.
We know, for instance, that torture is always wrong on a gut level due to the image of God in us, unless our conscience is seared.
We know torture is always wrong because BOTH the divinity and humanity of Jesus, our silent, slain God, reveals it to be so.
Ditto with rape. Ditto with a lack of love for our enemies. Same with coveting what belongs to someone else. Same with worry about tomorrow. We know lives driven by fear and fallen hungers are wrong. And so on.
Human sensitivities about what is good and what is evil that flow from the image of God in us are baptized sensibilities.
Jesus has taken humanity into the waters of the Jordan, identified with our brokenness, drawn close to every human person in those living waters, and now the lamp of his charity illumines the whole human path.
Jesus reveals a God that subjects himself to his own creation, which laws reflect and praise his relational, gracious, and magnificent character, a character made known to us by the suffering, silence, and weakness of God in our Savior’s flesh.
Precisely in the poverty of Jesus Christ nailed to a tree, hung like a curse between criminals, the fullness of God is disclosed.
Christians are not projecting this God of mercy and charity and justice and compassion from an antinomian or "humanitarian" bias; we are instead seeking to bear God's revealed image in Jesus the crucified when we live and have our being by the Sermon on the Mount.
God is not a parent who says "Don't do as I do, do as I say." The saying and the doing are inseparable in our holy God. This is what makes the triune God different from all human projections and idols.
On the mount, as Jesus is transfigured, as the Spirit descends, we hear the majestic voice of the Father and what he says is: "This is my Son. I am pleased with him. Heed his life!"
Heed is life. Heed his silence. Heed his suffering. Heed his extreme humility.
If God shows up at the end of history as Pol Pot on steroids, as a General Sherman scorching the earth and everyone and everything in sight, then all of history is a tragedy and ISIS has it right and we are all fools to heed the life of Jesus.
Thank God that is not the case, that rather the whole creation sings his humility, his light, and his love.
Are we still enough to perceive this?
Comments