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| "The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah" John Martin, 1852 |
Editor: One of our readers sent in the following question. I don't claim to have all the answers, but I am happy to attempt a response.
Question: Some of this non-violent God stuff is relatively new to me, and I’m curious how it would relate to stories like the flood, Sodom and Gomorrah or the ten plagues of Egypt? Do you explain this in any of your books?
Response: A very good question and yes, I did ‘go there’ in A More Christlike God (in the section titled “Unwrathing God”), but I don’t address the specific instance of Sodom and Gomorrah. Let’s begin generally and work our way there.
If we start with the premise that God is only finally revealed exactly in Jesus (John 1:18, Hebrews 1:1-3) as perfect love seen most clearly on the Cross (1 John 4:7-21), then we will filter everything else through that gospel truth.
A Christ-centered premise requires us to reread stories like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah through Jesus’ eyes. In some cases, we only need to read more carefully and the apparent problems dissolve. But in other cases, the stories are so incongruent with what we know of God through Christ that we can no longer receive the original version as face-value propositions that reveal God’s heart. We need to read the “wrath” of God as a metaphor for the destructive consequences of sin rather than direct acts of divine violence. Happily, we see both Jesus and Paul model this for us.