So, what does love look like? A friend in Colombia just read to me some bible verses in English, but I am not sure if they really square with the idea I am trying to promulgate. I won't repeat the text here, but the idea comes across as a God who only likes those who like him, and will do vindictive and nasty things to his enemies. The one line that resonates with me is where Jesus says that the prince of this world is now cast out. But that says something rather different than portraying a God who is winning a battle against warring hierarchies. I am not disagreeing or disputing with the texts by the way. I do believe that such things are easily taken out of context in our efforts to shape a view of God as made in our own image, rather than vice versa. And this also goes for the writers of these texts, and here I am about to get in trouble with any biblical purists or literalists who might happen to be reading right now, but you heard it first from me.
Yes, I believe that the scriptures that constitute the Old and the New Testaments are inspired by God. However, the words were written down and transcribed by human beings. Which is to say, by imperfect human beings. Whatever God was trying to say to them was still going to be filtered, and at times distorted, by their own fallen, broken and festering humanity. It's inevitable. God knows all this in advance by the way. He knows that we are never going to get it quite right, but he still wants to communicate with us and through us. What is communicated is always going to carry the distortion of the prejudices and limitations of the person receiving the message, as well as the limitations, mores and prejudices that they were living under during the time and within the place they happened to be living.
When God is presented in the scriptures as a vengeful deity, that is the cry for justice, warped by human rage and suffering, that will also be written into the scripture. It is going to be unavoidable. That isn't to say that the light doesn't shine through in the scriptures. In some places we read, the light is always dazzling and pure. And even when in the Old Testament, and in some of the writings of Paul, God can come across as vindictive and wrathful, I think it could also be read as the absolute protective love that God has towards all of us. Yes, that love is brought into fruition in the lives of those of us who put our trust in him, but his love also extends to those who neither know him or want him, and God tasks us with the calling to be instruments and vectors of that very love and grace to those same unfortunates who would rather carry on in their selfish and self-centred little lives, undisturbed and unchallenged by annoying Christians.
Even if Jesus was incredibly rude to the Pharisees, they certainly had it coming, and in his condemnations of their selfish hypocrisy you hear the cry of love and the cry for justice and vindication. So then, our job, our task, would be to make real in our lives that vindication, as we go forth among our brothers and sisters of the multitudes carrying the light of his love and grace as instruments of healing and grace and redemptive kindness. If anyone is to be punished for their sins, well, that is more God's concern than ours, and suffice it to say that sin itself is going to be our punishment, because sin simply means turning away from all that is good, true, beautiful and loving in order to walk and live in the ways of destruction.
How could we get wrong something so simple? But that, Gentle Reader, is something we are all only too good at doing!
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