THE NEW TESTAMENT says many things about God, but only once does it offer an overall definition of God: “God is love” (I John 4:8).
Going through the Bible, we can get a lot of statements about what God does, thinks or feels, but the affirmation “God is love” gives us a basis for interpreting everything else. Especially when we ascribe anything negative to God, we need to go back to that definition and ask ourselves whether we are understanding things properly.
In 1988, I finished my last year of seminary in Berkeley, Calif. The next year, there was a huge earthquake in that area, killing and injuring a number of people, knocking down some buildings, destroying a freeway and making the Bay Bridge unusable.
The next day, I was driving home, turned on my radio, and heard my bishop arguing with someone who had called into the talk show where he was guesting. The caller insisted that God sent that earthquake to punish the Bay Area for accepting gay people. The Bishop was asking what about the straight people who were harmed, and the caller ascribed them to collateral damage (God’s aim must be imprecise).
What if we were to interpret that earthquake according to the statement that God is love?
There are also people approving of violence toward others who do not share their faith or their doctrine. Again, what if we subject that idea to the statement that God is love?
The thing I think people miss who presume that God is attacking sinners or nonbelievers is that love does not look like that.
If we read the Gospels, we will find one instance of Jesus getting angry enough to be violent, and that was when he attacked the money changers in the Temple. He hurt them, but not badly. Otherwise, he surely would have been arrested. His concern was actually for the poor people who were getting overcharged for things they needed in order to worship God.
We can find Jesus scolding, exhorting, explaining and inviting. We don’t see him assaulting.
Looking at his encounters with non-Jewish people, we see him being kind to those the Jews considered as enemies — Roman soldiers and officers. Hia final reference to them before he died on the cross was to ask God to forgive them.
On one occasion, Jesus’ disciples wanted to know if they should call down fire on the heads of some Samaritans who would not receive him, as Elijah did when some soldiers were trying to arrest him. What did Jesus do? He rebuked the disciples.
So for anyone to suggest that God hates someone, or has targeted someone for vengeance, is to offer an opinion that needs to be interpreted in light of the statement that God is love.
What would your life look like if God were constantly trying to punish you or get even with you for all that you did wrong?
I know many of us think it is always other people who deserve God’s anger, but think about the things you have quietly excused yourself for, or justified, or tried to reinterpret or forget about? Because God treats each of us the same – as people who need mercy, grace and forgiveness.
So let us read our Bibles, read the situations we find ourselves in, read the people we encounter or hear about in light of the fact that God is love. Then we can decide how to deal with them; and be grateful that God deals with us in love as well.
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Issues of Faith is a rotating column by religious leaders on the North Olympic Peninsula. Blaine Hammond is a retired Episcopal priest currently volunteering at St. Luke’s in Sequim. He has also led services and preached at Episcopal and Lutheran churches in Port Angeles and around the Puget Sound area.
