I watched the former Sergeant First Class shuffle off in an orange jumpsuit and manacles, feeling relief, sadness, and regret. Relief that a long dark experience was almost over. Sadness at the suffering, pain, and loss I’d witnessed. And regret that such an ugly experience had not been prevented. At the time, I commanded a recruiting company in the United States Army. One of my NCOs (Noncommissioned Officers) had committed a string of assaults on teenaged girls. He’d figured out a way to game the system and avoid punishment for quite some time. I’d managed to build a strong case and convicted him of several counts of rape of a minor. Now stripped of rank, he faced a long incarceration. In an odd twist, I learned much about God, holiness, and justice from that experience. Things that inform my spiritual walk today.
I often read articles and postings on social media platforms that eschew the concept of a literal hell as being inconsistent with a God of love. Somewhere in the text one normally finds a sentence like this, “How can a God of love send someone to a place of everlasting torment and punishment?” It is a valid question. Another line of thought normally laid out in such documents or discussion strings struggles to equate the God of the Old Testament with Jesus in the New Testament. Another valid consideration. Some go so far as to say that we should discard the Old Testament as invalidated by the advent of the Christ; however, such action violates the idea of, “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever,” Hebrews 13:8. If we accept the scriptures in which Jesus says he and the father are one, we cannot easily discard the Old Testament revelation of God as somehow incongruent with the New Testament revelation of God. I believe the problem lies elsewhere.
Our urge to discard or diminish the God of the Old Testament stems largely from our misunderstanding of holiness, love, free-will, and the nature of existence. Like all humans, we want to remake God closer to our own failed image. Yet, the holy and powerful God, who conceived and breathed out the universe as we know it, does not easily compress. Part of what Jesus did here on earth was to show us what God is truly like, “I and the Father are one,” John 10:30. God injected Himself into our reality through the incarnation, which has confounded easy definition for millennia. Holiness, the defining characteristic of divinity, often eludes our grasp.
We often equate holiness with being kind. We think of a gracious, kind neighbor. You know the type. A casual wave, some friendly conversation over a hedge, a willingness to lend a hand with a difficult task, or the loan of a needed tool or truck, and certainly music or TV that never intrudes; these are the hallmarks of a good neighbor. We may think of our favorite Aunt Edna, always kind and long-suffering, always ready with a bit of chocolate or toffee, who never hurt a fly or raised her voice or hand in anger. Surely, she must be holy. Or even better, your Grandparents, surely they must be holy. They always have time for you. They enjoyed listening to you prattle endlessly about your most recent adventure. Their laps were the best and they understood moving and living at a slower pace. Retired, they always had time for you. Yes, they must be holy. Maybe you think of some great religious or spiritual person. An ascetic, giving their entire life in service of something greater. These “holy” men and women move among us mere mortals like shining torches, always calling us to a higher plane of existence. Perhaps they are holy. Sadly, none of these examples are holy. We exist in a fallen world with no true examples of human holiness walking around today; consequently, we often do not understand what holiness really is.
True holiness is set apart, unlike common things. That much is fairly easy to grasp. But true holiness cannot abide with sin. The fallen state of the world inures us to sin. We see and suffer its effects all the time, and all too often, we adopt a rather casual attitude toward it. We assume that God’s grace and forgiveness indicate a casual attitude on His part. Yet, nothing could be further from the truth. A holy God cannot put up with sin, a lesson we should take from the Old Testament account. God bursts out against sin. The story of Uzzah, found in I Chronicles 13, reminds us that a holy God is not to be trifled with, or taken lightly. Lest we think that somehow God changed His attitude about sin, keep in mind the passage in Hebrews 12:28-29 in which the writer reminds us that God is a consuming fire and should be approached with reverence and awe. When we read the Old Testament accounts that seem so hard in contrast to the New Testament account of Jesus, we must remember that God wants us to understand that He cannot tolerate sin in His holy presence. Jesus echoes this when says in the Sermon on the Mount that if our right eye causes us to sin, we should gouge it out or if our right-hand causes us to sin, we should cut it off, Matthew 5:27-30. Jesus is not some sadist who desires a half-blind and crippled humanity. No, He just wants you and I to understand how He and the Father view sin and its deadly nature. Sin separates, as surely as any crevasse or canyon, Ephesians 2:12. When you and I take a casual view of sin, we fall into the same trap the Uzza and David did with just as lethal results. We must always keep in mind that God takes sin seriously enough to offer His Son as the only appropriate perfect sacrifice. Our sin erected a barrier that we cannot breach. And like my NCO, we shuffled off into oblivion.
You see, I did not enjoy or want to see my sergeant stripped of his rank, humiliated, and incarcerated. I felt a sense of justice being served, but no joy. I knew that those wounded by his transgressions would feel some sense of relief at the end result, but no joy. He’d committed such heinous acts that he could no longer enjoy the company of free society. And that is what our sins do to our relationship with God. So, when we attempt to divest the reality of hell, we may very well be trivializing the grievous nature of sin and the holy nature of God. The same God of the Old Testament still rules today, and He still cannot abide sin. Fortunately for you and me, He poured His wrath out on His son, Isaiah 53:10. But that does not mean He is no longer angered by sin. Sin still angers Him, Romans 2:5. We should not let His application of grace and mercy in our lives lull us into complacency regarding sin. He allows us free will. We enjoy the ability to choose with all its attendant consequences. That is part of the equation we get free will in order to love; but, free will comes with a variety of perils. We will examine free will in the next essay in this series.
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