The Instrument of God's Justice
Bible believers don't bat an eye when they say that God sent Assyria or Babylon against Israel as ministers of his punitive justice as he furthers his larger gracious purposes. (Take a look at Isaiah 10:5-6 as a single illustration of the kind of thing I mean.) They say it without a moment's hesitation because for one thing, God himself said he did it and for another, it was a very long time ago. Besides, it doesn't hurt if you have to say that sort of thing about people other than your own.Try telling Americans that Osama Bin Laden was God's instrument of justice and from anguished hearts you'll hear ten thousand good reasons why that can't be so and why it's scurrilous to even suggest it. Try telling Europeans that God was racing through the continent in the Panzer divisions of the ruthless German army. Ten thousand of us church-going people will yell ourselves hoarse denying such a thing. But in Bible class we'll nod contentedly when we read Habakkuk chapter one or Isaiah 10 or think it "interesting" when God calls the Babylonian war-lord Nebuchadnezzar, "my servant" as he levelled Jerusalem in 586 BC.
We "understand" of course the reason Habakkuk protested but we seem to have little sense of the violence that such a word from God did to the man's mind. We have no trouble sensing his feelings when someone seriously argues in the face of invading hordes coming after us that it's our turn to feel the agony of a divine visitation. So rather than face the real possibility that God has come to us on the wings of terror or cruelty we "explain" God out of the picture and talk about "perverted free will" or about our not being able to "know that this is the will of God". Or we say, "We know it was true in Habakkuk and Jeremiah because the text says so but we can't know it now." Not surprisingly our pain drives us wild and coupled with our soothing theology we'd rather not believe it is the work of God because somehow that might mean we'd have to bear it without bitterness and our cosy theology might have to go.
But there was no doubt in Habakkuk's mind who was responsible for this foreign invasion. "You're bringing in ruthless international gangsters to deal with local gangsters?" When Jeremiah told Judah that God was coming in judgment and that his face would look like Nebuchadnezzar's, his fellow prophets and leaders loaded up with stones to slaughter him. All because he said it was God who was bringing the city to ruins. These prophets would rather admit their bitterness than deny it was the work of God. At least when they were protesting they were facing the truth rather than some overly pious defence of God.
What do you say when God looks you right in the eye and repeats, "No. No! It isn't them, I'm the one doing it"? What's called for then? "Explanations" that explain that he didn't mean what he clearly meant or that we don't need to trust that through judgment something profoundly gracious is being wrought? What's called for? A ceaseless brawl with God, threatening to walk away from him or a hard-won, trembling trust that somehow God is in the middle of all this pain and chaos, that it is his doing and he is being faithful in it?
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