The wreck of the universe
"Isn’t that a bit radical?" That’s what he said. We’d been close friends some years ago but our friendship lost its way. Life has a way of working out like that. We’d been talking about the awful suffering of the world and I was claiming that the world’s suffering was God’s redemptive chastisement by which he intends to bring the world to glory. I had said that we rebelled, God in loving holiness responded in chastisement and so the combination of our sin and God’s relentless love means suffering; suffering that affects even innocent babies and righteous people. He was thinking of the horrific suffering in the world when he said, "Isn’t that a bit radical?" What could I do but agree?But, then, what a paramedic does is radical when he comes to a car wreck and sees people on the verge of dying in agony. These caring professionals will cut into a woman’s throat with a penknife and shove a tube into it so she can breathe. Or they’ll shoot electric charges through a helpless body to galvanize heart muscle into action or they grab a saw and rasp their way through a child’s leg to keep it from dying in a fire that is threatening to break out at any moment. I’d say that any of that was a bit radical!
I suppose in the end that it all depends on how we assess the situation. Is life worth having? If yes, rip open the throat, amputate the arm or leg, assault the body with a strong electric charge or force the tube into the fluid filled lung. However radical all that is even gentle and loving parents would urge it on if it meant ultimate life and health for the one they love. They’d share the agony but they’d insist that the medic get on with his awful but life-saving work.
There is suffering in the world because the universe has had a horrendous moral wreck and the divine Paramedic will not permit us to go down to destruction without attempting to rescue us! It doesn’t really matter that we aren’t able to see our danger and loss in a true light. It doesn’t matter that we don’t love him or ourselves enough to care about real and glorious living. It only matters that he sees our loss for what it is and that he loves us enough to do what he knows is necessary.
It’s rubbish to say of a paramedic that he shreds the bodies of the endangered people because he’s sadistic—precisely the reverse is true! It isn’t pain and loss he enjoys; it’s life and health he longs to see and he pursues it whatever the cost. It is nonsense to say of God’s chastisement that it is vengeful over-reaction—it is a holy lover that’s at work, one that can’t bear to let us die. If we were to trust him the day would come when we would look back at the global hurt and fall to our knees blessing his name that he ignored our whining or our lofty criticism. We’d be speechless with gratitude that he went on with his redeeming work, enduring the sight and sound of us, immoral and pathetically limited as we are sitting in judgement on him. Like little insects born, living and dying during a thunderstorm and concluding that that is the sum total of reality.
And once we get into a rhythm we can describe the physical suffering and loss of the world in the most graphic terms and with increasing passion. And why not—doesn’t some of it absolutely beggar belief? But of the moral chaos of the world—not a word! We rant and rave about the horrors of the physical (and somebody should!) and puff at all talk about sin and the moral gloom that is the trigger for it all. We groan and weep about the car wreck and impatiently dismiss the moral wreck of the cosmos. The final proof that God won’t ignore the whole of it is the cross of Christ where humanity’s awful moral wreck is seen in blinding clarity. Did God think the cross was overkill? If the Lord Jesus Christ is the revelation of the one true God then God is prepared to do whatever it takes to bring us glory and life eternal.
(I have a thing called Celebrating the Wrath of God that you might find useful.)
No comments:
Post a Comment