Distorted Images of God part 3: God the Angry Judge

Read part 1 here.

Read part 2 here.

Surprisingly and ironically, after feeling a bit dry on this blog, since I started this series I have found I could go in about four different other directions. 🙂 But since I promised to continue this thread, I’m gonna write this one first, and save the others for later.

So…I’m continuing my ramblings on the ways we humans get distorted pictures in our minds of who God is, and what He is like. Today I’ll tackle another common one, which I call “God the Angry Judge.”

This one’s pretty self-explanatory, and I have a feeling that the name I’ve come up with for it has already generated some ideas in your mind of what it means. The Angry Judge can have different levels of severity or extremes, but simply put, this is the image of a God who is offended by our sin and seeks to root it out, or punish it, or what-have-you.  Many of the people who purport this idea get most of their Scriptural backing for it from the Old Testament, and perhaps a little from the Book of Revelation. Not surprisingly, people that lean toward this understanding of God tend to be legalistic and preoccupied with sin in general, both in individual lives and within our culture. When a natural disaster happens, and some outspoken Christian immediately attributes it to the judgment of God upon a people, I think it is often fueled by this image of God. The idea behind this approach seems to be that the fear of God’s judgment should be a motivation to get us all to repent–like the best way to convert people is to, quite literally, scare the hell out of them. Perhaps the most extreme example of a modern-day group influenced by this image of God is the notorious Westboro Baptist Church group, who have become known for picketing funerals and pronouncing God’s judgment on America over the issue of homosexuality.

Now, to be clear, most Christians who have this picture of God are not nearly as extreme as Westboro Baptist. I have a bit of experience myself with the picture of God the Angry Judge, and in my past it has caused me to take hard line stance in several instances. However, while I can’t speak for everyone, looking back on my own life, I see that the reason I was drawn to God the Angry Judge was that I was angry, mostly at myself. I was angry over the sin in my own life that I didn’t know how to reconcile, and I assumed God was offended with me, as well. As a way of coping with that, and trying to overcome it, I allowed my anger to come out upon others in the name of zeal. I think this is actually a very common response. Perhaps you can name one or two examples in recent memory of high-profile preachers who took a hard stance against a certain sin, only to be exposed for practicing that very sin. We are quick to label them hypocrites, but I think there’s often more that lies beneath than we can see. Sometimes (not always), promoting God as the Angry Judge is a way people try to cope with their own shortcomings or compulsions that they don’t know how to deal with.

So…is God an Angry Judge? After all, there seems to be a fair amount of Scripture that supports this idea, at least with a surface reading. I could probably write a whole book on this topic, but I’m going to try to narrow it down to a few ideas:

First of all…while I’m not a proponent of this particular author or all his ideas, I think Brian McLaren gave a great perspective of Scripture in his book A Generous Orthodoxy. He reminds us that the Bible was written, not as a handbook for Christians, but as a progressive narrative, a progressive revelation of God. Historically, God has always dealt with people and people groups within the realm of their own culture and understanding. I don’t want to oversimplify this, but I think there were times when the language of judgment was the only language people would understand, and we must remember that God was in the process of enacting a long-term plan of redemption. My point is that there were a lot of circumstances surrounding each reference to anger and judgment, especially in the Old Testament, that may or may not be relevant in our time and place. The existence of those passages is not necessarily enough to create a caricature of God, or to limit Him to this mentality.

Second…we must remember that sin carries its own judgment. I believe God is not arbitrary in what He calls “sin”–anything that is sinful is also something that is naturally harmful. Many times, what we call the judgment of God is nothing more than God allowing sin to run its course. Many times, He doesn’t even have to intervene. I think we see this very clearly in the parable of the Prodigal Son: the father did not have to actively punish the son to bring him to repentance; he only let the son drink his fill of his own ways until he “came to himself” from the consequences of his own sin.

Third…in most cases in Scripture, The word “judgment” means, simply, “a reckoning” or “a decision.” When a judge in our day renders a decision, he/she is not supposed to be arbitrary about it, but when doing the job correctly, that judge is simply supposed to be interpreting laws, and rendering decisions based on those laws which already exist. Thinking ahead to the “last judgment” at the end of the age, unlike some, I don’t see God arbitrarily sending people to heaven or hell in varying moods of generosity or anger; I see it as a reckoning, an accounting of all that has already taken place. I simply have this picture of Him “opening the books” and making pronouncements based on what is already so. Those who will go to eternal fire in that day will have already charted that course; God will simply be acknowledging it. Again, not to oversimplify, but that’s the picture in my own mind.

I don’t mean to ramble here, but I guess what this all boils down to is that to paint God strictly as an Angry Judge is to base our whole mentality of Him on a few Scriptures that convict us of our own sin, rather than let the whole of Scripture paint a broader picture of Who He is. If I look at God as a Father, the way Jesus portrayed Him, and then look back upon the words of the Old Testament, it puts the whole judgment thing in a different light. I can see so many times when God warned of judgment, then stayed judgment, sometimes for centuries, trying to give people time to repent. I see so many times, even in the O.T., where God acted in mercy when He could have acted in judgment. While I do see where God sometimes says He is angry, I don’t think He stays in that mood all the time. I see a God who gets angry at sin, not just because it offends Him, but because it hurts the people He loves–the same way an earthly parent hates it when his/her child does something self-destructive. And I see every depiction of judgment in the context of a greater plan of redemption. Even in those times where He allows the consequences of sin to flow freely, God’s ultimate goal seems to be to redeem people–which is why He sent His Son to the cross. When I look at God in the whole context of Scripture, I do not see a God who dwells in a perpetual state of anger, or relishes the idea of punishing people for their sins. I see a God who fiercely loves the people He created, and is committed to a long-term mission of redemption for them.

So, while I think it’s presumptuous to suggest that God winks at sin, I also think the picture of God the Angry Judge is a distortion simply because it does not take the whole context of Scripture into account. Furthermore, when we picture Him as an Angry Judge, more often than not, we are superimposing our own anger upon that picture, causing us even to filter how we read the Scriptures.

Here, I believe, is a healthier approach: The same Scripture that tells us that judgment exists is the same Scripture that tells us it is the kindness of God that leads us to repentance. Judgment exists because sin exists. It seems our best remedy for both is not to fear an Angry Judge, but to let our loving Father redeem us through Christ.

There’s even more that I could say, but I think I’ll let this be a good stopping point.