Unfinished Thoughts on God's Justice and Our Indignation

Passage: Matthew 25:31-46

When people react with anger and indignation toward those passages of the Old Testament dealing with God’s judgment on certain people, I wonder on whose behalf they are indignant.  The rhetoric typically goes like this: “How could God will the violent deaths of all those innocent people?”  One flaw underlying this rhetoric is the assumption that the people who suffer God’s wrath are innocent. 

But there’s a subtler flaw.  It’s this: the assumption that God cares less about people than we do.  In Jesus Christ, God turns our criticism back upon us by challenging us to put our money where our mouth is.  Jesus tells all those of us who are tempted to militate on behalf of all those anonymous “innocent” people instead to militate on behalf of the living, breathing people right in front of us.  Are you mad that people died in God-sanctioned battles years ago?  Then channel that anger into saving children from dying of worms and malnutrition right now.  Are you indignant that God lashed out against people he identified as his enemies?  Channel that indignation into loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you.

Those of us who are incensed at God’s apparent insensitivity are reacting to our own insecurity that we are living in God’s good graces.  If God judged them, couldn’t he also judge me?  And how dare he?  If you’re just worried about yourself, then in fact you have reason to worry. 

If on the other hand you trust God’s grace, then you also trust God’s judgment.  Rather than blame God for being capricious and cruel, you celebrate God’s compassion.  And you embrace compassion as your response to a world full of people at dying right here, right now.  If you truly believe people are innocent, you should devote your life to saving them.  If you accept that none of us are innocent but rather objects of divine mercy, then all the more reason to save others in the very same way God saved you.  Indignation toward God is useless – whether you believe in him or not.  Compassionate action is the only productive response to a world whose brokenness seems indiscriminate.  But here’s the irony: Jesus teaches that when you respond to that brokenness with compassion, you will end up – even in spite of yourself – communing with the living God.