Love
and Judgment: God’s Dilemma (Hosea)
Stephen
Terry
Commentary
for the April 13, 2013 Sabbath School Lesson
“…fire
came down from heaven and devoured them.” Revelation 20:9b, NIV
Last year, we lost a beloved cat to coyotes. Cats are
nocturnal hunters as are coyotes. When evening would fall, our cat, Khan, would
always frantically try to get outside to enjoy the warm summer nights. The fields
near home were teaming with mice, shrews and gophers. He could hear every
rustle they made in the brush--sounds that were too slight for human ears. But
his ears would rotate like small radar dishes picking up clues we could never
understand.
He was a prodigious hunter who could leap four feet into
the air to pull down dragonflies as they zoomed by. But he had no sense of the
possibility of his own destruction. Eventually, he faced a keener predator than
himself. Just as Khan had done with the dragonflies, that predator showed no
mercy. For all his personality and the love we had for him, he became another
part of what biologists call the food web which links all life on this planet. These
scientists might call this simply fulfilling his place in nature’s order.
Creationists might argue that this is not natural and is the result of mankind
allowing sin into the earthly realm. But these differences of perspective are not
the focus of this commentary.
Instead, I wish to consider the actions of my wife and I
regarding our unfortunate cat. We had the option of keeping him confined
indoors where he would have been protected from predation. However, we chose
not to. Not realizing the imminence of the danger, we allowed him to go out into
the evening. He had gone for these dusk forays many times without incident. Although
he had always returned safely home, we knew that coyotes, owls and hawks were a
danger to cats and small dogs. We made the mistaken decision that the loving,
compassionate thing was to allow him to enjoy the warm evening. We could have
confined him and endured his plaintiff pleas for understanding as we do with
our present cat, Jasmine, but we chose instead to be a friend to our cat, and
through our misguided idea of what love and friendship meant, we allowed him to
go to his death.
Like Khan and Jasmine, we plead with our God to allow us
so many things that we yearn for. When the door is closed we “meow” at the door
with our prayers, demanding to be allowed through. We know that what we desire
will be so wonderful and be a blessing to us and everyone else, if we can only
pray our way through to receiving it. We know that a loving God would want us
to have our desires granted as long as we promise to use them for others
benefit as well as our own. No doubt Khan would have been happy to bring home
his kills to share with us, also, as is the way with cats.
However, just as Khan had little idea of the dangers he
faced, we also do not know the full story. Our perspective is limited by our limited
understanding. We simply do not possess the omniscience of the God we petition.
Just as our cats could bring forth anguished cries if we did not allow them out
into the evening air, we complain when we are prevented from our course. We may
even feel that God is simply too stern or even unjust in the restraints he
places on us. But would it be any more loving for Him to allow us to pursue a
path to destruction than it was for us to allow our cats to pursue their natural
cat desires? The Bible tells us that we are little different from them in this.[1]
We naturally are drawn to a God who blesses us. Our cats
are drawn to us as well for similar reasons. We walk around the house magically
dripping food from our fingertips into their little cat bowls, conjuring
streams of water from metal faucets, and providing warm and comfortable places
for catnaps. These things are beyond their understanding, but just like us they
find it far easier to trust us when showered with such blessings than when they
are thwarted in some desire they might have.
Perhaps we also prefer a God who demonstrates an
interest in our well-being by showering us with blessings. When we are clothed
and warm, fed and healthy, our hearts purr with praise to our Creator in
response. We know that all are not thusly blessed, but if we experience any dissonance
over this, we cobble together theological justifications for why we are blessed
and they are not.
Such justifications find a God who can also be angry a
convenient prop to our spiritual edifice. We tell ourselves that God is not
blessing because they themselves are an impediment to being blessed. The Bible
tells us that this is not so,[2] but since it feeds our
spiritual pride and sense of self-justification to believe otherwise, we do,
even though it betrays our failure to understand God’s character.
Several thousand years ago, when the Israelites poured
into Palestine with a vengeance and wrought judgment on the Canaanites, they
did so in God’s name. The record of this wrath is spread through much of the
Old Testament. Paradoxically, that wrath they executed was justified by what
they felt was the relatively greater sinfulness of the Canaanites, a sinfulness the
Israelites became blind to when it appeared in their own ranks and they in turn
were decimated by an invading people. When this happened, it was hard for them
to understand how God could favor the heathen Chaldeans over His own chosen
people. To this day they have not understood that when the Israelites invaded
Canaan, they also may have been little better than some of the inhabitants they
were displacing.
Instead of humbly acknowledging their failures meant
that their only hope was God’s grace, they proudly proclaimed themselves the
chosen and Jerusalem as God’s holy city.[3] Just as the idol
worshipping Jews who went into the Babylonian captivity still had prophets
among them such as Jeremiah, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, so a
consistent God would not have abandoned the Canaanites to destruction without a
witness, a voice of righteousness to call them to repentance. In the Bible we
see an example of this when God used a Jewish prophet, Jonah, to reach the
Assyrian city of Nineveh,[4] whose principle deity was
Ishtar.[5] The prophet left the city
after delivering his message and watched from afar, awaiting its destruction. When
it was not destroyed, Jonah had difficulty reconciling his concept of an angry,
judgmental God with the sparing of the city. His spiritual pride meant he
conveniently overlooked the grace he had experienced earlier from the same God.
The God who demonstrates such compassion is not
consistent with a God who would deny us anything that would be truly beneficial.
Hosea modeled this in the parable of his relationship with Gomer. We do not
find him beating Gomer into submission as some might sadly do when their will
is crossed. Instead, he drew her with love, a love that flowed from his
understanding of God’s will for him concerning his wife.[6] As Hosea later records God
saying of His relationship with Israel, “I led them with cords of human
kindness, with ties of love. To them I was like one who lifts a little child to
the cheek, and I bent down to feed them.”[7]
Since we spent many days in the fields searching for our
errant Khan, I can understand a God who has that kind of love for His people. Just
as my love carried me out to the fields day after day, God’s love compels Him
to continually seek the hearts of those who would turn toward Him. I called out
my cat’s name many times as I searched for him. Our hearts were broken when we
failed to find him. Just as God pictured holding Israel to His cheek as a
child, my mind would fill with images of special moments with Khan as I
searched for him.
In the end, I found only my cat’s collar near the edge
of the field. Since then others have lost pets to the coyotes in the same
field. Each incident is a reminder of our own pain of loss. Perhaps, it is
possible to believe that if the loss of our cherished animals can touch our
hearts, the eternal loss of each human being is a similar but far greater pain
that God feels. A pain that reminds Him of the day He went searching for His
Son and instead of a cat collar, found only an empty, blood-stained cross on a
deserted, wind-swept hill.
Can I have the hope of ever seeing my cat again? I do
not know. I must leave that in God’s hands, but because God’s Son rose from the
tomb that held Him, I can hope that one day all things will be set right. The heartaches
of this world will be healed, and we will no longer feel the pain of separation
from those we love.[8]
I can hardly wait.
