Divine Plagiarism

I remember driving in my car, praying, the day Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was killed. There was something prophetic in the air, like something important had happened. Something tragic, but beautiful. Something somehow deeply true, deeply right. For many reasons, in the physical, I was glad to hear the news. Glad to hear for the American and Iraqi families who had lost sons and daughters, glad to hear for the families who would now not lose sons and daughters to that sociopath. But in the spiritual, there was a deeper, louder chord. One grave but strong, a foreshadowing of the Day of Judgment, where all men are faced with the glory of God, whether to their terror or to their tremendous joy. It was hard to explain, but brought water to my eyes. And somehow, I felt His sentence, that he never stopped loving that man, but he forced Him to choose. And His fury is just as passionate as His love, for they are the same. His wrath is swift and irresistible. God has plans for that land. I have no doubt of that. He comes back to claim His beloved. And the most dangerous place in the universe is between Him and His beloved.

Al-Zarqawi was as much a creation of God as any of us. God loved him as a child, as much as He loves any of us. Let me be clear on that. But here is the thing. That man spent his life torturing and killing others that God loved equally as children. At some point, he asked God to choose between how much He loved him and how much He loved the people he would have continued to kill. And choose He did. Perhaps this is an imperfect way of describing it, for we cannot force God to do anything. Imagine a river. If you let the river flow through you, it will just flow. But if you build a dam, at some point, that river will come crashing through your dam, destroying it and washing away much of the valley ahead of it. We cannot thwart God’s will. But we certainly can make it more painful for ourselves when His will comes to pass. We build the very scales upon which we our weighed. We are not judged according to our merits, for if we could, who could stand? But we do ask Him, as we continue to hurt others, which of us do You love more? And as we pile hurt and death on the other side of the scale, we may find that we have tipped them. And that is a very dangerous place to be.

King David loved all of his children. He loved the with the unconditional love of a father. When Absalom went rebel, he did not stop loving him. But as Absalom’s rebellion grew, he forced his father to choose what he loved more. He built the scales that weighed his father’s love for him against his father’s love for Israel. His father never stopped loving him. He never ceased to be his father’s son. But King David chose. And once he had chose, that choice could not be undone. God’s love is the same way. It will never cease. We will never cease to be His creation. But we can ask Him to choose with our rebellion. And choose He will.

Rebellion demands judgment, even if we do build the scales. God loves the families. God loves the victims. As passionate as His love is, His wrath is just as ferocious. They go together. Do not force Him to decide between you and them. You do so at your peril. But murder is not the only rebellion. And death is not the only expression of wrath. All sin is rebellion. Let’s speak of wrath in general now.

There is this argument which goes something to the effect of ‘I can forgive or ignore something somebody does to me. Why can’t God just get over it… if I can ignore sin, why can‘t He?’ We like to talk about out victimless crimes. We love to say how our sins aren’t really bad, because they’re not hurting anybody. Even if we do buy into the total libertarian construct, let’s see if these assertions hold up. Consider pornography and drugs. These are things we do to ourselves. We call them victimless. But by partaking in pornography, we sustain an industry which exploits vulnerable men and women, often seizing the most vulnerable, the most scarred. We tell a daughter of God that her only worth is in being an object for the pleasure of strangers. She is the victim, even if she chooses to be. No father should be at peace with someone who asked his daughter to do such things, even if she was willing. How much more angry, then, will her Heavenly Father be? Look at drugs. If some doctor decides that he will use white powder to deal with the stress of life, what is that to anyone else? After all, he’s only hurting himself. Except for the fact that the drug is produced somewhere. And the Columbian child of the coca farmer who finds their family expendable, subject to the whims of the cartels. And the family who finds themselves in a country held hostage by the FARC, sustained by money from the sale of those drugs. And all people in that country who deserve to have a country instead of a 40-year civil war, but have been denied one because of the consequences of North America’s insatiable demand for chemical escape. There are always victims from sin. If I want to sleep with whoever I want, what is it to anyone. What is it to the unborn child who dies due to the inconvenience of its existence? And so we only become more eloquent with our hypocrisy, dehumanizing or denying the victims of our crimes. The simple reality is that sin always hurts someone. It always hurts someone else, someone who God loves just as much as you.

And in this we find the reality and necessity of wrath. Imagine a man standing alone. If you go up to the man, and punch him in the face, he may choose to forgive you. In turning the other cheek, he proves that he is more of a man, not less. Now imagine that man with his family. If you were to approach man’s family, and try to punch his wife or children in the face, he will have you on the ground in a millisecond, pummeling your face into a bloody pulp. He would be less of a man, not more, if he turned away. This is the wrath of God. God, standing alone, turned the other cheek. He did far more. He gave His life, His body to be broken and mutilated by all of our hatred. But the wrath of God is the anger of the man protecting his family. God responds with the fury of a man protecting his beloved, for He is. We always sin against someone else He loves. We always sin against His children. So we should not be surprised when He responds as a man defending his child. Our actions demand wrath. We need to see that if we are to be forgiven. As Paul says, death had to come through the law, so that we could receive life in Christ.

What about compassion? The Angel of Death does not have less compassion. Rather, that angel has compassion for the victims as well as compassion for the cruel. To show apathy to the cruel is to show cruelty to the innocent. The Bible designates the governing authorities, and by extension, the military, as agents of wrath. God uses governments as his instruments to administer His justice. This was true, even for Rome, even in the midst of its tremendous injustice and cruelty. So I am an agent of wrath, as the verse goes, to strike fear into the heart of the evildoer. And in foreshadowing the day of judgment, as somber and final as that chord is, it still resonates with the glory of God. This is why I do what I do. The scriptures also say those that live by the sword die by the sword. This is true. As an agent of wrath, my place is more dangerous than many others. But my place is not the most dangerous. The most dangerous place in this world is to stand between the Most High and His beloved.

This is from a while ago. It is still true.

I hear so much talk about the 'safety' of one path vice another. It seems to me that there are two different views of safety. If safety is freedom from fear, our different views of safety are borne out of different fears. Both fear the loss of life, yet both fears are very different. One fears death, fears the cessation of breath; the other fears not living the life set out, fears the loss of the story we were meant to live. The first grasps at control, flailing to slow the inexorable progress of entropy, clenching each day as it slips through their fingers. The second surrenders control, drinking in each moment, spending each day to purchase as much life as they can. Between these two views of safety, I choose the latter. Death is a foregone conclusion, for birth is terminal in this world. Yet destiny equally inescapable, for the majesty of the story that is written for our lives is written on history and in the clouds. I know I will die one day, but I also know God has set out a path for me to live. I will then not fear the former, and I will choose to pursue the latter with and in Him. When I find myself in the center in the paths God has laid out for me, I am most alive. And when living life in its fullness, death holds no fear.