Spiritual Hiccups - God's Troubled Heart

The Lord is good to all,
   and his compassion is over all that he has made...
The Lord watches over all who love him,
   but all the wicked he will destroy. 
                                from Psalm 145

So which is it?  God loves all people and has compassion on everyone, or God's blessings are reserved for the faithful, and the wicked are going to get it?  This morning's psalm seems to say both.  And this is not the only place in the Bible where this tension is on display.  The famous John 3:16 passage speaks of how "God so loved the world," and the following verses speak of Jesus coming not to condemn but to save.  But then we immediately hear that "those who do not believe are condemned already."

There is another famous passage, this one in Hosea, that presents the tension very differently.  In it God speaks of judgment against Israel for their unfaithfulness and how the Most High will not listen when the people cry out.  But then, God seems to have a change of heart.  "How can I give you up, Ephraim?  How can I hand you over, O Israel?..  My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender.  I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath."

We Westerners have had our understanding of God shaped very much by Greek philosophy, and so the notion of God experiencing some sort of internal crisis is hard to fathom.  Yet the Bible has no qualms about speaking of a crisis within God's interior life, a crisis that emerges over what to do about us, God's wayward human creatures. 

Still, we like a God without such tensions.  And so went tend to resolve them in one direction of the other.  Some tend more toward the judgment side with pretty clear standards regarding heaven or hell, while others tend toward the compassion side, with God's mercy trumping judgment. 

This morning I was reading in the paper about one of the local "Craigslist Killers."  Two people, one a 16 year old, lured people to a rural property with the promise of a job managing a small cattle farm.  But when an individual arrived, they killed him.  (Three bodies have been found after one victim escaped and tipped off authorities.)  This morning's article was about a letter the 16 year old had sent to his father.  In it it spoke of his fear over a long prison sentence and how all his family might be dead by the time he got out, perhaps in his early 40s.  But then he wrote how he couldn't believe God would let that happen to him.

I had visceral reaction to his remarks.  He thinks that God will not allow him the personal trauma of being separated from his family for too long, but apparently he has no remorse for killing and robbing people who were simply looking for a job?  And I quickly found myself in caught in that tension between judgment and mercy.

Sometimes I think that our fascination with Christmas is related to this tension, perhaps more precisely, with eliminating it.  A baby in a manger doesn't really have much to say about mercy or judgment.  A baby is sweet and innocent, evoking wonder and hope.  Oohing and Ahhing over the Christ child, we can get lost in the moment and forget about such questions.  Not so with the adult Jesus, who speaks of sinners entering the Kingdom and asks forgiveness for those who execute him, yet speaks of people cast into the out darkness where there is "weeping and gnashing of teeth."

Perhaps this is wishful thinking, but I like to credit spiritual maturity for giving me an increased willingness to live with a certain amount of uncertainty when it comes to the heart of God.  I'm willing to leave some things hidden within the mystery of God while I do my best to share the God I have encountered in Jesus, a God of unfathomable steadfast love and mercy, but also a God whose holiness is nothing to trifle with.

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