On God’s Wrath

Why do so many people in the modern world sneer at the idea of God’s wrath?

Is it really as many preachers would put it, that so many people in the modern world are simply evil sinful heathens who don’t want to know the truth?

I believe that many kind and honest people in the modern western world have been lied to by church leaders — and many have left the church because of it, renouncing faith and all that comes with it, and I don’t really blame them.

In my opinion, there is an obscene amount of improper teaching on the subject of wrath. I believe that many, many preachers have woven inaccurate assumptions and conclusions about God and His character into their beliefs and teaching. As a result, these preachers have spread lies about God and caused many to leave the faith.

I believe it is, above many things, this poor teaching that has caused so many well meaning seekers to become utterly confused about who God is, or to ask a common leading question “why was God different in the Old Testament?” This topic is one that we need to get right.

I’d like to try to shed some light on why I think this has happened, that where we go from here.

It seems to me that many Christians in the modern western world hold to a view of God’s wrath in earthly terms, rather than God’s perspective on God’s wrath.

To start, it should be said that it makes sense that we would see God’s wrath through an earthly lens. We make meaning of the facts we hear by referencing other things we understand. Often we form narratives that make sense to us, whether accurate or not. Making sense of the circumstances around us is fundamental to living and functioning in daily life.

Unfortunately, it is very easy to get tripped up and form inaccurate conclusions about our lives and others when we lack a deeper understanding of the context of what we are concluding.

Take for example the following story:

A man sees a young woman walking into a store. The young woman walks through the door while looking at her phone, letting the door fall back into an elderly woman walking behind her. Seeing this, the young man thinks to himself: “How rude! If that young woman had been paying attention she would have seen how close the elderly woman was and seen the opportunity to hold the door for her. Instead, she was looking at her phone the whole time! Probably just looking at TikToks. These dang gen Z kids! I should give her a piece of my mind!”

So the man approaches the young woman and chastises her. What the man finds out is that the woman’s best friend has just passed way in a car accident, and that she got the text message right as she was walking up to the store.

The woman grieves and the man consoles her.

This story portrays how people often misunderstand the facts at hand due to the way we hold to assumptions. We can easily try to fill in the gaps around us without thinking twice. When we form conclusions about facts we see or hear, we can be entirely inaccurate in our assessment if we make wrong assumptions about the details we don’t know.

I believe this is what often happens for many Christians when we read or hear about God’s wrath.

There is a very common argument in the world today for why God’s wrath exists, and why salvation is necessary:

God is good,

God hates evil,

God projects His wrath onto those who practice evil because He hates evil,

Therefore, you must accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior to be saved from your own evil

Before you tell me “yep that’s the gospel,” let me encourage you to keep reading…

When holding to this argument about hatred of evil, some may go as far as to say “God hates sinners”, while others who are less forward will say “God hates sin, but loves the sinner”

These conclusions are often formulated through an attempt to grapple with the existence of evil while simultaneously trying to believe there is good reason to be hopeful for redemption.

I think that for many, we often feel that we must form our theology of wrath around the way evil makes us feel. We all understand what it feels like to be wronged. As we look at God’s word we find solace in concluding that God must hate those people who do bad things just as much as we do.

We may read passages about God’s anger, His command to destroy nations, His outpouring of wrath on the unrepentant — and we assume that this must mean that God does all of these things from a place of hatred toward the evil that is being committed. But is that how God sees these actions? Or how we see them to be?

Often times this view of God is a mischaracterization of God’s intent, and a misunderstanding of God’s plan for the world.

God did not lead the Israelites to become enslaved to the Babylonians because He hated their evil and idol worship, although it broke His heart that they refused to be the heirs of His plan of redemption.

God did not lead the Israelites to conquer nations who worshipped foreign gods because of his hatred for how they lived, though it broke His heart and He wanted more for them.

God did not tear down the Tower of Babel or bring the flood of Noah because He was mad that the people were doing things their way, though it broke His heart that they settled for such mediocre living.

God has in every one of these occasions taken the measure He has because of good purposes He has in mind to bring to fruition in the world.

God brought the Israelites into captivity because He has chosen to use them to bring redemption to the entire world. He intended to use them for this purpose and cannot do so if they continue to allow their culture and customs to be polluted by things that would prevent that purpose from being fulfilled. They must be obedient to His commands if the plan is ever to work.

Likewise, God brought adversaries of Israel and adversaries of the plan of redemption to ruin because of the His good plan. It’s much easier to see through the lens of “God hates evil” than through the lens of the Bible.

And honestly I get it, a lot of us in the modern world struggle to understand how a good plan can include the destruction of people groups. We see things through our modern civilized ways and find ourselves utterly unable to embrace any idea of good that requires such actions. Yet, without the proper context of the time period we can easily try to fill in the gaps and form assumptions about what we think is good. If the alternative to having God’s people wiped out by barbarians is that His people first take preemptive action to protect themselves — where do we draw the line of good and evil?

While describing the details of God’s choice to tell the Israelites to wipe out people groups was not my focus for this writing, it is yet another example how we can easily form assumptions and try to fill in the gaps of a story when we only have some of the facts.

Through these examples I think it’s very clear to see that God has not done things simply out of hatred or anger.

Yes, He is opposed to evil, but that’s not the same as hating people who do evil. God desires to bring His good plan to fruition for the people He created. That’s why He is opposed to evil — not on the basis of Him being a divine being who “can’t stand evil”, but because He is a loving being who chooses to impart His love to us through His good plans. It’s for love that He has made some very hard decisions. I believe a deeper dive into this topic is needed. We haven’t even touched on what Hell is yet. Will write on this more soon.