Wrath and Love

Certain sections of Christianity seem to have a strange fascination with God's fury and wrath. A fascination that I don't quite understand. This is, by the way not aimed at anyone in particular, just stems from observations I have made over several years.

It was pointed out to me that I appeared to be going against the doctrine of divine simplicity in my post on primary and secondary attributes of God post. I don't really think it makes a difference to my argument, however, I think there is more to be said here.

The Bible tells us (quite plainly, and incontrovertibly) that God is identified as a father. Not in the biological sense, but in the social sense in which he provides "father-hood". Fatherhood stems from God, it is not a mere analogy of "how God is like", it is in fact a reflection of how God is - He made it after all.

This, I think is helpful in understanding why God does not need to be wrathful in order to be God, but at the same time wrath is a necessary consequence of God exposed to evil. We are told that the enemy comes to "steal, kill and destroy".  I am not a father, but I am pretty sure that any loving father out there would be angry, wrathful, or even furious if someone came to steal, kill or destroy their child. Yet, this is exactly what we as humans have done to Jesus. This is what we have done to Jesus' followers. There is indeed blood on our hands.

I propose the following 'equation' to examine the magnitude of the wrath.

Wrath(W) = (Depth of love for the subject who has been wronged) * (how much wrong was done).

Now, this is a mathematical analogy, it's not perfect, and don't think too hard on it, but it does illustrate the broader picture. If I do not love the people dying by ISIS, even though the wrong done is massive, I have no real anger about this. Additionally if a brother borrows my pen and forgets to return it, though I love my brother dearly, the wrong is too small to incur wrath. Perhaps mild annoyance at best.

Our failure to love, our love growing cold (Matt 24:12) is what causes us not to evangelize, to care for the widow and the orphan, and to do what God commanded. We simply don't care enough any more, so it takes a major wrong close to home to move us at all.

When we consider God, however, His Love infinite, and the wrong done was terrible, it should come as no surprise that God is, to put it mildly very very angry. Even in the Garden, Adam and Eve wrong God. They fail to trust Him, when he gives good instruction. They don't believe Him. They disobey.

The lesson to draw from this is a deeper understanding of the scripture Psalms 145:8 "The LORD is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love." He withholds his righteous wrath. No human could do that.

It is not that making love central to our understanding of God reduces his other qualities, or turns him into a gentle old man sitting on a throne, it is that it displays in sharp relief exactly how God truly is, and that includes terrible wrath. It could not be otherwise. God's Love is not a passive 'feel good' emotion, it is white hot and consuming.

The push-back against the centrality of the Love of God is mistaken. It is only through the understanding that God is Love that we can truly understand the rest.  This is, naturally, not the whole picture. There is more to God than just Love, but this is why we need to distinguish how God is primarily from how God is in the presence of secondary factors. God could not be wrathful if He did not love, and a right understanding of love demonstrates that God is indeed wrathful.


One final note -  God's anger does not derive from surprise, God knows the future, He knew what would happen. Apparently there is something He considers worth it all.

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