God of wrath; God of LOVE — Conclusion
In conclusion, then, we can use the Bible to make God in our own image — a vengeful ruler who “loves” us only as long as we satisfy certain requirements. Fortunately, we can also choose to see Jesus’ “Bigger God” therein — an all-Loving, all-Forgiving Father — one who transcends all of humankind’s pretty definitions of “love” and “justice”; caring for every single one of His children (i.e. every sentient being on Earth) regardless of the noble choices we might fail to enliven, and regardless of the selfish decisions we might make instead … And it is this latter, Greater God who is truly worthy of our praise.
May you have the Humility to recognize the presence of this choice …
the Wisdom to choose wisely …
… and the Courage to act accordingly.
Amen … Let it be so.
“The soul, in its loneliness, hopes only for ‘salvation.’ And yet what is the burden of the Bible if not a sense of the mutuality of influence, rising out of an essential unity, among soul and body and community and world? These are all the works of God, and it is therefore the work of virtue to make or restore harmony among them. The world is certainly thought of as a place of spiritual trial, but it is also the confluence of soul and body, word and flesh, where thoughts must become deeds, where goodness must be enacted. This is the great meeting place, the narrow passage where spirit and flesh, word and world, pass into each other.
The Bible’s aim, as I read it, is not the freeing of the spirit from the world. It is the handbook of their interaction. It says that they cannot be divided; that their mutuality, their unity, is inescapable; that they are not reconciled in division, but in harmony. What else can be meant by the resurrection of the body? The body should be ‘filled with light,’ perfected in understanding. And so everywhere there is the sense of consequence, fear and desire, grief and joy. What is desirable is repeatedly defined in the tensions of the sense of consequence.” ~ Wendell Berry
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