Mercy triumphs over judgement. Provision and Protection

In the last post, I was talking about the consequences of some of the choices we are making in our society. In Psychology we are not allowed to use the concept of right and wrong, of sin or of judgement. But we cannot in the end do without these ideas. So Psychology talks about poor choices and the consequences thereof. A poor choice then is one that has undesirable consequences. This would be more straight forward if we were not so resistant to see the inconvenient truths about the consequences of our choices. Rationalization and denial are widespread in all kinds of areas personal and cooperate, individual and collective. As with the alcoholic, the consequences build up and escalate until, when they have gone on long enough, and have gotten severe enough, we come to the place where it is impossible to ignore them.

The Biblical take on all of this is that when God says "no", He does it for our provision and our protection. It seems to me that many of us have misunderstood this about God. We have seen Him as a kind of Scrooge in the sky who, whenever He sees someone down here having fun, leans over the balcony of heaven and shouts down “Cut that out.” Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact of the matters is that He has given us in the Bible guidelines which when we follow them, will help us avoid many of the pitfalls I was taking about in the last post, and in addition, will bring us the benefits of righteousness including fullness of life (John 10:10).

You see there is a deeper and more lasting joy than can be found in the pleasures of this world which, in any case are only for a season (Hebrews 11:25). The out of control appetites we develop when we give in to what the Bible calls the lusts of the flesh, keep us from the deeper things. In my coming book “God's math, take away what hinders, add what helps,” I have a chapter called “Random God sums” which illustrates this. So there are subsections with such titles as “take away lust, add intimacy,” or “take away self hate, add self love,” or “take away religion/rules, and add relationship.” The point is that giving into lust is detrimental to developing intimacy, self hate diminishes our sense of self worth, and religion that has as its basis rules rather than relationship with Him, tends to make us into self righteous Pharisees, which in turn prevents us from even seeing our need of an empowering relationship with God. Ignoring the “no”s of God not only takes us out from under His protection, it robs us of His provision which, in the above examples included intimacy, self acceptance and relationship with the most wonderful person in the entire universe!

But He also knows that most of us only learn the hard way (from the school of hard knocks), that His ways are best. And at incredible cost to Himself, He has provided a way for us to come back to a Holy God even when we have thoroughly blown it! There is no pit that we have dug for ourselves that is so deep that He is not deeper still. He came to restore the broken hearted, even when our broken hearts are largely a result of our own actions and attitudes. In the Cross “Mercy and truth have met together; Righteousness and peace have kissed” (Psalm 85:10).

The very last thing that God wants to do it to judge us. He tells us in John 3:17 “God did not send His Son into the World to condemn the World, but that the World might be saved thorough Him.” When we turn from our rebellion and receive His free gift of salvation “mercy triumphs over judgement” (James 2:13), and we are welcomed into the Kingdom. He then makes available in the here and now “life in all its fullness” (John 10:10). Or to put in the words of another section of Random God sums, He takes “away fear, strife and stress, and add(s) peace and rest, and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Most of us won't go there until we are desperate. And this is good in some ways, because until we are desperate, we are not likely to fully surrender which is a necessary part of entering into fullness of life. “Are we there yet mummy?” (April 17).