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In 2016, a Stanford swimmer raped a young lady and received a woefully brief, unjustly light sentence of three months. This sparked national outrage; news outlets, bloggers, and women's rights advocates everywhere pointed to it as a prime example of systemic injustice against women. And they were right. They were both right to call it an injustice against women, and right to be outraged over it. Moreover, they were right to be disgusted with the swimmer who would do such a thing.
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As I've contemplated the evil in the world and the abuses I've personally witness, I've come to realize that there is a kind of outrage that we ought to have towards certain evils. A man who thinks raping a little girl is morally acceptable ought to be locked up, and society ought to condemn him. In Christian circles, there's an oft repeated phrase: "you gotta hate the sin but love the sinner". The trouble is that our actions spring forth from the content of our character; they reflect who we are. Rejecting the sin means rejection of the character that produces that sin. Now to be sure, Christians ought to love all sinners and not utterly hate them. But what does that really mean? Does that mean overlooking people's evil if they haven't really asked (or wanted) forgiveness? Of course not. It means desiring their eternal joy and longing for it even when we might be disgusted with their character. This kind of love (desire for the eternal joy and life of the beloved) doesn't exclude appropriate outrage with the kinds of characters that merit outrage. There's a kind of anger that is indeed righteous anger.
If this kind of anger humans ought to have with each other (not just with each other's actions), then the idea that anger is intrinsically evil has to be scrapped. So what happens when a righteous, good God confronts the horrific reality of human evil? NT Wright, a New Testament scholar and an Anglican theologian puts it like this:
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"“I think the reality of the world, and the reality of Scripture, go interestingly together. When people are talking about science and religion they often talk about the two books that God has written (the book of nature and the book of Scripture), but it’s true of the book of human life as well: human life is full of all kinds of things which are just gloriously, wonderfully celebratory, and other things which are just terrifyingly, awfully horrible – and we shouldn’t be surprised when we meet them in Scripture as well. And then you say, what does God think about, or do with, the stuff which is horrible? And the answer is, if he’s a good God, he must utterly reject it, and must hate it, and must ultimately destroy it ... If God is a good God, he must react extremely strongly against that which destroys, corrupts or defaces human life. So the whole thing about the one versus the other is ill-conceived ..."
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According to Scripture, God is the source of all good. (James 1:17) He is the source and origin of all good in reality. If God is utterly good, then what should His attitude towards evil be? I think Perfect Goodness must utterly reject evil. Now, if Scripture's account of us is true, then evil is not just something we do. The assessment of Scripture is this: evil isn't just something we do, but is a part of us. It is something all of us are. (Matthew 7:11) None of us would like to think of ourselves in this way. I know I'd like to think that the evil I do is just some occasional slip of hand--it's not really what I am. I'm mostly good, right?
However, God's law confronts my heart. When I stare into the command "do not covet", I find myself coveting plenty of things that other people have for selfish reasons. When I hear "do not lie", I can think of many instances (this past year!) where I've stretched the truth or told a half-truth to escape blame or gain praise. When I see "do not lust" or "do not steal" etc, I've found that at sometime or another (even in the past few months), I've violated that command. And I violate these moral maxims because I value crappy things. I want people's praise, or I want other things that people have for selfish reasons. If my actions reflect the values of my heart, then my heart sucks! So if evil is intrinsic to who I am, then a good God must not only be opposed to the evil I do. He must be opposed to the kind of character that does such evil...or in other words, He must be opposed to me.
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Perhaps even more centrally, if God is supremely good, then He's also supremely Just.
What is Justice?
Suppose two kids named Generic Name 1 (GN for short–sometimes he goes by “Bobby”), and Generic Name 2 (GN2 for short, who goes by Phil and was affectionately dubbed “Philly Cheese steak” by his Dad-joke-obsessed Dad) get into a legal spat. You see, GN was at Wrigleyville when the Cubs made it to the World Series and got super drunk. With a baseball bat in hand and hallucinations in his sight, he saw a Mercedes Benz. Except…to him this was no Mercedes Benz. No. It was the bottom of the ninth and the Benz was the baseball. As he belted “take me out to the Ballgame”, he hacked the car to pieces. GN2, the owner of the car, understandably prosecuted him and won the legal spat. “He’ll be buying me more than just peanuts and crackerjacks” GN2 whimsically quipped (amusing only his Dad). GN was fined heftily.
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In this scenario, penalizing GN2 is just. “Well, what makes it just?” I’ll tell you ad-hoc interlocutor! The purpose of a penalty is to show the seriousness of the offense. If I spit on you, I deserve some recourse–since spitting on you doesn’t honor you as a human being. In other words, crimes devalue the victim-it doesn’t accord the victim their due worth. The penalty is supposed to communicate “your devaluing of the victim was this serious”. Thus, the penalty, by showing the seriousness of an offense, upholds the worth of the victim.
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Justice, therefore, is to uphold one’s worth. To act justly towards one another means we treat each other in accord with their value as human beings. To fail to do this is to act with injustice. Just penalties aim to uphold the value of the victim.
Now suppose the judge had chosen not to deliver any penalty or consequence at all. Would that judge be just? Would a Judge who overlooked a murder and excused the murderer be just? Is the Judge who gave an extremely light punishment in the Standford rape case just? Absolutely not! Therefore, if God is Just, and if He is the One davlued in the crime of sin, then He must act to vindicate His worth.
What is the Just consequence of turning from God?
What happens when you reject the sum of all good, of all life, and of all love? I think, if that's what you and I have done, then we've done something infinitely evil. We have done something infinitely serious. By turning from Life itself we've embraced death; by rejecting the Sum of all Good we've done something infinitely heinous.
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And this is exactly what we do every time we sin.
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Every time I slander my neighbor, I am mistreating him or her as an image of God. I'm in essence saying "it doesn't matter that you are so valuable that you were meant to beam forth God, I'm going to treat you as though you're not worth telling the truth to or about." And when I've treated people like that, I've actually treated them way out of accord with their worth, and I've dishonored God by saying (with my actions) His image in people is not worth treating rightly.
Now here's the rub: we might say "okay, lying is bad but it's not that bad, right? It doesn't deserve death. It doesn't deserve outrage." However, what would we say to the Judge in the Standford rape case who might say "that rape was bad, but it's not that bad"? We'd say he's wrong. And we'd say that his moral sensibilities are out of wack!
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If I told flat out lies to the President of the United States (before Donald Trump, at least), many people would be shocked that I'd have such audacity. But do you realize how precious every single human life is? What audacity must I have, to be willing to lie to beings who bear the very image of the eternal God Himself! What a horror it is to lust after women, so as to treat them as objects when they are indeed queens of heaven!
If sin has wrecked us in the ways the Bible says it has (if the Bible's assessment of our hearts is indeed true!), then might it be the case that our sense of the evil of our actions is far lesser than what they ought to be? If I am in rebellion against the Source of all Good, and if my heart is messed up outside of Christ, then might my heart be somewhat unable to feel the full horror of my actions? Until God shows me the weight of my evil, I'll never feel it so much as to want it to lift. Of course the concept of a Savior is silly if there's nothing to be saved from. And of course the concept of a wrathful God is absurd if sin and evil isn't all that outrageous.
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But it is.
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This is the context for God's final judgment of the world. As a Just Judge, He cannot just let the evil in the world go unpunished. God must deal with it in a way that showcases its horror. He must deliver a sentence which makes the perpetrators understand the severity of their actions. In other words, He must punish them infinitely. Hell, in other words, is not some "place" that God puts people in, like a referee putting a football player in a penalty box. It is a word for His full opposition to (and therefore wrath against) evil and evildoers.
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God promised a day when He would come to His world, deliver justice, set His world right, and make the world a display of His beauty. The world will echo the excellencies of the God who made it! But for those who want to be in God's presence--for those who want to drink from the fountainhead of all Joy--the payment Jesus made must be accepted. The reason why Jesus is the only way to God is because this same Jesus is the only One who made a payment on your behalf. No one else has paid our debt, and no one else offers to unite us to Himself. No other figure in history chose to die for your wrongs done against the Source of all good and all justice. To be a part of God's kingdom, you must surrender your life to His love, and let it heal, control and define you. This is the path of lasting satisfaction and happiness; apart from God, there is nothing but death, decay, our own evil and the consequences it brings.
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By visiting this site, you have the chance to embark on a journey. You can explore the claims made here and test them to see if they're true. If they are, that means both that the happiness and joy you're searching for can be found in Jesus Christ, and that lasting happiness cannot be found elsewhere. In fact, if you were made to thrive by knowing God, then turning from Him will cut you off from the source of your life. It has eternal consequences that none of us can ignore.
The question of God is urgent. We believe that the reality of God satisfies. And in fact, we believe that there are good reasons to think that Jesus is the risen Lord.