The Secular West Hates God’s Judgement. As a Former Refugee, I Welcome It
It’s a Friday night in 1998, and I’m in a Bible study with other university students from New College, the University of New South Wales.
We’ve just started a new series in the Old Testament book of Nahum, and I’m asked to read the first couple of verses:
The Lord is a jealous and avenging God;
the Lord takes vengeance and is filled with wrath.
The Lord takes vengeance on his foes
and vents his wrath against his enemies.
The Lord is slow to anger but great in power;
the Lord will not leave the guilty unpunished.
There’s silence from the group. Some of the students squirm in their chairs. They’re uncomfortable at this talk of God being ‘a jealous and avenging God’ who ‘takes vengeance on his foes’.
And yet, I’m feeling a growing sense of joy and relief as these words sink in.
I feel refreshed. I feel reassured. I feel surprisingly comforted. The thought of God not leaving the guilty unpunished makes my heart sing. Yet, everyone else in the group finds the words harsh and unsettling.
What’s going on?
The Belief Blocker of God’s Judgement
According to a 2017 McCrindle Research report on Faith and Belief in Australia, ‘Hell and Condemnation’ was the second ‘Issue Blocker’ that prevents non-Christians who are ‘open to change’ from exploring Christianity. [1] By and large, our secular Western culture doesn’t like to hear about a God who brings Judgement and condemnation. Jesus’s teaching on loving your enemies goes down well, but the Bible’s teaching on hell is harder to swallow.
And we Christians here in the West struggle with it as well.
Why might this be?
God's Judgement seems harsh and cruel if you've never suffered a grave injustice
Being White Australian means that you have grown up in a free society with little, if any, government oppression.[2] Life is free. Life is comfortable. Overall, we live in a reasonably law-abiding, just and fair society.
And so, what about God's Judgement? It seems so out of place. Unnecessary. Harsh, even cruel. Why can't God chill and leave people to do their own thing – as long as they don't hurt anyone?
On the flip side:
If you’re oppressed, God’s judgment is wonderful and liberating
On the other hand, if you’re a former refugee like me whose family fled a communist dictatorship, you have a different perspective on the world.
I grew up amongst other refugees, hearing the stories of communist oppression. The oppression and atrocities committed against my family and my people are burnt deeply into my psyche. It’s part of my identity. It’s part of the way I look at the world.
This feeling is captured in a song by Hungarian Rock Band Karpatia, called ‘Neveket akarok hallani’ (‘I want to hear names’), about the failed 1956 revolution in Hungary against communism. The song features excerpts of a speech from a late Hungarian politician, Maria Wittner, who fought in the revolution and spent over a decade in prison afterwards as a political prisoner.
Here is what she said about the Hungarian communist regime:
Does the world now expect us, out of Christian charity, to forgive [the communists] and move on?
That we forgive those who ran over kids with tanks? Who ordered executions?
That we forgive the massacres? And the many years of oppression?
That we forget that Hungarians were buried face down in mass graves?
That for many Hungarians, immigration was the only option?
That we forget the horrors of torture? And the last words of the those condemned to death?
That we forgive, and history will judge?
Well, no, no and NO!
To our Western ears, these words sound jarring.
They seem a bit much. They seem unenlightened, even vindictive.
If you feel that way, chances are you haven’t experienced what much of the world has. Chances are you've lived in a comfortable Western bubble, where the thought of being taken in the middle of the night to prison, to be tortured and executed, or to a Siberian Gulag, is unthinkable.
But if you have experienced it, like Wittner – or grew up hearing about it, like me – then you would feel the profound injustice. You would feel the anger. You would know what it’s like to be at the mercy of a powerful, evil, oppressive state. You would feel sadness at such awful things having happened to you and the people you love.
And so the thought of God punishing guilty oppressors would fill you not with discomfort or embarrassment but with relief. You would then realise that in His righteous anger, God cares. He cares about your suffering. Our God cares about the oppression your people and your family endured.
You would then see, as many around the world do, that these passages don’t show God as vindictive or harsh: quite the opposite. His anger at evil and his promise to bring justice show that He is a loving God.
To think that God doesn’t punish the guilty would show indifference, not love. But, thanks be to God, that’s not the God of the Bible.
The Lord is slow to anger and great in power,
and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty. (Nahum 1:3).
While our comfortable West despises these words, they are music to the ears of the oppressed.
And yet, that’s not the end of the story.
The Radical Twist to God’s Judgement
While God is committed to punishing evil, he takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ez 33:11), whether that wicked be a communist oppressor or any one of us who has rebelled against God’s rightful rule.
So, what does God do about this dilemma?
The radical twist to God’s judgment was the first Easter, where God takes the furious fire of his righteous wrath and pours it on Himself, as His son Jesus hung on that Roman cross. And why? So that would not have to endure his judgement, but could walk free – forgiven. Whether you're a communist oppressor or a communist victim, the incredible news is that if you trust in Him, you will be forgiven (John 3:16).
But doesn’t believing in God’s Judgement lead to religious violence?
Some people might balk at the idea of God’s Judgement because they fear it leads to religious violence.
And perhaps in religions like Islam, Allah's Judgement on evil calls for the faithful to prosecute a holy war – ‘jihad’ – against those who resist Allah’s will. But that's not the view of the Bible - far from it.
God's declaration of vengeance on evil is coupled with the command for Christians to put down their weapons and leave the judging to God. No Intifada. No vigilantism. Instead, as we read in Romans 12:14-20:
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse… Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary:
“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.