Fear
of God's Judgment
People
are frequently anxious about how God is going to judge them
for what they have done or what they are
doing in their lives. In the worst-case scenario, they attribute
the bad things in their life to an angry God who is punishing
them for their sinful behavior. But, it’s difficult to
square that thought with the concept of a God whose very nature
is love.
It is true
that God is a just God. But, it is also true that we are more
likely to punish ourselves than to receive punishment
from that just God. The reason for this is simple. God is just,
but God’s justice is not our justice—it does not
conform to our narrow limitations of judgment, and it is never
meant to cause us harm. Scripture tells
us that God does not desire to bring us grief and pain. Over
and over
throughout the
Bible, God’s forgiveness outweighs God’s judgment.
Consider
the familiar story of Jonah—the man who was
swallowed by a whale because he refused to go and give God’s
words to those who most needed to hear them. Jonah didn’t
want to go because he knew about God’s forgiveness. He
said to God, “I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to
relent from punishing.”
Jonah
did not want to go where God was sending him because Jonah
wanted God to keep account
of what the people did and didn’t do, and reward or punish
them according to how the accounts came out. He didn’t
want God to offer them limitless, endless grace. So he chose
not to go and preach God’s good news to the people of
Nineveh.
Jonah
knew that God is always offering us grace, pure grace.
Even when we have difficulty accepting it. Even when we are
unwilling to give it ourselves. Grace that we don’t deserve
or can’t
earn and that comes no matter what we do or do not do. Such
grace is the result of God’s nature of absolute Love,
and it is actually the way God’s justice is lived out.
What we are
given by God is not punishment, but a conscience that alerts
us to the unhealthy patterns of behavior that separate
us from that Love that is beyond our human comprehension. Whenever
we are in those patterns of negative behavior, we feel the separation.
We feel the uneasiness in our soul. We feel the emptiness and
loss. We suffer the consequences of being
cut off from God—from
Divine Love—not because God has punished us, but because
we have made bad choices. Our conscience is not a punishment,
but a gift from God. It helps us aright ourselves and move from
separation toward union with God. It helps us creep closer and
closer into the arms of the One whose forgiveness and love can
heal.
Tip
to Try
The next time you notice that you are engaged in a negative
pattern of behavior, take a few moments to glance at your soul,
and then to glance toward heaven. Do you feel a fracture in yourself,
or in your relationship with heaven? If you do, imagine for a
moment that a warm shaft of light is being passed over the fracture
like a laser beam, and when the light passes, there is no longer
any separation. Look again at your soul and notice that there
is simply no evidence that there ever was a fracture, the healing
has been so complete. Offer a prayer of gratitude to God, the
Giver of the light.
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