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Divine Justice Part Two
Glorifying EvilJohn R Gavazzoni
July, 2002
Thousand Oaks, CA
When we consider God's relationship to man, could there be any evil greater than man being separated from God forever? Will such a horrendous eventuality actually come to pass, or is that religious "conviction" the ultimate in evil vain imagination? I must insist, that for such a thing to exist would involve God maintaining the supreme evil for all eternity.
Not only would that be so because of what the lost ones would have to endure, but, if the final, ultimate good is that God be eternally glorified, would not Christ be eternally denied a great measure of the glory of fulfilling the will of God that none should perish? This vain, evil imagination is further intensified by the insistence that divine justice is the above's driving imperative.
The fact is that this dark speculation has arisen in the mind of man; speculation which attributes to God the standard of relationship that rules the world system, and then is taught as a cardinal tenet of orthodoxy, until we are at home with the unthinkable and the unthinkable has claimed a home in our minds with its intimidating claim of orthodoxy.
Institutional Christianity has fortified that home, turning it into a stronghold of imagination in which every evil conjecture resides, and where that dream-combination of the incomprehensible, the terrifying, and the irrational is found in the outlandish nightmare of man's will thwarting God's will. There, obvious superstition is cloaked in the ostentation of religious sobriety, guarded as truth and supported by the misunderstanding and misrepresentation of, of all things, the justice of God.
Watch as the drawbridge is frantically raised and tightly closed, the religious archers poised with bows drawn taut, the oil brought to boiling when the army of the Lord comes against this stronghold. By all means available, the evil imagination of everlasting separation from God must be protected; the Christian mind must not be permitted to seriously consider that such an evil has never been in the mind of God as a possibility, probability or eventuality.
God is love and love acts wisely, righteously and justly. It is twisted theology which insists that God, in His justice, can only act lovingly, mercifully and graciously as His justice (understood as legalistic, retaliatory vindictiveness) will allow----"If you don't do what I tell you then justice demands that I withhold from you, or allow you to withhold from yourself the goal of my love. My justice makes me powerless to fully follow through in my passion for mankind. So you see, your rebellious will, will finally prevail over my will, and in the measure that this is so, you, the creature become sovereign in the matter that is closest to my heart."
Such is the portrait of the god of much of Christendom and this portrait of our Father God is afforded a greater or lesser place of prominence in the majority of Christian thinking since institutional Christianity resorted to controlling the masses by fear rather than emancipating them from fear by the true proclamation of the unconditional love demonstrated on Calvary.
There, God was reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their sins unto them. Conventional interpretation has entirely missed the very obvious meaning of the passage. It was in NOT reckoning our sins against us as we crucified His Son that God was reconciling us to Himself, for only such a response as "Father forgive them for they know not what they do," Lk. 23:34 expressing the will of His Father in prayer, could finally and forever answer the cry of the alienated heart which had concluded itself abandoned by God.
We who, in the collective unconscious, believed God to have acted unjustly by subjecting our innocence to over-powering evil, were now confronted by the true justice of the true God, who took responsibility for it all on the cross of Calvary, satisfying our needy hearts through the propitiating sacrifice of Christ by which He revealed the love behind the great plan that momentarily left us deprived of the light of life.
Essentially we do not need to understand why; we, most importantly, need to know and believe the love behind the plan. Knowing that, we can rest in that love until it has fully lit our hearts to know the "why" of it all. Such love can only be fully assimilated when it is seen in its refusal to retaliate with the infinite power at its disposal.
Then, we can say, "I still don't understand why the global agony, why the inhuman human condition was/is necessary but knowing the love, I can await wisdom's explanation. If I can attack God as I have and there occur not a ripple in the continuance and consistency of His love, then my heart, if not my mind, can enter the rest of faith."
Stay tuned for future serious, seminal samplings.
John Gavazzoni
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