A Two-Faced God
There is an undesirable consequence that comes from believing that God is arbitrary, vengeful, and punishing. We become compartmentalized, genuinely participating in the love of Jesus on one hand, but experiencing anger and fear from the Father on the other. Over the years, we come to worship a two-faced God, one who is merciful and wrathful, loving and punishing.
Changed to the Likeness of Our God
This God loves those inside the church who love and obey Him, but is wrathful and punishing to sinners outside of the fold, which often really means those outside of our particular brand of dogma. This would all be fine and good if we didn’t become like the God we serve. However, serving a two-faced God translates to showing love and compassion to our own, but fear and anger toward those who live outside of God’s (our) code of moral ethics. They get wrath instead of mercy, or at least a condescending relegation to hell.
“As a result of this wrong picture of God’s justice and character that we have been taught, we tend to develop a schizophrenic approach to evangelism. In our experience with God, He is loving. Overwhelmingly loving in fact. When we expect him to react harshly he often surprises us with tenderness and forgiveness. David talked about this a lot in the Psalms. Paul said “It is your kindness that leads us to repentance.” This unconditional love of God sends us to our knees. It breaks us. But although we experience this with God ourselves, when we tell non-Christians about God we present a God who cannot leave sin unpunished, who loves justice, who seems by our description to be unfair and hateful. We try to scare the Hell out of people, rather than believing that God meant it when He said that it is kindness that leads us to repentance.” – Derek Flood
Dangers of a Paradoxical God
Preaching God’s love is not the antidote to this problem because it is not simply that we have the wrong picture of God and need to remedy it by looking into the loving face of Jesus. The problem is that we have been damaged by a paradoxical view of God, which sees Him doing mutually exclusive things. We go so far as to define genocide as good, if God sanctions it. If our God is two-faced, then how can we keep from being two-faced too? We can’t preach a “Jesus loves you if, but God hates you when” message without hurting others (and ourselves). It is no wonder that few Christians know how to love gays or anyone else who is seen to be outside of God’s moral code.
“Our fundamental sin is that we place ourselves in the position of God and divide the world between what we judge to be good and what we judge to be evil. And this judgment is the primary thing that keeps us from doing the central thing God created us to do, namely, love like He loves.” – Greg Boyd
True Mercy Cannot Punish
With this split view of God’s mercy and justice, it is no wonder that the cry from many in Christianity is, “We need keep God’s mercy and justice together.” Yet God’s mercy is His justice. If God is infinite mercy, then how can He violate mercy and punish for the sake of so-called justice? True mercy cannot punish. God can either extend mercy, or require punishment, but not both. They are mutually exclusive.
Jesus didn’t believe in this two-faced God and neither should we. The life and death of Jesus teach us what divinity without retribution looks like. It is high time for us to take a closer look.
* A special thanks to Derek Flood for many of these thoughts and such clear teaching on this subject
