God is full of love and mercy. Why, then, do we read about various threats which appear as if they come from God, such as those given to the people of Israel by the prophets, threats which seem to suggest God wants to punish people instead of showing them mercy? How can this be if God a God of love? It is all due to how we understand those threats; instead of seeing them as an indication that God is full of wrath, seeking vengeance for even the slightest of wrongdoing, they should be seen as warnings reveal the kinds of consequences evil actions will bring upon those who do them unless they are stopped. God does not want anyone to suffer, but also God does not want to undermine our freedom, so God makes a way to warn us what can and will come happen if we do not change our ways:
The reason that the God of all threatens punishment, you see, is not to inflict it on those that he threatens but to strike them with fear and lead them to repentance, and by ridding them of their wicked behavior extend to them salvation. After all, if he wanted to punish, he would not threaten punishments; instead, of threatening he makes clear that he longs to save and not punish.[1]
The prophets knew the pathos of God, a pathos which is full of love, a desire for everyone to do better, to treat everyone with dignity and respect. Many who are not religious often do something similar, such as those scientists who warn us about the effects of climate change and what will happen to us if we do not heal the world from the harm we have caused it. They, like the prophets, like God, do not want us to experience the horrors which will come about if we do not change our ways and become better stewards of the earth. Similarly, those who tell the rich and powerful that their exploitation of the poor and vulnerable cannot and will not last forever, be it from secular or religious sources, indicate the terrible outcome which will eventually happen if such exploitation is not stopped: eventually, such a society will collapse in upon itself. When xenophobes attack migrants, having them cast out of their country, or tortured and killed, the work such migrants do for society will not be done, and in the end, such a society will collapse. In the United States, migrants work on farms; when they are removed from the labor pool, how long can the United States sustain its food supply? Not long. The famine which will come will affect everyone, the exploiters as well as the exploited. Similarly, if the health care system is under attack, if the funding needed to keep hospitals open is eliminated, it should not be surprising that the system will collapse, leaving many, if not most, without access to proper medical care. All of these consequences that are the result of terrible social policies demonstrate how systemic sin, and therefore sin, makes its own punishment, for it is sin which creates the conditions that such suffering is established.
Therefore, we should understand the various threats found in Scripture, the threats which are often aimed at those who are in positions of power and authority are given with the hope that those who hear them will repent before it is too late. They are warnings God has provided so as to promote change in society, and they are given with the desire to make sure the outcomes being warned about do not happen (or at least lessened). The prophets were not sent into the world to threaten punishments for the sake of the punishments, but for the sake of mercy, to give time for metanoia, and it is really mercy, not punishment, which God wants to give to the world:
After all, many are the founts of compassion and mercy that flow from him, and in his exercise of longsuffering he is not in the custom of putting his threats into effect. In fact, he indication as much by saying, repenting of the troubles, that is, by instilling dread by the threats of punishment, and by the changes in human beings for the better transforming the threats into something pleasant. The God of all, you see, does not intend one thing at one time and another thing at another, or like us repent of what he does; rather, while making threats he has mercy within himself, and he offers it to those who are sorry for their sins, and while making promises of good things he knows those who are good and those who are unworthy of his gifts, extending them to the former and giving to the latter the opposite of what he promises. Promises and threats he uses to good purpose, you see, to attract to a lawful way of living those who dread the latter and desire the former.[2]
William of Auvergne understood this, as can be seen in one of the example prayers to God he wrote for his readers:
Moreover, such punishments can do nothing else in those whom they are except torment and torture them, but this by itself never pleases your goodness, Lord of mercy. For you do not take delight in the perdition of the living; it is, in fact, a mark of diabolic malice, namely, to love the punishments and torments of human beings.[3]
Legalism does not understand this, as it does not understand mercy and grace. Those who are legalists like to make rules, like to exert control over society by making more, and harder to follow, laws, giving excuse for more and more punishments they can use against those who break their laws as a way to prove the kind of power they have. Thus, many of them, though they claim some reason why they think a law needs to be made, really are motivated by malicious intent, desiring to find more and more ways to exercise their power over others. The law, they say, must be followed, and if people do not follow the law, even though it is a human construct, and unjust in its expectations, deserve to be punished. Once mercy is no longer in the picture, the punishments can and will become crueler, as, for example, can be seen in the way migrants are being demonized, rounded up in the United States and treated without any respect to their human dignity; they are being brutally tortured, put in unsafe living conditions, and often left to die. This shows how laws can be established to promote all kinds of evil, all kinds of sin which cry up to heaven, the kinds which cannot and will not last forever because those involved in them will end up creating the conditions which leads to the downfall of their society (or at least, their regime).
Justice, true justice, promotes mercy and the need to look after and promote the good of all. It is not aimed to punish, but to make people better, helping those who especially suffer grave injustices in the world:
In the Gospel, righteousness is a grace. Justice is not a judicial act that dispenses punishment for evil and reward for good. It is, rather, love, shown in freeing the oppressed and delivering the enslaved. God is faithful to his promise of salvation. Justice really means, on the part of God, the help of God bestows on the poor and on the needy.[4]
Christians who go against the way of God, who go against the way of God’s justice, need to be told, just like the leaders of Israel needed to be told, that, even if they invoke God in what they do, God’s ways will not be denied and their evil cannot and will not continue forever. They can repent and change their ways, or suffer the consequences of their actions, consequences which will feel as if they are acts of divine retribution.
Sin is a self-inflicted condemnation and a punishment which man freely chooses when he refuses to be as a personal hypostasis of communion with God and prefers to “alter” and disorder his existence, fragmenting his nature into individual entities – when he prefers corruption and death.[5]
God does not want those who have acted unjustly to suffer, just as God does not want those they harm to suffer, but God will work for and promote justice, and if mercy is rejected, if the way of love is rejected, then all that will be left will be the doom evil makes for itself. God works for those who are oppressed, those who suffer unjustly by society, sending people to help them and comfort them in the midst of their distress, as well sending people to change society so that the evil it does comes to an end. The prophets did this in times past, and so, today, many Christians, following the path of the prophets, can be said to continue with their charism. Where they are found, their voice needs to be heeded before it is too late and what they warn us about will come to pass.
[1] Thedoret Of Cyrus, Commentary on the Twelve Prophets. Trans. Robert Charles Hill (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2006), 38 [Hosea — Introduction].
[2] Thedoret Of Cyrus, Commentary on the Twelve Prophets, 93 [Joel – Chap 2].
[3] William of Auvergne. Rhetorica divinia, seu ars oratoria eloquentiae divinae. Trans. Roland J Teske SJ (Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2013), 89 [From an example of a prayer to God in the text].
[4] Archbishop Joseph Raya, The Abundance of Love: The Incarnation and Byzantine Tradition (Combermere, ON: Madonna House Publications, 1989; 3rd ed.: 2016), 136.
[5] Christos Yannaras, The Freedom of Morality. Trans. Elizabeth Briere (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984), 36.
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