Thursday 13 April 2023

Background

Today's reading conjures up for me images that Hieronymus Bosch would be proud of. I imagine dead bodies rising from their graves and well-earned, terrible judgment meted out with enthusiasm by a vengeful God who, to be fair, gives plenty of warning. 

Down the centuries such preaching has left ordinary people quaking with fear. It makes me think of the 'Church of the Quivering Brethren' in Stella Gibbon’s ‘Cold Comfort Farm’. I am interested which passages of Scripture most draw people, and what choices they make when seeking to understand and apply them. It is a choice!  I am not helpless before Scripture but am expected to engage and choose. We are to view a particular verse in the light of the whole and not the other way around. Do we read, "those who have done evil will be condemned" (v. 29) in the light of Christ who came to bring life (John 10:10), or do we hear, "I have not come to condemn but to save" (John 3:16) in the light of verse 29? 

For me the main thrust of this passage resonates far more with the good news of Jesus Christ than the bad history of human beings (and my failure). Christ has come to mediate between us and God. Read Romans 8 where Paul reassures us that all those who are in Christ are not condemned. Some would argue that this means only those expressly claiming a conventional Christian faith are free from the fear of damnation, but from the beginning of the Church there has also been held the idea that in reality no-one will be able to ultimately resist the light of Christ. It is a debate that continues: ‘universal salvation’ on the one hand, ‘saving the elect’ on the other. We choose which way we lean as we struggle to understand the whole. I understand it to mean that only those who refuse life for ever will fail to live, like fish dying of thirst in a vast ocean.

To Ponder:

• How do you understand God’s judgement of you and others?
• What is motivating God in making such judgements, and what limits that love?