One of my favorite angry, kill-joys.
This morning I've been thinking about my perspective on God's punishment of sin. Many times I've thought of God like an angry giant who wants to stomp on all the little peons who aggravate him. And we've all heard him described as a 'cosmic kill-joy' - unable to have any fun himself and certainly unable to stand anyone else having any fun.
But what if there's another perspective? What if there's something much bigger at stake than God's anger or sullenness? I'm beginning to ask, "Does sin make me more or less alive? Does it increase my humanity or diminish my humanness?" If I were to walk into my brother's pottery studio right now and smash his pottery, what would that do to me? It would communicate to him that I consider the effort of his gifts and craft to be without value. I would be stomping on his joy. And me, it would make me less of a brother, less of a friend. I would lose some of my humanity in the process.
God punishes sin. In a very real way when we sin we punish ourselves. Ultimately God receives our punishment himself. God created a beautiful thing: humanity. Sin makes us less human - causes decay in the deeply beautiful image he invested in us at Creation. The surprise is that we are the angry giants who stomp on others and crush dignity. We are the killers of our own joy. Jesus is the great defender of dignity, beauty, joy, and our only hope for becoming truly human.
PS. Psalm 96 is an example of the joy and relief that the whole Creation is to experience. Surprising to me is that the Psalmist tells us the source of all the rejoicing is God's "judgement"! Facing the truth of our brokenness and learning God's better way is healing.
Let all creation rejoice before the Lord, for he comes,
he comes to judge the earth.
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