When we experience pain, we tend to look for retribution. If you hit me, I must hit you back. At least in that sense “fairness” will have won out. But what if fairness was not the goal? What if the elimination of hitting altogether was the goal, not just by me, but by you, and the entire world? What if the true goal was the complete elimination of pain entirely? How does my hitting you back foster a greater goal? Justice may be served, fairness may be enacted, but hitting remains, pain remains, and now two hurt instead of one. There must be an alternative to pain, something better for us to aspire to. There must be an example of what is better, and why it is better, or our decisions to embrace pain may never change.
When Lucifer first rebelled against God in heaven, perhaps the most often asked question is why God simply did not eliminate him from the universe immediately. He had the power to do that. He had a legitimate reason to do that. It would have been both fair and just. But God is love, before He is justice. God is mercy and forgiveness as long as there is hope. God did not simply want Lucifer to humble himself, admit his error, and return to the throne of grace. God wanted the entire universe to freely choose love. Love could not be mandated. The witness of all intelligent life must be free to see what the alternative to God’s reasoning was, where it would lead, and what would be its result. Only then could intelligence freely choose love, and in so doing, turn away from pain altogether. Killing Satan right away, would not have allowed this freewill decision to be reached by those who had not yet had the time to see where alternatives to God would lead. There would forever have been a question as to whether something different from God, might indeed be better than God. So to achieve the greater goal of the extinction of all pain, and because love was indeed the core principle within our God, Satan was allowed to pursue his choices.
And the war of ideas came to our world. Adam and Eve were offered the choice of love by God, and permitted to face his alternatives in the garden. They chose badly. Already there had been a war in heaven. Already the adoption of the ideas of “self first” had yielded a painful harvest. Now it would be so again in our world. Justice could simply have left us to our fate. Equality under the law meant our extinction as a species was chosen at our own hand. Permanent separation from God was the first result of our embracing the pain and deceit of his enemy, subjugation to Satan was now our lot. This was at our doing, not part of the plans of God for us. God did not desire this for us, He did everything He could to avoid this fate for us. But He could not mandate our choices. Now what to do? It would have been easy for us to allow the guilty to suffer their fate – we do it regularly in our society. We punish the guilty and hold in our own hearts the comfort of enacting justice. But love is greater than justice, forgiveness greater than pain. And so hope was offered to us, despite what we had done.
If the Bible were nothing more than a story of punishment or retribution, it need not proceed any farther than the story of Adam and Eve. They had perfection, were offered a choice, were warned of the consequences, and chose badly. It could easily have been the end of the story of man, as told by the unfallen angels in the millennia to come. But it was not the end of the story. God CHOSE to forgive man, to offer man redemption, even at the cost of His own life. How does one show what love is? Love is not shown in exacting justice, but instead returning mercy for hatred. “Fairness” is not the standard God achieves, instead it is higher than that. In point of fact, it is not fair, that man is offered an eternity in perfection because of the actions of the Son of God. It is not fair that we who deserve death are offered life instead. It is not fair that we who have so wounded the God of love, are given love back instead of what we deserve. Fairness never seems to enter the equation. But love does. Mercy does. Forgiveness does. Everything of true value in the ideology of love is offered to us by the God who embodies love.
If our God’s hatred of pain and evil were his overarching personality characteristic, then the story might well have ended at the flood. Evil had grown so intense, so pervasive, that to witness what man did to man, and what man did to nature was nearly beyond the capacity of God to sit and watch. Evil was so bad in our hearts, minds, and actions, that it caused God to be “sorry” He had made us. So why not with a simply flick of the wrist, or speed of thought, wipe man from existence then. Obviously our choice to embrace pain and sin had yielded a harvest beyond the scope of our imaginations. The world was nearly as evil as it had ever been, or could be. But God’s love was greater than His desire to see the world rid of pain. So instead Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. It was not that Noah was perfect, nor his children, but they still chose to follow God. For 120 years, Noah would preach to the world of an impending destruction to end the pain God must daily witness. Had his listeners repented, the flood would have been cancelled as the destruction of Ninevah was cancelled when they listened to Jonah many years later. Think of it, 120 years more, not a day, or a week, or a year, or even a decade longer, but for 120 years the flood was delayed; patience and time for the world to decide to continue to embrace pain and death, or to escape it. But only Noah and his family chose to enter the ark.
Throughout scripture the stories of love, mistakes, forgiveness, and redemption would be illustrated over and over and over again. Enemies of God would arise, and seek to kill those who chose to serve the Lord. It would take divine intervention to keep those who served the Lord from immediate destruction. Fairness was not the standard. Mercy was. God attempted to reach every enemy of His and of His people throughout time, but so many would not hear His calls, or accept His mercy. Even those who claimed to serve Him made mistake after mistake. But despite our own actions God did not abandon His love for us, or His plans to redeem us. Even when we, His creations, the object of His love, put Him up on a cross and crucified Him, He remained steadfast determined to redeem us. The leaders of His own religion that He established would be the chief instigators in His death, yet He did not shy away from His love for us. Christ defined how far love would go. It was so much farther than justice, so much farther than fairness, beyond the imaginations of all who witnessed it. This was the standard to which God ascribes. This was the fulfillment of salvation to man, and the definition of love to the universe. On Calvary, Christ illustrated to all intelligent life how far love would go. And in so doing Satan was defeated.
It was not because Satan was killed at Calvary that he was defeated, but it was because his ideology of pain and hate was fully revealed. The results of any alternative to love were finally shown for where they would lead, how far they would go. These ideas stood in striking contrast to the Son of God who laid down His own life to redeem the creations bent on His destruction. The contrast of love against all other ideas, and love won. Evil and pain are dead in the universe from Calvary to infinity, not because intelligent life lacks the ability to choose, but because they have made a choice that will not be undone. Now it only remains for man to see, and choose again as all other life has done.
Creation, followed by roughly 2000 years and the flood, followed by roughly 2000 years and the Messiah, followed by roughly 2000 years and it is we who enter the stage, ready for His second coming. But the message that must be preached to all the world before He returns, is not one of the impending justice to be enacted. Instead it is the bright shining alternative to Satan found only in unconditional love. It is not threats the world needs to hear of the final fires of Hell. It is the alternative to life of pain, a life of empty self-serving pursuits that can never be satisfied. It is the reality that separation from God, and from love, is ALREADY the highest form of torture that could exist. It is worse than dying by flame. To live without love is to exist in torture. But because of love, this need not be our fate. Because of His love, we are offered an escape from pain, and a life worth living. A life that seeks always to answer the infinite question – how does one show love? This question will find answer in our every thought and deed for all of eternity.
The Bible then, is a love letter from God. Our God is not interested in seeing us suffer the justice and fairness we have earned, rather He is interested in seeing us embrace the love He offers us. His salvation from the pain we embrace is His gift to us. He charges nothing for it. He offers it freely. He makes it easily available. He does everything to lead us to it, and nothing to hide it from us. Love is truly greater than justice. Forgiveness is greater than equality, or vengeance. Those who know what love is, through the daily submission of the will to Christ, begin to understand why we should turn the other cheek. Those who begin to see how deeply He loves, and aspire to do the same, begin to wish to participate in His goal, of bringing about an end to all pain. It becomes less about being fair, and more about reflecting love. For that love is the character of our God, the reason for our redemption, and the reason for us to choose forever to abandon evil and pain that mark its alternatives. In this, God achieves His goal forever and pain and death will one day cease to exist.
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