The Danger of the Narrow Study of God

The church has long taught only one part of God’s nature, tending to play it safe and not offend anyone. To often have pastors and Sunday school teachers taught about love, grace, and forgiveness, ignoring the God of perfect justice, anger, and full of righteous wrath; One that is not afraid to punish those who deserve it, and a God so powerful that if he were even to think it, he could demolish every being he ever created in an instant.
We seem to have forgotten the God of the Old Testament, only dwelling on the seemingly more loving and ‘cuddly’ God of the New Testament. Some people in the church have gotten things so twisted they say, “I can do anything I want, God loves me and is gracious, so he’ll forgive me every time I sin.” Basically they’re saying that grace is the allowance to keep on sinning. This is egregious theology (to put it lightly). But when you look at the way most of us approach and think about God, this Christianity- shattering belief makes sense. The absence of the teaching of God’s full character (as well as humanly possible) is handicapping the growth of Christianity.

Before I begin my argumentation, I’d like to investigate how we got to this unhealthy fixation on the loving side of God’s nature. I’ve already expounded on the point of how it is used to justify sin, but I think there are a couple more reasons we do this. The first reason being we as humans don’t like mysteries. God being perfectly just is a huge mystery to humans. How can a perfect God send people to Hades? We don’t like to think about God’s justice; it just doesn’t seem to make sense.
Another reason we focus exclusively on God’s justice is because the way we think about Jesus is only through the lens of love, advantageously skimming over the passages were Jesus displays his perfect anger and wrath. We’re too busy admiring His miracles to look at when he cleansed the temple and committed other deeds out of perfect wrath. Having adequately shown how and why we slip into this improper and unhealthy view of God, I will now show how and why we need to look at all of God’s attributes.
First, I would like to show why we need to see God in his fullness. The first reason is because it alters our lifestyle. If we don’t see God in his perfect justice, it leads to a point were we live in complacency, content with our sorry excuse for a spiritual life. If we don’t believe God will implement justice, why should we live according to his laws? If we believe that God doesn’t implement his justice, then a parent also would not need to punish their children. If a parent is to punish their children as God punishes his children, and God does not implement justice, than a parent should not punish their children either. We must see God in his perfect justice in order to live a just and holy lifestyle. We must also see God’s attributes correctly if we are to impart a healthy lifestyle to our children.
Second, it hinders our worship. How can we grow in our worship if we only praise half of God’s attributes? Another reason this hinders our worship is because it eliminates a good deal of mystery in Christianity. We need mystery in worship for it to be complete. If there is no mystery in Christianity then we know as much as God. If we know as much as God, then he is no longer God, and we cannot worship him. So for us to worship him completely we need mystery. Mystery should not scare us; rather, it should encourage us.
In summary, we need to study God in his full character because;
-It will guard our mind from vain philosophies and their subsequent ill effects
-It will influence our actions for the better
-It will improve our worship



A few passages showing God’s perfect justice, perfect wrath, and anger
Deuteronomy 27:19
Job 34:12
Job 34:17
Job 37:23
Job 40:8
Psalm 9:8
Psalm 9:16
Psalm 11:7
Psalm 33:5
Psalm 45:6
Psalm 72:1
Psalm 89:14
Psalm 97:2
Psalm 99:4
Psalm 103:6
Psalm 140:12

There are many more passages that clearly show and proclaim God’s justice.

Free will and morality

I’ve been re-reading Mere Christianity lately, and as C.S. Lewis is arguing for basic morality, it reminded me of an argument employed by J.P. Moreland. Moreland was arguing that atheism does not allow free will, and listed highly respective atheists who say just that. John Serull (spelling?) a professor at UC Berkley (and a leading scientific naturalist) said this, “our conception of physical reality does not allow for the existence of freedom of the will.” Similarly, William Provine, a leading scientist at Cornell university says this, “free will as it has been traditionally conceived, simply does not exist, there is no way the evolutionary process as currently conceived, could produce a being that is truly free to make choices.”

They have to say this because:
Premise 1. Only material things exist
Premise 2. The current concept of free will is intangible
Conclusion: free will does not exist

This clearly does not make sense. If there is no free will, why do we make so many excuses? When we make excuses we acknowledge that we should have done something different than what we actually did. We should have done action (a) instead of the action we actually did (b).
Another clear objection to this “scientific predestination,” is the human emotion of guilt. Whenever you feel this sensation, you admit that the action you took was wrong, and you should have taken another action. This is basically saying, “I feel bad about the action I took, because I had the choice to do action (b) and decided not to.” If there is no free will, we have nothing to feel bad about, it ultimately wasn’t our choice so we don’t anything to worry about.

Now picture this, what if in a courtroom someone who had committed a murder said this, “Judge, I don’t think I should face jail time or the death penalty; because I don’t really control my actions. It wasn’t my choice it was the laws of nature that made me commit the murder. So ultimately I’m innocent, because I don’t control anything. I’m simply an inanimate object that external factors move and use. I’m no different than a rock, if a rock killed someone, would you give it the death penalty?”
Hmm…that’s a tough one… The judge and jury would have a hard time with this case. Don’t you think?
I thought not.

We humans expect something out of each other (we're strange like that). We expect each other to act decently to be kind when kindness is due, and be just when justness is due. C.S. Lewis said this in Mere Christianity, "think of a country where men were admired for running away from the battle field, or were men felt proud of themselves for double crossing all those who had been kindest to him. You might just as well imagine a country where 2 + 2 = 5."

So in conclusion, humans have some sort of free will, label it differently, set different boundaries to it. I don't care, but you have to acknowledge some level of human free will. This concept of free will leads to a lot of places atheists don't want to go.