Category: Justice

Justice and Mercy, and How We Measure Our Own Relationship With God

kevingdrendelLeave a comment

depositphotos Image ID:40565079 Copyright: atholpady

I don’t see anywhere in the teachings of Jesus a statement that we will be judged by the degree to which we have achieved justice for the wrongs that have been done to us. God is just. In fact, he is perfectly just, but He didn’t leave us any instruction to that effect.

We may think of God’s justice in the context of an eye for an eye.[A]  Where there is a wrong, perfect justice requires recompense. We don’t feel this any more keenly than when we have been wronged ourselves by others.

But there is a flip side to God’s justice. The flip side of God’s justice is God’s mercy, and God desires mercy more than God desires justice.[B] God desires to extend relationship to people rather than assign punishment. Our own relationship to God also can be measured by the quality of our relationships with others, to the extent it is in our control.

Continue reading “Justice and Mercy, and How We Measure Our Own Relationship With God” →

Whose Side Are We on?

kevingdrendel1 Comment

Where will Christians stand in history as we look back? Some would say we were on the wrong side of slavery, the Holocaust and Apartheid, but Christians were most definitely on the right side of each of those evils – at least, some might say, the real followers of Christ.…

Source: Whose Side Are We on?

The Greatest Being is God

God is by definition the greatest, the maximal being.

kevingdrendel2 Comments
Yosemite by Kallie Carlson
Yosemite by Kallie Carlson

St. Anselm postulated that the greatest being is God. Dr. William Lane Craig often references God as the “maximal being”. If we can envision something greater than God, then the something greater has to be God, because God is the greatest being. God is by definition the greatest, the maximal being.

That is why every single sin committed must be punished. Why? Because God is perfectly just. A perfectly just being punished every crime. If we imagine a god who published some crimes and not others, that would not be the most just being. He might be merciful and nice, but he would not be the most just. We could imagine someone more just – a being who punishes every crime.

We could also conceive of someone who is merciful, who can forgive everything that could possibly be done, from the smallest offenses to the greatest. If we conceive of a judge who forgives some things, but not all things, that would not be God. God would have to be absolutely merciful and forgiving.

God would have to be absolutely just and absolutely merciful at the same time. Any being who is not the most just and/or the most merciful is not God.

God must also absolutely love. Continue reading “The Greatest Being is God” →

How Can God Judge Good People: the Problem

Is goodness the key to getting into heaven?

kevingdrendel1 Comment
(c) Can Stock Photo

(c) Can Stock Photo

If good people do not believe in God, how can a good God send them to Hell? If God is good, as Christians claim, how can a good God judge good people? This is a perplexing question to many people.

Some of the difficulty comes from the question itself. The question assumes, as frankly most of us do, that goodness is the standard to “get into Heaven”. There certainly is good reason for that assumption. Christians are always talking about sin and morality. So, let’s take a deeper look at. Is that really what is going on?

Continue reading “How Can God Judge Good People: the Problem” →

The Wrath of God and Eternity

Our eternities rest on the choices God has given us. This life is serious business.

kevingdrendel1 Comment
(c) Can Stock Photo

(c) Can Stock Photo

This is part 3 in the series of Putting God’s Wrath in Perspective. We started by considering the fact that God is God. We are not God and really have no say in who God is or what He does. He could be nothing but wrathful, but we discover that God is, ultimately, love.

From there we discover that God’s wrath in history is employed to achieve the ends God purposes to accomplish, beginning with meting out justice, but more importantly to accomplish His ultimate purposes. His ultimate purpose is to bless the entire world and to reconcile the world to God and to mete out justice as justice is due.

This can only make sense, really, in the context of eternity. If this world is all there is, a just God would have to accomplish justice within the parameters of time. He would have to accomplish justice for each person during the life span of each person. That would be impossible to accomplish in a world in which individuals have real choice.

We tend to think of justice in terms of our own experiences. We think of justice at first instance in terms of our own lives; then we look out to the world that we know in the time in which we live. Justice is lacking in our experience – both in our own lives and in the world in which we live. In fact, if we are honest, injustice seems to be the norm.

Yet, we have this insatiable ideal and longing for a just world.

Where exactly does that come from? If justice seems so elusive in this world, why are we not simply accepting of the “way it is”? This is all we know. Why do we long for – actually insist on – something different from the injustice that is our experience?

Continue reading “The Wrath of God and Eternity” →