The Wrathful God

For centuries we believe that we are created in the image and likeness of God. So we have always believed that the unseen God is someone with a face, with two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth. We designed God according to what we see among ourselves. So it has been the other way around: we created God in our image and likeness. And we have believed that God is someone who has a watchful eye, like J.R.R. Tolkien's Sauron, a Big Brother (or Father) that monitors our every step. We have always feared God, like our own fathers, who might burst with anger any time he sees us deviant of his rules. Most of our Biblical accounts tell us that God is a wrathful God. But how can a Loving God, who created us out of Love, be full of anger? Some people say God is not just Love, but a number of colorful characters: God is jealous, God is avenging, God is.... I feel how you feel: there is something that just doesn't fit the big picture. Feeling jealousy, and anger, and revenge happen in a God that otherwise might be full of Love. How come an unseen God can frown his face in contempt and disgust? Well, it could simply be imaginable if someone you think who Loves you can do that, like your parents. But God? WE both share the same dilemma: I really don't feel so.

After God of the Old testament destroyed the whole world and its creatures, it has become very difficult for many of us to believe that God won't destroy the earth again one day. Our days are filled with terrified anticipations, of many possibilities of doomsday. We have seen movies of alien invasions, volcanic eruptions, meteor collisions, freezing storms, and engulfing tsunamis, all of them portray the horror that my end the world we are living. We have scared ourselves to our impending deaths. We have accepted these seemingly prophetic end without attempting to voice our questions. "Does God really want to destroy us?" Have it ever occurred to you that the God you also call the "Creator" will one day again become the "Destroyer?"

How to understand an angry God? Rodger Kamanetz, a Jewish poet, quotes a rabbi's liberating insight: "When God was younger, he made mistakes..." God must be younger. As God grows, so he changes. A God capable of creating himself in his growth. God evolves and eventually becomes more Loving, as he learns. God has left his younger, wilder, angrier years. God is now becoming wise, gentle and forgiving. God brings the promise of creating a better change.

Is God not the same as we are? Were we once younger, wilder and angrier, but now wise, gentle and forgiving? What we have found what God becomes is just like we ourselves become. We can always change. This nature of change is part of our evolving selves.

If Love is a being, then it must be God. Don't worry, we are not here to discuss theology. That is not the point. If God remains indefinable, so does Love. The Wrathful God we used to believe and contend has evolved. We are leaving behind the word wrathful, together with all words that no longer label God. God is now a Loving God. John once wrote this in his first letter: "Whoever does not Love does not know God, for God is Love."

In a probably epiphanic way, "God is Love" could be redundant. Because what we call God is apparently the energy of Love seeking our awareness. This God who has never shown himself would not appear as a hologram of our imagination. God will remain invisible until we become aware of Love. The God to whom we say our prayers will remain deaf and mute until we ourselves hear and answer the call of Love. However mysterious and ineffable Love is, we can only see it through our own eyes. Until we become aware that we ourselves are Love, as incarnates of the unseen God, then the true nature of both God and Love will remain hidden to us.