Love and Wrath by Jacob Kersh
When I was in high school, I listened to a sermon given by a fundamentalist pastor at my old church about “God’s Love” and “God’s Law.” The point the pastor was trying to make in his sermon was that sure, love is nice, but if you only live by love, you will lack moral boundaries. You need the Law to keep love in check. He painted this picture of love as this spiritual pizza and of the Law as its spiritual broccoli counterpoint. Indulging in love sometimes, and in the right amounts, is wonderful, but it’s all empty calories. You need the bitter but fibrous law to keep you regular.
I disagree. When referring to the greatest commandments, love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself, Matthew 22:40(NIV) says, “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” At its core, the function of the Law is the perseverance and preservation of love, not to “reign love in,” or to “keep love in check”. Without love, the Law is, at best, pointless; and at worst, it is cruel and manipulative.
Despite what scripture plainly says about love, what my old pastor said can feel true to me sometimes. I am a progressive Christian, which means I choose to live by love in a way my old pastor would certainly disapprove of. It can feel like I’m taking the path of least resistance because I’m not shouting through a bullhorn at party-goers on bourbon street or at patients outside of planned parenthood. It feels like I’m choosing to live into the easier truth of God’s love and mercy rather than accept the “hard truth of God’s Wrath”.
As Imago has been diving into the book of Jonah, something has dawned on me; Jonah’s rebellious attitude towards God’s command was kind of understandable. It is no secret that the Assyrian empire, home to Nineveh and the Ninevites, was known for its ferocity and cruelty towards its conquered people. At the time of the story of Jonah, the Northern Kingdom of Israel, Jonah’s countrymen, were such conquered people and would have suffered tremendously under the reign of the Assyrians. Jonah wasn’t like one of those street preachers handing out tracts and yelling about “Sodomites” outside of pride fest. He was asked to walk into a major metropolitan area of one of the most savage military powerhouses of pre-antiquity to offer them total forgiveness, in exchange for repentance, on behalf of the God of a people the Assyrians had brutalized and forcibly assimilated.
As citizens of the premier military powerhouse of modernity, it might be hard for us to truly grasp what Jonah must have felt having to work towards the salvation of the people who had orchestrated genocide against his kin. The Ninevevites do, however, pose an interesting hypothetical we can apply to our own lives. If the person who had caused us the most harm suddenly repented of their past transgressions generally and faced no consequences for said transgressions, could we rejoice for them; or, would we feel a deep and disheartening sense of injustice?
It’s easy for me, as a progressive Christian, to love and accept those who belong to the LGBTQ+ community, to fight for and protect women’s rights to reproductive healthcare, to advocate for those who are disabled in some way, and to work towards racial equity; but this kind of love is easy compared to God’s love and God’s expectations of my love. I have never been harmed by a pregnant woman, a queer person, or a person of color. They often suffer oppression under the social and economic systems I benefit from. Loving, accepting, advocating, and caring for them is the bare minimum.
God wants me to reconcile with those who have harmed me and my people. God wants me to go to Nineveh, the home of my enemy, and beg them to repent so that they do not perish, even if that is what I believe they deserve. We don’t need the Law and the fear of God’s wrath to reign in our love. We need the acceptance of God’s love to reign over our wrath against those who have harmed us. God’s path of total forgiveness in the face of repentance; the rehabilitation of those who have done truly evil things, is a much harder path to follow than our gut response of punitive justice and retribution, but it is the path God wants us to take.