We now get to part four of Bob Vincent’s paper on our compassionate God and the suffering of men.
Human nature and choice
Someone asked me: “If people are sinful by nature, then they have no choice but to act sinfully. (i.e. commit acts of rebellion against God.) So the question is: how can you justly punish someone for acting in the only way they can? The ideas of personal responsibility and choice usually work their way into our definitions of justice.”
This is an ancient question, similar to the one with which Christ’s holy apostle dealt in Romans 9 (see Romans 9:10-24). Paul, while recognizing the difficulties you raise, essentially responds by warning us that we cannot question God. This is not an answer that most of us modern folk, especially those of us in the West, are comfortable with. Our Weltanschauung, the distorting glasses through which we look at the world and whose vision we naively assume conforms to reality, is radically egalitarian and radically individualistic: we think that no one is superior or inferior to another, that no one can be affected by the actions of another. We live in the days of the final outworking of the bastardization of the Democratic Ideal, and imagine that God himself must conform to our image.
Against such a view, the Scripture holds up a Despot (transliteration of a Greek word used of God and rulers with absolute power over others, e.g. Acts 4:24; Revelation 6:10.) who is wholly righteous and all powerful. Sin is so very serious and so very evil, fundamentally, not because of its impact on other human beings, but because it is an offense against his Majesty. This is what David confessed, dripping with bloody murder of a trusting friend and sordid adultery with that friend’s wife: “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.” (Psalm 51:4.)
Because God is God, we must shut our mouths and await the consummation when we will understand and accept all God’s ways as holy and just. We must recapture the vision of the grandeur and greatness of God, as in the old Russian national anthem.
God The All Terrible! King, who ordainest
Thunder Thy clarion, the lightning Thy sword;
Show forth Thy pity on high where Thou reignest:
Give to us peace in our time, O Lord.God the All-merciful! earth hath forsaken
Thy ways all holy, and slighted Thy word;
Bid not Thy wrath in its terrors awaken:
Give to us peace in our time, O Lord.God the All-righteous One! man hath defied Thee;
Yet to eternity standeth Thy word,
Falsehood and wrong shall not tarry beside Thee:
Give to us peace in our time, O Lord.God the All-provident! earth by Thy chastening,
Yet shall to freedom and truth be restored;
Through the thick darkness Thy kingdom is hastening:
Thou wilt give peace in Thy time, O Lord.
Amen.”Alexis F. Lvov
[...] (Continued from part four) [...]