Ty Cobb, as baseball fans are aware, is famous for being an
amazing player. He was the first person
voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame and still holds the record for having the
highest lifetime batting average. He is
also certainly one of baseball’s most infamous
players - widely known for being an angry, racist, and wrathful individual.
Charles Leerhsen, author of the award-winning book Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, in a
fascinating speech shows
that much of what we think we know about Ty Cobb is… wrong.
Leerhsen tells the story of how in doing basic research by using
original sources, he quickly discovered that, while Cobb was not perfect, he
was certainly not the rage monster popular opinion has made him out to be. It turns out that a man named Al Stump, a
hack writer, wrote a scandalous piece about Mr. Cobb that was shared over and
over by people who were trying to correct its errors but instead ended up
perpetuating a lie.
Yes, it seems that Ty Cobb’s legacy was a victim of fake
news.
And it seems that popular culture wanted to believe in a
caricature (“Cobb was a wrathful person and player”) more than they wanted a complete
picture.
But, Ty Cobb is not the only “wrathful” victim of fake news
– there is another whose reputation has been misshaped and mishandled.
Many people have misperceived God as a mad, violent
deity. This is an extremely popular view
(remember, the most famous and formative sermon in American history is Jonathan
Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”!). Many of us have heard and incorporated
narratives of God as wrathful and those misconceptions have taken on a life of
their own. That “fake news” has become
the story we expected, wanted and embraced.
But if we follow Leerhsen’s example and do a little digging,
will the research support that perception?
In the New Testament, the Greek words often translated as
anger, rage, indignation or wrath are used both in reference to God and in reference
to humans. I’ve categorized the verses below
using the NIV:
1.
Texts that caution humans against being
wrathful/angry/indignant:
a.
1 Cor. 13:5 – Love, “does not dishonor others,
it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”
b.
Eph. 4:26 - “’In your anger do not sin’: Do not
let the sun go down while you are still angry,”
c.
Eph. 4:31 – “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and
anger”
d.
Col 3:8 – “rid yourselves of… anger, rage…”
e.
1 Tim 2:8 – “lift up holy hands in prayer,
without anger or disputing.”
f.
James 1:19 – “everyone should be… slow to become
angry.”
g.
James 1:20 – “because human anger does not
produce the righteousness that God desires.”
2.
Texts that tell humans to hate evil and
wrongdoing
a.
Rom 12:9 – “Hate what is evil; cling to what is
good”
3.
Texts that refer to a connection between law and
wrath:
a.
Romans 4:15 – “because the law brings wrath. And
where there is no law there is no transgression.”
4.
Texts that refer to Jesus being angry:
a.
Mark 3:5 – Jesus, “looked around at them in
anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man,
“Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely
restored.
5.
Texts where God is described as having anger/hate/wrath:
a.
John 3:36 – John the Baptist says, “Whoever
believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see
life, for God’s wrath remains on him.”
b.
Rom. 1:18 – “The wrath of God is being revealed
from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the
truth by their wickedness.”
c.
Rom 2:5 – “But because of your stubbornness and your
unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of
God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed.”
d.
Rom 2:7-8 – “To those who by persistence in
doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who
reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger.”
e.
Rom 3:5 – “But if our unrighteousness brings out
God’s righteousness more clearly, what shall we say? That God is unjust in
bringing wrath on us? (I am using a human argument.)”
f.
Rom 9:22 – “What if God, choosing to show his
wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his
wrath – prepared for destruction?”
g.
Rom 12:19 – “Do not take revenge, my dear
friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to
avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.”
h.
Rom. 13:4 – Christians should respect human
government because “He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment
on the wrongdoer.”
i.
Eph. 5:5-7 – “For of this you can be sure: No
immoral, impure or greedy person – such a man is an idolater – has any
inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because
of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not
be partners with them.”
j.
Col 3:6 – Paul instructs them to leave behind a
list of sins… “Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.”
k.
1 Thess. 2:16 – The people persecuting the
Christians “heap up their sins to the limit.
The wrath of God has come upon them at last.”
l.
Heb. 3:11 & 4:3 (citing Psalm 95:11) –
Because of Israel’s disobedience and rebellion… “I declared an oath in my
anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’”
6.
Texts that refer to the destruction of Jerusalem
or a future punitive judgment
a.
Matt 3:7-8 & Luke 3:7 – John the Baptist
says to the Pharisees and Sadducees, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to
flee from the coming wrath? Repent!”
b.
Luke 21:23 – Jesus in talking about the upcoming
destruction of Jerusalem says: “How dreadful it will be in those days for
pregnant women and nursing mothers! There will be great distress in the land
and wrath against this people.”
c.
Eph. 2:3 – “All of us also lived among them at
one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and
thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.”
7.
Texts that refer to the way Jesus saves us from
wrath or future punitive judgment:
a.
Romans 5:9 – “Since we have now been justified
by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!”
b.
1 Thess. 1:10 – Paul refers to how they’ve
stopped worshipping idols and are now following Jesus, “who rescues us from the
coming wrath.”
c.
1 Thess. 5:9 – “For God did not appoint us to
suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
8.
Texts that refer to wrath in the book of
Revelation
a.
Rev. 6:16-17 – “They called to the
mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits
on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great
day of their wrath has come, and who can withstand it?”
b.
Rev. 11:18 – “The
nations were angry, and
your wrath has come.
The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your people who revere your name, both great and small—
and for destroying those who destroy the earth.”
The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your people who revere your name, both great and small—
and for destroying those who destroy the earth.”
c.
Rev. 14:10 - “they, too, will drink the wine of
God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. They
will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of
the Lamb.”
d.
Revelation 14:19 – “The angel swung his sickle
on the earth, gathered its grapes and threw them into the great winepress of
God’s wrath.”
e.
Revelation 15:1 – “I saw in heaven another great
and marvelous sign: seven angels with the seven last plagues—last, because with
them God’s wrath is completed.
f.
Revelation 15:7 – “Then one of the four living
creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls filled with the wrath of
God, who lives for ever and ever.”
g.
Revelation 16:1 – “Then I heard a loud voice
from the temple saying to the seven angels, “Go, pour out the seven bowls of
God’s wrath on the earth.”
h.
Rev. 16:19 – “The great city split into three
parts, and the cities of the nations collapsed. God remembered Babylon the
Great and gave her the cup filled with the wine of the fury of his wrath.”
i.
Rev. 19:15 – “Coming out of his mouth is a sharp
sword with which to strike down the nations. ‘He will rule them with an iron
scepter.’ He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty.”
While there certainly are a basketful of references to God’s
anger/wrath, it would be interesting to follow that up with a study of how many
times God described as loving or holy or good.
My guess is that there would be significantly more than references to
his wrath…
But, my objective in this post is not to ask you to ignore references to anger/wrath/indignation on God’s part. Instead, I think the references to wrath of
God have been misread and have distorted our image of God. There are two examples that I’ve found helpful
in trying to understand the relationship between anger and the Almighty.
- Memory and Children – Let’s imagine a mother who asked her grown daughter to relate how she remembers her childhood. The daughter responds by saying that her clearest memory is of her mom grabbing her gruffly by the side of a busy road. The mother’s mouth hangs open in shock as she considers all the eating and playing and enjoying each other’s company that happened over the years. As they discuss the memory, it turns out that what the daughter is recalling is the one time when the mother had to save the daughter by pulling her out of a busy street to protect her from a passing car. Could it be that the stories of intense emotion, the ones that may stand out the most, may not be the ones that should define our overall experience of God? If they seem out of character, could there be a good reason for that?
- Maps and Globes – Taking a 3D object and turning it into a 2D image inevitably distorts it. Because of this most of the maps in our classrooms and offices are wildly inaccurate. Greenland looks to be the same size as Africa in those pictures, but the truth is that is laughably incorrect. Any time we squash something flat to get it to fit on a page, we will alter what it is in reality. I think that is similar to how we have misinterpreted the wrath of God – by smashing a view of God flat on a page we have distorted God’s important desire for justice as modeled in Scripture and made it into a dominant feature on the theological landscape when in reality – it is just cold, small, (and relevantly minor) Greenland.
For the rest of this post I would like to examine this topic
by asking a few questions and sharing some observations. So here goes…
1. Does the phrase “wrath of God” mean what we
think it means?
One text from the Old Testament that can help us address
this issue of God’s wrath is found in Psalm 7:10-16. That psalm talks about God as a righteous
judge who prepares to go against the ungodly **in wrath** but interestingly the
examples given in the following verses show that the damage done to the
disobedient people is all self-inflicted.
Could we say that God’s wrath is a dish best served cold, or maybe more
simply put, God’s wrath is a dish that is… self-served? When we live contrary to the essence that God
has called us to be, we cause trouble for ourselves and initiate our own
destruction (we serve the dishes of wrath to ourselves).
2. Is “wrath” even really the best word for
what God experiences?
I’m not convinced that “wrath” is the best translation of
what God experiences because in modern English it tends to mean uncontrolled
anger or rage. Would it be more accurate
to use different terms like God’s “righteous anger” or God’s “deep commitment
to justice”?
In talking about this topic with our Makua friends, they
differentiate between three different words: “Urusiya” means to be upset or angry. “Uviruwa” is a stronger reaction that could
be violent (they brought up the examples of the flood in the time of Noah or of
Jesus cleansing the temple). But the
word that sounds the most like wrath is one they borrow from Portuguese, “raiva,”
which means rabid anger or rage and is interestingly also the word for rabies! The Makua Christians I’ve talked to say they certainly
see how a “just anger” is a good and important part of God’s character but they
don’t believe that God has “raiva.”
If wrath is uncontrolled anger or rage, does that seem to
fit with the character of God? I don’t think so, especially if that that is the
kind of anger that human beings are specifically instructed in Scripture not to
have.
Exodus 34:6; Numbers 14:18; Psalm 86:15; Joel 2:13 all say
that God is slow to anger and abounding in love. The Apostle Paul certainly knew those
scriptures and that is why I don’t think he would ever see wrath as a
definitive quality of God. A God that
doesn’t get angry at injustice wouldn’t be good, but serving and worshipping a
rage monster wouldn’t be good either. What we need here is more than a caricature
– we need a complete picture.
In talking this through with Rachel, she has shared the example
of how if one of our daughters gives the stink-eye (an expression of contempt) to
her sister, something like anger flashes inside of Rachel, an intense reaction
that serves as a catalyst for a stern intervention – necessary to deal with the
way they are treating each other. God
gets angry at our sin and injustice because of what it does to us, how it
divides us, and how we are enslaved and trapped by it more than his own personal
offense at it. God is more angry at sin
and the way it holds us captive to sin, death and Satan because what we do
shapes who we are as individuals and how it effects the way we treat each
other.
So, re-framing the wrath of God does not mean perceiving God
as a “pushover buddy” who enables your bad behavior. Instead, he is more like
the true friend who calls you to live at a higher level – he takes away your
keys so you won’t drive drunk, but it you are hell bent on doing things your
own way and reject being in relationship with him… things will not go well for
you. So, God’s response to injustice is
not generally to “nuke the place,” but may be more like a smart bomb to address
the heart of the problem. It seems to me
that what God experiences is less like wrath and more like a “judge’s
legitimate emotional reaction to injustice.”
3. Is Jesus saving us from God’s wrath?
Certainly not. God is NOT like a wrathful, abusive parent who
is interrupted in his plans to inflict harm on us by our benevolent older
brother (Jesus) stepping in to take the beating for us. The Scriptures affirm that God’s
character is revealed fully in Christ (John 14:9). God and Jesus are not doing some kind of divine
good cop/bad cop routine. Jesus is not
saving you from God. God loves
you immensely. Nowhere in the Bible does it explicitly says
that God poured out his wrath and punishment on Jesus instead of on us. God doesn’t kill Jesus. Instead, incredibly, God deals with our sin
by submitting to all the brokenness that we throw at him – through his own death
on a cross. God didn’t kill Jesus – we did! (that’s what Peter says in Acts 2:36
– human beings did this!) But that’s not the
end of the Story – Christ triumphs! We
don’t have to live under guilt, shame and fear because Christ has defeated Sin,
Death and Satan! That is really good
news! Instead of being stuck in Darkness
– God brings us into his kingdom of light and love and life!
Conclusion
On a recent podcast, I heard Leerhsen describe his surprise
at the push-back he has gotten from people who are angry at him for questioning
the dominant narrative about Ty Cobb as a wrathful player. It makes me wonder if whether followers of
Jesus who try to counteract fake news about God as a wrathful deity should be
prepared for push-back as well…
Thanks for reading… this is certainly still a work in
progress. My hope is that we can keep
learning and growing and begin to see a more complete picture of the God revealed
in Christ and move past the destructive caricatures of a God full of wrath.
May we grow in our understanding of both the love and
justice of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus!
Grace and Peace,
Alan
