The scriptures referred to are Ezekiel 33:7-11, Romans 13:8-14 and Matthew 18:15-20.
I had just finished Karen Hao's eye opening book, The Empire of AI, about how the race for artificial general intelligence has created a globally exploitative and extractive system that copies colonialism, and decided I needed to read something lighter. So I found the audiobook, Mythos, Stephen Fry's delightful retelling of the stories of the Greek gods, read by the author himself, acting out all the parts. And then I realized that I had switched from a book about men with godlike wealth and influence who don't care about the harm they do to fellow human beings to mythical gods who don't care about the harm they do to human beings. The Greek and Roman gods were petty, cruel, capricious, vengeful, lustful, incestuous, murderous, cannibalistic and all round terrible beings. Zeus is so incensed that Prometheus has given the gift of fire to humans that he decides not only to torture his former friend forever but to drown the human race. Not because of human sin and violence as in Genesis 6:11-13 but just out of spite. When that doesn't kill them all, Zeus gives Pandora a container as a wedding gift and when she opens it, all the miseries of life, like poverty, famine, disease and despair, escape into the world. Cadmus, the first hero, slays a water dragon who has killed 4 of his men only to find it is the favorite of the war god Ares and thus is cursed to become a snake. A priestess of Zeus is seduced by the king of the gods only to be killed by jealous Hera, Zeus' sister and wife. Small wonder that the story of Jesus, revealing that God is in fact just and loving, was received as good news in the ancient world.
Unlike the Greek gods, whom you might unknowingly offend, the Bible reveals that God has told us what is right and what is wrong. We are to love both God and our neighbor. (Deuteronomy 6:4-5; Leviticus 19:18) Things that violate those two laws—stealing, lying, infidelity, wanting what doesn't belong to you—are wrong. (Exodus 20:1-17) Murder is wrong because humans are created in the image of God. (Genesis 9:6) In our passage from Ezekiel, the prophet is to warn people from doing things that will lead to their deaths. Even before Jesus comes, we see that God is forgiving. He takes no pleasure in the death of sinners but wants all to turn from their sins, their destructive and self-destructive thoughts, words and actions, and turn to him, the God of life.
In our Gospel reading, Jesus gives us a practical, step by step method of dealing with someone who sins against you. The goal, you will note, is to bring about reconciliation. Paul likewise is telling Christians that we are to love one another. Love, he points out, does no wrong to a neighbor. So what do you think that Jesus and Paul would say to Christians who feel that God's top priority is to punish sinners and who have no problem with actions that are cruel, vengeful and lead to misery and death for others?
Such “Christians” remind me of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church which would send protesters to funerals of gay people, victims of AIDS, military veterans and disaster victims. Their preacher, Fred Phelps, felt that these were punishments from God for tolerating homosexuality. The church's website featured a clock counting off how many people were going to hell every minute. They said that even Ronald Reagan and Mr. Rogers were in hell for not being outspoken against the bankrupt values of the US. Weirdly, they didn't even believe that what they were doing was warning people so they would repent as Ezekiel was doing. They believed that these people were predestined for hell and that it was impossible for them to repent. So why did they spend so much time and effort making their signs and traveling to funerals and other events? To gloat?
I read a book by Lauren Drain, a woman raised in the Westboro Baptist Church and whenever she questioned the church's leaders about verses on forgiveness and love, she was discouraged from exploring such topics. She left that church, as have 4 of Phelps' own children and about 16 of his grandchildren. Ironically, Phelps himself was excommunicated by his own church when he told the people who owned the house across the street and who painted it with an LGBTQ rainbow, “You're good people.” His grandson said that the church considered that “rank blasphemy.”
There are some preachers who prefer the picture of Jesus from the 19th chapter of Revelation over the picture of him we see in the Gospels. In Revelation 19, we are told, he is on a horse and “He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood and his name is the Word of God.” (Revelation 19:13) They think the blood on his robe is the blood of his enemies. But the majority of the times that blood is mentioned in Revelation it's either the blood of the martyrs or the blood of the Lamb of God, that is, Jesus' blood. (Revelation 1:5; 5:9; 6:10; 7:14; 12:11; 16:6; 17:6; 18:24; 19:2) (We can discount the references to the sea or the moon turning to blood as obviously not literal.)
He also has a sword but it is not on his hip; it comes out of his mouth, as it does in the earlier vision of Jesus in Revelation 1:16. This is not an actual sword but a symbol of the Word of God. The Word of God is called the “sword of the Spirit” in Ephesians 6:17. And Hebrews 4:12 says the Word of God is “sharper than a two-edged sword.” (Compare Isaiah 49:2) Indeed earlier in Revelation we are told that when the angels triumph over Satan, “they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony...” (Revelation 12:11) Their testimony to whom? Jesus, of course, the living Word of God. So Jesus is not pictured anywhere in scripture with a literal sword, nor is the blood on his robes that of his enemies.
Yet the default picture in many people's minds seems to be that all gods are vengeful and not very loving when it comes to human beings. Sadly, that's true of many Christians. And because they think that God's top priority is punishing sinners, they think that should be their top priority as well. As someone once said, their approach to evangelism is like saying, “Have you heard the good news?” And when someone answers, “No, what is it?” they respond, “You're going to hell.” That is not good news!
However, that attitude explains why most of our entertainment seems to be about good guys seeking out and punishing bad guys. Today, to keep our heroes from looking as if they are partaking in genocide, they mostly kill robots, monsters and aliens. But even in the movie The Matrix, which is arguably an allegory in which Neo is the Jesus of that world, he kills a lot of people. And we are told that if you die in the computer world of the Matrix, you die in real life. According to the List of Deaths Wiki, in the first film Neo kills 15 people, mostly in the lobby scene. Over the four Matrix films, he kills 86 people. Jesus' body count: 0. Or if you count the people he raised from the dead: -3.
Our bloodlust is probably part of the reason that of the 3 books of Dante's Divine Comedy the most popular is the Inferno. Dante gives us a pretty comprehensive collection of sinners, including some of his political enemies, each suffering some devilishly appropriate eternal punishment in hell. Yet none of those fiendishly clever tortures come from the Bible. They come from the human imagination.
Our Creator has given us incredible intelligence. We can use it to create things that make the world better for others. But a lot of human ingenuity has been expended in creating new ways to harm and kill each other. From rocks to spears to swords to guns to bombs to flame throwers to drones to AI weapons which decide whom to target on their own, we have as yet not exhausted the ways to wage war on each other. And from beating to impaling to crucifying to drawing and quartering to waterboarding to electrified gloves, we keep coming up with more ways to cause pain and suffering. During World War 2, the Axis powers did horrific medical experiments on prisoners. And starting in 1953, our CIA had chemist Sidney Gottlieb, whom they called their “poisoner in chief,” give people powerful drugs, like LSD, without their knowledge or consent, in order to achieve their goals of mind control and more effective interrogations. Some of those unwitting subjects lost their minds and even killed themselves.
It seems to me that in viewing gods as vengeful and cruel, people were only projecting their own terrible traits onto beings more powerful than they. Let's face it, if humans had magical powers, it would be disastrous. In 2025, there were 42,348 gun deaths in the US. Imagine what the number of deaths would be if, as in the Harry Potter world, you could kill with a word. In the real world, Superman would most likely be a murderous tyrant. No wonder the ancients thought the gods must be dangerous for us to encounter.
That's why God had to reveal himself as just but merciful, forgiving and abounding in steadfast love. And when his written word wasn't getting through to enough people, he sent his Son as the living Word of God, the last word on what God is really like.
So why didn't Jesus stay and set up a physical kingdom as the Jews thought the Messiah would do? For the same reason a wise parent has to let their children grow up and learn to live as an adult in the world, using the principles they taught them. You want your children to become good people in their own right. They won't learn to use their own judgment and do the right thing on their own if you are always hovering over them. God wants us to become good people, not because a king of the world is right there, watching you. He wants us to want to do right, even when it seems like no one is looking. He wants us to do what's right because we love him and we love one another. He wants us to be like Jesus. (1 John 3:2)
But he knows that is difficult. So God sent his Spirit to live in us and guide us. And because he knows it is not good for humans to be alone, he gives us the church, the community of those who follow Jesus. As Jesus said, “where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” We are called to be the body of Christ, the ongoing embodiment of the Spirit of Christ in the world, doing the things that Jesus did. Because you know what is more effective than merely telling people about Jesus? Demonstrating his presence in our lives. Jesus healed and fed others. He told us that how we treat the poor, the sick, the imprisoned and the resident foreigner is how we treat him. In his parable of the sheep and goats, those who neglect to help the destitute, the diseased, and the despised are excluded from his kingdom. (Matthew 25:31-46)
Because no kingdom, no nation, can flourish if it is turning on its own people or neglecting them. It's not that God won't let certain people into his paradise; it's that he cannot let in those who harm others because then it wouldn't be paradise. Put Hitler in heaven and it would be hell for him. For one thing there would be too many Jews there. But more importantly nobody in heaven would be worshiping Hitler—or any other despot. Nobody would be treating him as more special than anyone else. Heaven would be hell for any narcissist or any arrogant person. And he would try to make it hell for everyone else.
Nor would God force anyone to live eternally with him. Because God is love and love requires consent. (1 John 4:7-8) As C.S. Lewis pointed out, there are people who say to God, “Your will be done,” and people to whom God will in the end have to say, “Very well; your will be done. You don't want any part of me. So be it.” As Lewis said, everyone will get what they wish for; some will not like it.
A lot of folks think the God of the Bible is no better than the Greek and Roman gods. Even ignoring the Old Testament and going back to Revelation, they fixate on the disasters and the plagues there. They read that a third of the world will be on fire and the waters will become poisonous and they see them as supernatural acts of God. But if you read the news, you can see that we are doing these things to ourselves. They count the 7 bowls of God's wrath mentioned in Revelation. (Revelation 16) They don't count the 11 times in the same book that there is a call to repent. (Revelation 2:5, 16, 21, 22, ; 3:3,19; 9:20, 21; 16:9, 11) Forgiveness is still possible. They focus on the depiction of the end of the world and ignore the creation of the new heaven and the new earth. They focus on the people excluded from the new Jerusalem, people who, if turned loose, would turn it into a hell. (Revelation 21:8) They don't pay attention to the fact that God himself will live with his people. More importantly, they miss the part where “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain.” (Revelation 21:4) That was God's goal for our world all along, to restore it to a place where he could once again pronounce everything good. (Genesis 1:31) Oh, and the hand that will wipe away those tears will still have the marks of the nails, the sign of the love that the true God, our incarnate, crucified and risen Lord, has for us.
