Ministering to the grieving and those in crisis has lead me to reflect a lot these days on my theology of God’s judgment. Some would say that those I minister to are in the hospital or assisted living facility because of some sin in their life or because of the fallen state on this world. Others would say they are casualties in an unseen spiritual war that has been raging on since before time began. I, myself, have never been able to reconcile the whole idea of a wrathful God. My heart kept on asking how a compassionate God could lovingly create children that were predestined to destruction. Sure, I had no problem being one of God’s elect, but, to put it as one of my favorite others does, I could never fully stomach the idea of being part of “a party going on in God’s living room while torture is going on down in His dungeon” (Brian D. MacLaren, The Last Word and the Word After That). I am still working all this out in my heart and mind and reflecting with God about it all. The easy pat answers aren’t really satisfying to me anymore. Even as I offer them to those I minister to, sometimes I find myself wondering, “Do I really buy what I’m saying? Do they?”
As I reflect back on this, I keep on coming back to the whole idea of becoming. If there is a heaven and a hell, and I do believe there is, then it seems to me as if we spend the whole of our lives preparing for one or the other. As Andy says in Shawshank Redemption,“ Get busy living or get busy dying.” Or to put it more biblically “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed” (2Corinthians 4:7-9. We do not become who we are over night. Every choice we make, every step we take, shapes us into who we are and who we will be. And I believe God is with us the whole way through. Shaping and molding us into the people He desires us to be. The question is will we respond to His leading or continue to listen to the voices around us. Will be become like Jesus or will we become like the world?
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