God in the Mud:
A Woman’s View of the Dark Side of God
 
by Beatrice Neall

Toward the end of the dry season in Cambodia, when the ponds are almost empty, little boys jump in the mud to catch the fish trapped there. As they pursue their wriggling prey, their naked bodies get plastered with slimy, gray ooze. You wouldn’t want to hug them just then!

The mess those boys get into is nothing compared to the mess God encounters when He deals with sin. Many times as we study the Bible we don’t like the picture of God we see. He seems harsh, vindictive, severe. What we don’t realize is that God, in dealing with sinners, not only got His hands dirty, He sank into mud up to His armpits. To rescue us from the mire of sin He had to plunge into the mess Himself, act in ways He didn’t like, and muddy His reputation. Sin is dirty. There is no clean way to deal with it. Consider US/UN actions in the Middle East, eastern Europe, and Africa. Limited action with a minimum of casualties, to be achieved by “clean surgical strikes” from the air, would be a neat strategy -- no ground forces, no prospects of body bags. But these options are not possible. War is always dirty, and in many eyes America looks dirty.

When the war between good and evil struck this world, God did not fight it from the air. He entered it on the ground. He slogged through the mud. He not only risked, but actually lost, His life.

God is in a war, and He looks bad. Elie Wiesel, devout Jewish survivor of the holocaust, bemoaned the fact that Hitler robbed him not only of family and possessions, but also of his faith in God. “After witnessing the suffering of my people,” he declared, “I can’t believe in God as I once did.” Today, as a result of the holocaust, many Jews are secularists.

A common tactic of the devil is to cause evil and then blame God for it. God didn’t do it, of course, but He witnessed it and did not prevent it. Doesn’t that make Him a co-conspirator?

Whatever God does or doesn’t do, He looks bad. If He tries to curb wickedness by wiping out whole populations -- the antediluvian world, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Canaanite nations -- He is perceived as cruel. Because He did not wipe out the Nazi war criminals He is blamed for the death of six million Jews. Either way God gets blamed. He’s in the mud. He looks ugly.

Messy Options

The problem in dealing with sin is that usually all the options are messy. A thirteen-year-old girl gets pregnant. What should she do? Marry the guy? Both parents are immature; shotgun marriages rarely succeed. Have an abortion -- a “clean, surgical solution”? Abortion, taking life that ultimately comes from God, leaves scars -- guilt, or loss of respect for life with the prospect of easy promiscuity in the future. Carry the child to term and keep it? The child-mother is ill-equipped to parent a demanding infant, her opportunities for education are curtailed, her own development is stunted. Adopt the child out to someone else? A fetus carried under stress or subject to drug abuse may carry deep emotional scars. The child may become a magpie in a bluebird’s nest, siphoning off energy the adoptive parents need for rearing their own offspring. Prevention is the only clean way to deal with teen pregnancy.

In dealing with sin, God too has had to choose from bad options. He always tries prevention, but we humans don’t listen to His warnings.

Initially He tried to prevent evil by issuing a stern prohibition: “Don’t eat the fruit or you will die!” But it didn’t work with Adam and Eve. At Sinai He evoked sheer terror through blinding light, mushroom cloud, thunder, earthquake, and trumpet blast. The mountain shook. The people shook. But the fright wasn’t great enough to prevent a wild orgy several weeks later.

In the covenant blessings and cursings God appealed to the lowest level of human motivation, reward and punishment. (His people at that time were at a low stage of moral development.) But over the centuries neither promises of prosperity nor threats of disaster had a lasting effect to deter evil.

He enacted harsh laws with severe consequences for violation. The penalty for adultery was stoning. Knowing the pain adultery causes families, He hoped the threat of death would deter unfaithfulness. But threats don’t work unless they are carried out. So He carried them out occasionally to show that He was serious. Fire devoured Nadab and Abihu. The earth swallowed Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. Ananias and Sapphira were struck dead. God does not kill people every time they sin. His pattern seems to be to make an occasional example as a precedent for what future judgment will be like. It seems that He doesn’t enjoy carrying out His threats.

Dictatorial control is another method. There are nations that are virtually drug-free and crime-free, but at the cost of individual liberty. Those who own or sell drugs are hanged by the neck until they die. Women who commit adultery are stoned. Thieves have their hands cut off. We Americans prefer democracy over dictatorship. We tolerate a high level of crime because we value individual freedom. God is not comfortable with dictatorial control. He seems to prefer allowing a wide range of freedom: you make your choice but then you have to live with the consequences.

God at times used extermination -- “ethnic cleansing” -- an extreme method. Israel was commanded to wipe out the inhabitants of Canaan, not leaving alive “anything that breathes” (Deut. 20:16), putting to death “men and women, children and infants” (1 Sam. 15:3). Why? Israel was confronted with vile heathen cultures. These nations practiced idolatry, witchcraft, cult prostitution, degrading sex orgies, and even child sacrifice. The Lord feared Israel would absorb these evil practices -- and they did. (However, there are demonized cultures in the world today that do the very same things. We don’t slaughter them -- we send missionaries to them. We wonder why God didn’t think of that approach.)

The problem with harshness is that it is hard on relationships. So God tries gentleness. He appeals to reason: “Come now, let us reason together” (Isa. 1:18). “Why will you die?” (Eze. 18:31). It is for your own good to obey! Sin is dangerous -- it harms you! God spoke this way through the prophets. But sinners rarely listen to reason.

God has tried patience. We might call it procrastination. He waits and hopes for change. He waited 400 years before destroying the Amorites (Gen. 15:13, 16). He waited hundreds of years before sending Israel and Judah into exile. He has waited thousands of years before executing final judgment on this world. But sinners take advantage of His patience.

God has always opened His arms in love, acceptance, and forgiveness -- His amazing grace. But even grace can backfire. Grace encourages sin. Our human response instinctively is, “I’ll sin and God will forgive me.” There are current examples of the dilemmas created by grace. Schools provide nurseries for babies of unwed mothers. Does this encourage teen pregnancy? Institutions distribute condoms to retard HIV infection. Does this encourage promiscuity? Grace appears to facilitate sin.

As a teacher I tried kindness and love. I didn’t like scolding, threats, and discipline. I didn’t want to expel anyone from my classes. I always hoped if I were patient the student would benefit from my teaching. Once I had an unruly class. I tried my best to make the class exciting. I studied hard to get new insights. I tried to involve the students. I wrote notes to the trouble-makers. I interviewed them privately and asked for their cooperation. But the disturbances continued. Once when I turned my back a large group threw paper airplanes and spitballs, then laughed uproariously. I wished I could think of a witty remark that would get them all laughing -- on my side. But I drew a blank. That evening I came home exhausted, head aching, and threw myself on the sofa. Wave after wave of nausea swept over me. I went to the bathroom and retched out the contents of my wretched stomach. I had tried to be kind, and it didn’t work. I can still feel the pain and rejection of that hour. Sometimes God vomits too (Rev. 3:16).

God in Pain

A careful look into the heart of God reveals the pain sin causes Him. His nature is love (1 John 4:8). He is “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness” (Ex. 34:6-7). Sin has forced Him to behave in ways not congenial to His nature.

I think I can understand what this means. I find it easy to be saintly, with occasional slippage of the halo, while living with my affectionate, easy-going husband. But join me to an alcoholic, who wastes the family finances on gambling, who sleeps with other women -- and my personality would change. Introduce a rebellious teen-ager who screams, makes irresponsible demands, and follows a destructive lifestyle, and a different side of my nature would emerge. Put me in an office where my colleagues are suspicious of me, my wages are unfairly low, and my supervisor is trying to fire me, and my negative side would emerge. I would have to say, “I don’t like the way I feel.” I think God says that too.

When sin entered our world God reluctantly activated the dark side of His nature. In a rare outburst of frustration He shared His feelings with Moses. “I have seen these people...and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them” (Ex. 32:9-10). But He was very uncomfortable with His wrath. “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked,” He mourns (Eze. 18:31-32). Scolding and punishing are to Him a “strange work,” an “alien task” (Isa. 28:21). His acts of destruction come from a heart in pain. “The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain” (Gen. 6:5-6).

When Elijah fled from Jezebel’s wrath, God let him in on an intimate secret about Himself. After giving him an awesome display of wind, earthquake, and fire, He said in effect: “Elijah, you’d like Me to put on a spectacular production to prove to the world that I am God. That’s what I just did on Mount Carmel, remember? And it wasn’t all that successful, was it? My heart isn’t in all that. You will find the real Me in the still, small voice” (1 Kings 19:11-13).

In the prophets we see God on an emotional roller coaster. Outburts of anger alternate with outpourings of regret and love. As Israel’s wronged husband He cries, “For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back. In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you” (Isa. 54:8). “‘Return, faithless Israel,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will frown on you no longer, for I am merciful....I will not be angry forever. Only acknowledge your guilt -- you have rebelled against the Lord your God.... Return, faithless people,’ declares the Lord, ‘for I am your husband’” (Jeremiah 3:12-14). He admits to surges of anger and even abandonment. But He is eager to “make up” and put the past behind Him.

A Close-up Look at God

What has God done to help us understand Him better, to see through His anger to the heart of love beneath? Is there anything He has done to wash the mud off His reputation?

He sent Jesus into this world. In Jesus we see the heart of God opened wide. In Jesus we see how God values all human life -- men and women and little children. He was so fiercely defensive of children that He declared anyone harming them deserved to have a millstone tied around his neck and be thrown into the sea (Matt. 18:6). How much, then, God suffered when men, women, and little children had to be wiped out in Old Testament times! In Jesus we see how God pities adulterers -- He doesn’t want them stoned, but redeemed (John 8:1-11). In Jesus we see that God does not want to wipe out heathen nations -- He commissions His followers to evangelize them (Matt. 28:18-20). No doubt He would have evangelized the Canaanites in Israel’s day if He had had missionaries to send. But there were no missionaries. Israel’s faith was so fragile that the Canaanites evangelized and converted them instead!

The Greatest Atrocity in History

In the Old Testament there is an act so shocking that it stopped a war. Mesha, king of Moab, was losing a battle against Israel. The god Chemosh, whom the Moabites worshiped, required his followers to sacrifice their children to appease his wrath. In full view of the opposing army, Mesha “took his firstborn son, who was to succeed him as king, and offered him as a sacrifice on the city wall. The fury against Israel was great; they withdrew and returned to their own land” (2 Kings 3:27). The Israelites were so horrified by this act that they withdrew. King Mesha saved his people by offering his son to mollify the anger of his god Chemosh and to horrify his enemies.

History records an even more shocking act. It is a crime to let a criminal go free. It is a greater crime to condemn, torture, and execute an innocent person. The greatest atrocity ever committed in the history of this world was the execution of the most innocent Man who ever lived. God condemned and punished the Innocent One so the guilty could go free. Yet by this double injustice God saves our race.

The cross is an amazing revelation about how God relates to His creatures, both good and evil.

The cross shows that sin is deadly -- so deadly that it takes extreme measures to remedy it.

The cross shows that God has not left us alone to suffer the results of sin. God, in the Person of Jesus, came down to suffer with us. He experienced all the misery of humanity. Even today He feels every stab of pain that pierces our hearts. Only someone as great as God could endure the daily freight of misery ascending from this world. No human being has had to suffer more than one lifetime. God has had to endure countless generations of suffering. The cross reveals to our dull senses the pain that sin has brought to the heart of God. At the climax of the struggle between good and evil, sin drove a wedge between Father and Son prompting the cry of agony, “My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?” Sin tore at the heart of both Father and Son.

The cross shows the vileness of human nature. Human beings did not recognize their own Creator. They tortured and killed the One who came to save them. But more than that, it reveals the heart of God as Jesus whispers the words, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

At the cross the heart of God was torn open by a Roman soldier. Bathing the very spear that pierced it, a torrent of blood and water gushed forth -- blood to wash away guilt, water to impart new life from above. From the cross flows a river of love to a skeptical world.

And that river washes the mud off our understanding of God.

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