Is God kind or judgmental?

By John Pearring

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/101321.cfm
Romans 2:1-11
Luke 11:42-46

Judgment is the defining theme for today’s October 13 first reading from Romans. Paul, unfortunately, centers on the definition of how our life’s “works” influence how we will be judged. Consequently, letting go of judgment, something he painfully attempts to urge us to do, gets pre-empted by our worry over sinfulness. God is kind. We don’t listen when told about the kindness of God. We fret over God’s anger instead.

Works is a tired and worn out subject in theological circles. It has also exhausted every congregation of believers. The most exhausted are those who have abandoned faith altogether. Whether we’re sinful or good seems to be a moat circling access to heaven. We just can’t get past it. Works are those things we’ve done in our lives with either bad or good intentions. The bad stuff drowns us.

Judgment according to our works isn’t what most of us think it is. No matter how careful the theologians and people of God explain to us the mercy of God, and our necessary repentance, the gathering storm of God’s wrath rumbles on our horizon. Without God we’re woeful sinners. With God we’re much the same, but we’re repeatedly forgiven and restored. We might “know” that God has the energy to deal with our long litany of bad behavior, but we see the mistakes, lies, and cover-ups all too clearly. We don’t really “believe” God is always forgiving us. Judging, surely, but let's put that off as long as we can. Maybe we can make it all up to him by being good. Then, dang it, we mess up again.

God is considered by many believers, and by most non-believers, as a necessary construct of retribution. He jots our failures down, then acts as executioner. Worse, his holy rules cannot be adhered to with precision. The rules are good, but we just can’t follow them!

Our sins stand out as a collected set of indefensible awfulness. They pile up in a mound visible to anyone who looks closely. Some of us (not me, thankfully) have photographic, deeply impressed memories of everything bad we have done. I pity those who can never forget. While each day we add to the list of crap thrown onto our mountainous history of sin, we get practiced at rationalizing or dismissing them. Memory freaks, though, live with a daily journal of their lives down to the tiniest of details.

I have trouble remembering where I put my reading glasses. Only a purposeful review of my sins, like the Lenten liturgies, reminds me of my disgusting past. A daily Ignatian examination, called the Examen, does the same thing, which may explain my reticence to remember that activity. 

A third group has given up on the problem altogether and identified all of life as random and faultless. They do this by tossing out free will. If we have no free will, then we’re not to blame. If we purposely do something wrong, we’re likely just programmed to do that. Their logical solution is constant reprogramming. In all cases, it’s not your fault. It’s just programming.

Whether photographic-inclined or tragically forgetful, we naturally come at our problem of sin with trepidation and fear. Even those who consider themselves blameless believe so in order to mask their fear. 

This fearful calculation of God is a real. It is, though, the reason to turn to him, not the reason to hide. There’s something about God that we’re forgetting. He’s not an executioner. He’s our redeemer. Yes, God judges us. He also loves us. It may feel contradictory, but it's not. 

Paul explains that waiting for our judgment on the last day is a losing proposition. We forget there is a God here right now. We’re mired only upon ourselves, holding off going to God in order to fix ourselves first. It won’t work. If we do the measurements of how good we are, rather than let God mold us into good, then we force God into an executioner. We see him waiting for us with a giant Thor-like hammer to wield upon our heads.

We have good reason for thinking this. “By your stubbornness and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself … the just judgment of God, who will repay everyone according to his works.”

We’re not going to win with a God limited to that verse. We’ll get a swoosh of the hammer, and then, “Squish.”

You don’t think so? I’m exaggerating? Well, yes, I am exaggerating. Only a little, though.

Every one of us has gone through a period where we’ve tried to weight our two piles. The good stuff and the bad stuff. We can’t rely on our ability to correctly identify the items in each stack. The best we can hope for, in our approach, is that those really big good things outweigh the innumerable tiny bad ones.

Our measurements cannot be assured. We live our lives with regret, anger, and regurgitation of worries that regularly haunt us. The words from scriptures just won’t go away for those of us who believe God runs a rueful court. “… wrath and fury to those who selfishly disobey the truth and obey wickedness.” Again, we're stuck on God's judgment as a one-time, court-held event.

Theologians offer in-depth arguments about mercy and judgment. They’ve covered this subject with intimate detail, weighing every part of life to scale of sin and lawlessness. Quite often, their discussion is one of loopholes. We do this too. The loopholes are terrific salves to our worried selves. We conclude that sin is due to the devil’s temptations; brainwashing by cultural and media controls; reverberations from the traumas of war; and a host of unabated sexual deviations which destroy both love and lives. Sin is due to folks doing all that stuff, not us! We’re collateral damage.

Fault, blame, and judgment. Yuck. Egregious sin triggers our own sinfulness. Yet, as we blame others, we end up blaming ourselves too. We’re inflicting others as much as they do us, for goodness sake. Paul hammers at our personal involvement in sin by calling the passing of judgment on others a wickedness. “Do you suppose, then, you who judge those who engage in such things and yet do them yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God?”

I know the choice between doing what I am supposed to do and doing something that satisfies me. The better path isn’t really any more difficult than the selfish one, though. God urges us to do something better while stuck in the whirlwind of uncontrollable opportunities to sin. Turn to him. Will we be judged? Most certainly. Daily judgment, however, is a whole lot different than a life of sin without God.

Repent, and grab onto God with both arms. Paul explains the beauty of turning to God by asking why we disregard God’s offerings. “… do you hold his priceless kindness, forbearance, and patience in low esteem, unaware that the kindness of God would lead you to repentance?”

It’s a typical Pauline vehicle — reveal God through our dismissal of God. God brings us kindness, forbearance, and patience. Nothing we do stops this giving from God. Paul calls these things priceless. That’s high praise. We can’t afford to buy such things, and God gives them to us freely.

Kindness quells chaos. God’s kindness cuts through all of evil’s dastardly divisions between us. Forbearance means restraint. God tolerates the most heinous of acts — from rude and arrogant temperament to wild-eyed violence. God allows us to exhaust ourselves when we lose our tempers, like a loving parent who corrals a child, or a trainer who slowly tempers a horse. And finally, God has patience. He waits for us to come back to him. He waits, and waits, and waits.

The kindness of God leads us to repentance. Do you see it? God does not bring a hammer. He brings us kindness and correction. He isn’t waiting for our judgment day to attend to us. He’s here, right now, at every second of our lives. He obliterates our piles of bad stuff on a daily basis.

Rather than fret, hide, and regret, Paul tells us that we should repent, and then immediately begin to seek eternal life. Eternal life is a trinity of glory, honor, and immortality. All we have to do is concentrate our behavior upon that, often. 

It’s not judgment that God willingly brings, but kindness. A daily reckoning with God burns away our sins. He leads us to being good people, fruitful sons and daughters, even as we sin. That’s a whole lot better way of living our lives than worrying that God will deal with us after he's finally tracked us down.