Many people genuinely doubt God's love
for all mankind and cite examples from the Old Testament to
demonstrate how savage God appears to have been in the past, and
therefore is likely to be in the future.
Of all the examples used, the
destruction of the whole world's population, less eight people,
during the flood at the time of Noah is the most common. How can God
be a God of love and yet destroy everyone? How can God, who is
love, wipe the earth clean of almost all human beings in one fell
swoop?
These are reasonable questions which
many people, including Christians, find difficult to answer in a
satisfactory way.
If we look at God's dealings with
mankind through the lens of love, rather than through the lens of
anger and punishment and vengeance, we will see a different picture
than many suppose.
You might hear a conversation between a
person in authority and an alleged offender, or between a parent and
a child, include words like, “I don't want you to say another word,
you are in deep enough already.”
In movies or television dramas we might
hear a lawyer or attorney advising clients in a similar way so as not
to risk providing more evidence against themselves or painting
themselves in a worse light.
Wise parents often advise their
children to stay away from situations that would appeal to their
weaknesses or make them susceptible to going astray.
People who are alcoholics are advised
to not even have one alcoholic drink; people who are compulsive
gamblers are advised to stay away from places where gambling happens;
children who are more followers than leaders are advised to stay away
from those who would have a detrimental influence on their lives.
It is wisdom and compassion that leads
people to give this sort of advice to those they love.
Given that those of us who leave this
planet at the end of our lives unreconciled to God will need to be
judged and spend time in a correction facility at the
end of the ages, it was kind and merciful of God to prematurely
remove from the planet those of Noah's generation who had made the
world corrupt and full of violence before they could do even worse
and be in need of an even more extreme and painful makeover.
And where did they go? And what
happened to them there? That's a wonderful story we will discuss in
chapter 5. (If you've already caught a glimpse of the theme of this
book, or you have peeked ahead, you will know that the result was a
very good one - much better than they, or any of us, deserves.)
But for the moment those God destroyed
were removed from the planet to prevent them making things worse for
themselves or leaving them where they could not resist the temptation
to continue in their sinful ways.
This “clearing of the earth” was
not the doings of a savage, vengeful God; it was the action of a
loving and merciful God towards those he loves, not unlike that of a
loving parent caring for his or her wayward children.
Barry
