If there is a God, I want a good one. I'm not interested in being a sinner in the hands of an angry God. I am a sinner; even when my thinking swings toward the atheistic, I am a sinner. I would love to believe that the power of God also lies in His/Her/Its/Their infinite forgiveness.
I'm about to make a point which might seem obvious to many, but bear with me.
Consider a family whose child has been brutally murdered by an unrepentant man who freely admits his guilt but claims he has done nothing wrong, or that he doesn't care if he did something wrong. I promise, I'm not trying to draw parallels to any recent events; this just happened to be the set-up to the parable that I wanted to use. The family can do one of three things: they can ignore this man completely, treating him as a random act that caused a tragedy; they can hate this man for killing their child; or they can forgive this man whether he asks for it or not.
On the face of it, the choice seems obvious, and it's one which I would have a hard time resisting, were I in that situation: they hate this brazen murderer and want him to suffer. It's natural; who wouldn't hate someone like that. Many people would hate this man even though he didn't touch their lives at all. He certainly seems worthy of hatred.
But hate gives power to that which one hates. By hating someone, they live inside you, causing you pain, because hatred isn't an enjoyable thing, at the core. It can become very pleasant, but it feeds on you, it stunts you, makes it harder for you to love anything, and love is far more wonderful than that visceral thrill of hatred can ever be. So some would make the choice to ignore t this man. You can't give him power over you if you treat him as a non-entity. Ignore him and it's like he goes away. You can grieve and move on.
The trouble with this is that you're still giving power to those you ignore. You have to consciously act to keep from paying attention. Better thinkers than I have pointed out that willful denial and ignorance actually take quite a bit of work, particularly when other things also must be denied or ignored in order to maintain that fiction.
That third option seems like a bad idea, though. Aren't you releasing him from guilt by forgiving him? He doesn't want your forgiveness. Isn't forgiving him the same as agreeing with him? And how can you forgive someone who has taken so much from you, caused you so much pain? I'm no saint, and I'm pretty sure I would let that hatred fester in my heart and it might eat me alive. And even as I knew that, I don't know if I could forgive a person who took someone I love from me.
Those of the hardcore camp tend to say, "No forgiveness," like it means, "Responsibility." But if my hypothetical family forgives the murderer, justice can still be served. Forgiveness isn't the same as release from punishment. Forgiveness is more for the forgiver than the forgivee. In modern society, we seem to have forgotten that; we assume that seeking forgiveness is the same thing as seeking a release from culpability. It isn't. Only by acknowledging your responsibility can you truly seek forgiveness, and forgiveness doesn't release you from an obligation to make good your transgression. Being a forgiving person doesn't have to mean that you let people do bad things to you and get away with it.
It takes a certain power to forgive. And by making that choice, the family would have power over the man who murdered their child. They would be saying, "You can't make us hurt, make us stick our heads in the ground. You can't own us by your action. And we make this decision whether or not you accept it, and there's nothing you can do about it." That's power.
Since I'm not Jesus and I didn't really tell a parable but rather gave some thoughts on a situation, let's draw some parallels. 1) For "unrepentant murderer" substitute "God." Suppose that instead of a murder, we're talking about a tornado. I don't want to argue anything other than that people also have three options when encountering a supposed "act of God" which hurts them: they can hate God and ask why God caused it; they can believe God works in mysterious ways or convince themselves that God had no hand in it; or they can forgive God. That's a novel thought, although it does presuppose some things that I'll get into next.
2)For "unrepentant murderer" substitute "humanity." If you're a Christian, you believe that Jesus was God's child (and possibly also God, but that's a whole other kettle of fish. Hell, you may believe that we're all God's children (I think that's a wonderful belief). So we've killed at least one of God's children, and a great many of us are pretty unrepentant about it. We're indirectly responsible for the horrible deaths of may of God's children, really. And God can either hate us (which would be hard to do if God is love, as many have said, correctly I feel), ignore us (the watchmaker God), or forgive us. I'd rather God was the third option, frankly.
But that was all a wild excursion: the central point I was trying to make is that I'm a sinner. And I'm a child. I want a God who's all-powerful in the "magical rain control" way, not in the "being able to be there with us in the storm," kind of way. The whole "that was when I was carrying you" thing comes to mind; notice that Jesus doesn't say, "The times you only saw one set of footprints were because I had gone off to magically make everything better because I love you." I want Magic Jesus, not carrying Jesus, because I'm selfish and childish and I just want my parents to take care of everything.
That's not a good way for God to work, though. If magic Jesus fixes everything, what's the point? We'd have no free will; God would simply decide what was best for us and do it, and we'd have to deal with it. Or God would be unfair and favor some kids over others, because sometimes there are mutually-incompatible "storms" to fix. Many people believe one or both of those things, although they may not see it that way; either they think "it's all part of God's plan" or they pray and expect Magic Jesus to do what they say because they're special.
I'm reluctant to get my theology from such a campy source, but perhaps God's omnipotence lies in the infinite capacity to carry us. Carry doesn't presuppose that there's any amelioration of whatever made it impossible for us to walk any further; it just says that God is our support when we need a support. Faith is the rock to which we cling when the waves threaten to wash us away. That doesn't say that the rock makes the waves stop.
But as I said, my response is a childish, "If God is so powerful and so good, how can God cause bad things to happen to good people, or if God doesn't cause those things, how can God stand by and allow those things to happen, and in either case, either God isn't all-powerful or God isn't all-good." I want Magic Jesus. And I'm almost positive that that's not how it works. Sometimes things happen and all we can do is weather them. And sometimes things happen because we made mistakes, not because an angry God is punishing us for our sins or because God isn't there. Sometimes it was in our power to save ourselves all along, but we spent all our time ignoring the problem or hoping Magic Jesus would come along and save us.
Again, please read the article to which I linked in the previous post. It is a concept of power which is almost completely foreign to the human way of thinking, which is why it makes sense that it would be true, since God's ways are not our ways. But it also makes sense because despite the childish impulse, a God who was powerful in the way we understand power would be a pretty lousy God to have.
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