In his book, Finding Jesus in the Storm, practical theologian John Swinton tells the story of a friend who took his own life and some of the reaction of mutual friends after the loss. Swinton, in the book, speaks specifically about the religious response in the community of friends and how it was often marked by fear more than consolation. The man who took his own life was, by all accounts, a Christian. The community of friends was the kind of Christian community that placed emphasis on making a decision about “accepting” Jesus and the man had done so. However, there was still fear. Swinton reasons that the fear was felt because the community ascribed to a kind of hyper-cognitive theology. That is, matters of eternal future had to do with human decision, belief and thinking, more than with the character of God. In Swinton’s words, “I guess that is the problem with hyper-cognitive theologies that assume our eternal futures lie in our own hands rather than in the loving hands of God.”
He goes on to articulate the beautiful assurance of Romans chapter 8, which states that nothing (death, life, spiritual powers, nothing in all creation) will be able to separate us from God’s love in Jesus. Theologies that are centred on our choice rather than on God’s love state the opposite. There is, in such theologies, a lot that can separate us.
An idea of the nature of God from which much of the Christian faith has yet to emerge, is that of a distant and vengeful judge. This concept of God is one of the central marks of a kind of primitive theology. In this idea, God’s holiness, instead of moving towards humanity, keeps God away from humanity. Divine judgement becomes a kind of terror of fear and separation.
Against this way of thinking, Karl Barth states that if we insist upon thinking of God’s justice as a display of wrath, as some kind of attack, we should see that such an “attack” is one of love, not fear.
“The attack is that of the love of the Father and the Son, the attack of his affirmation of the world, his generous self-giving.” (Church Dogmatics, 240 IV.3.1)
This way of seeing, this way of understanding judgment makes sense when you consider the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, much of what has passed as Christian theology has depicted God’s righteousness as something that keeps humanity away from God rather than as something that moves God towards humanity.
God’s holiness is that God has chosen not to be God without humanity.