I couldn’t watch.

Although the video eventually revealed that the bruised, frightened elderly Asian woman had pummeled her much younger assailant, I had to look away. It was the second video I’d seen in a week of someone who’d been attacked. The second video of someone who reminded me of my own mother.

In addition to the sadness those attacks brought me, they also conjured up an unprecedented, uncharacteristic, and unbridled anger. The thought of someone hurting my mother, especially in the name of the idiocy of racial hate, stirred up a violent fury in my soul.  And yes, I know…

That doesn’t sound very Christian.

But ironically, the awareness of this juxtaposition of love and violence inside me has also been an answer to prayer. It’s been helping me navigate a question I’ve been struggling with in the Old Testament.

I’ve been wrestling recently with God telling the Israelites to “completely destroy” the people in cities they were overtaking. I’d been asking God to help me reconcile the violence and carnage he demanded. I wondered how a loving God could be so vengeful and act in a way,

That doesn’t sound very Christian.

But realizing the rage I’ve had toward the cowards attacking people like my mother, has helped me begin to reconcile, infinitesimally, the wrath of God. Deep, impassioned, and unconditional love invokes deep, impassioned, and unconditional hostility when our loved ones are wounded. Could we genuinely love someone and feel indifferent watching them get,

Tormented, beaten, or killed?

God’s plan to save mankind was always Jesus. His wrath in the Old Testament was directly correlated to His love for His Son. Although I can’t understand that kind of love or sacrifice, I get that love and wrath are inseparable. And I suppose if they weren’t, that kind of love definitely

Wouldn’t be very Christian.

#thecross #redemption #easter

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