Compassion and Anger

As I read the news and reflect on the nature of man and on the current state of the world I alternate between two perspectives and prayers. As I look at the wickedness of the world and the way that God’s laws are smugly flaunted I am moved to cry out for justice and wrath. I want God to strike the jaw of the wicked and smash their teeth. I want Him to smite them in His anger and wrath. I want Him to unveil His vengeance and to wreak havoc on His enemies. I want His power and justice to be revealed and for all to fall on their knees before Him.

Then I remember that such was I before He mercifully and gracefully drew me to Himself. I too not only did evil but approved of others who did likewise. I recruited people to participate in my perversions and debaucheries because misery loves company and because if “everyone is doing it” it can’t be wrong; or at least I didn’t feel as wrong. I recognize in the depraved celebrities of our age my own wickedness magnified and on display for all to see. I see the twisted delight that we take in the fall of the famous and I recognize my own sarcasm and mockery. The sins of my generation are my own.

When I recognize this, I am moved to cry out for mercy! I want healing for the wounded hearts I see. I know the hurt that drives them to seek numbness and release for I too was wounded and am finding healing. I cry out for God to pour out His mercy and grace! I know that none can be saved apart from His drawing. I know that it is by faith that I was saved, but that this faith did not come from my background, my family, or myself; it was a gift of God and not a result of works so that none, least so I, could boast. So, I cry out for God to continue to have mercy and patience and to draw them with His persistent and severe mercy to Himself. I ask for Him to save those who have given up hope and who have become not only participants but the very purveyors of the filth that pollutes our world.

I feel myself torn between compassion and righteous anger. I cannot reconcile these tensions in myself. Sometimes I feel guilty for the anger. I feel that compassion is the way of God, but then I remember Jesus scourging those in the temple and His angry rebukes of the Pharisees and I see that righteous anger is indeed righteous. Certainly the Psalms are full of prayers for God to smite His enemies and I know that this is part of the nature of God. But then, lest I become an angry and judgmental man, I am reminded again of the woundedness that propels men toward wickedness. Men are responsible for their sinful choices regardless of their woundedness, but remembering the woundedness that drives them and relating that to my own woundedness allows me to view them with compassion. I can see the as harassed and helpless, as sheep without a shepherd, I can see them as I once was before the Good Shepherd rescued me.

Only God knows those who will be redeemed and those who will not. I cannot know who will be an object of God’s mercy and grace and who will be an object of His justice and wrath. Both will glorify God by revealing a portion of His nature and confirming that He is both the lion and the lamb, the one who judges and the one who justifies. I cannot resolve the tension, but I can praise God that He has saved me. I can choose to walk with Him each day. Some days, most days, He chooses to use me to communicate His love and compassion to those who are dying all around me without hope, but some days He uses me to warn of His anger and wrath, He will not always be slow to anger. One day He will judge the world. May God have mercy on us all!