Unequal Stories

The OT writers often had failed perceptions of God. For this reason, the revelation of God in Christ was symbolically represented by a tear in the fabric of the temple curtain at the death of Jesus. The portrayal of God as angry in the OT is one of the failed theological perceptions of the OT writers.

Although God’s absence is reflected upon as a form of wrath in the OT, it is, in reality, the product of human freedom to reject the ways of God. It is for this reason that Hosea would use the metaphor of God being ‘like a lion’ to Israel when God departs (blessing lost) and Assyria takes Israel into captivity.

It is also true that natural events erupting in death can be caused by the presence of God as the creation itself rejects that which resists God; e.g. the earth opening to swallow up the defiant in the Korah rebellion. I term this phenomenon of God’s presence as creating an ‘ecological hot zone’.

The scripture continually teaches us that our ethical and moral behavior is connected to the earth, to the physical creation. Even the blood of the innocent cries out from the ground.

- Phillip Michael Garner -