Sanitizing God

It is really a form of political correctness in the church. There is a general consensus floating around that God must be protected from bad press and must be kept a great distance from the disasters and evils of the world. This view so emphasizes the love of God (although this love is often only a glamorized human emotion type of love) that He certainly has nothing to do with all of the pain and misery all around us.


So, we sanitize God. This posture requires us to pick and choose those parts of the Bible we take seriously and those parts of the Bible we flee from like the plague. I saw this in action recently in a study I was leading with a group of young men as we were seeking to expose ourselves to the vitally important doctrine of the absolute sovereignty of God. God is fully and perfectly love and fully and perfectly wrath. He is fully and perfectly mercy and fully and perfectly justice. He brings glory to Himself through every act of righteousness and every act of evil. He brings glory to Himself through every soul entering heaven and every soul entering hell.


Some of the verses read nearly took away the breath of some around the table. Here are some of the verses too many of us think are among the plague-ridden:

• The Lord said to him (Moses), "Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord?" Exodus 4:11
• Surely Your wrath against men brings You praise and the survivors of Your wrath are restrained. Psalm 76:10
• "I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord do all these things." Isaiah 45:7
• The Lord works our everything for His own ends - even the wicked for the day of disaster. Proverbs 16:4
• When a trumpet sounds in a city, do not the people tremble? When disaster comes to a city, has not the Lord caused it? Amos 3:6
• What if God, choosing to show His wrath and make His power known, bore with great patience the objects of His wrath - prepared for destruction? What if He did this to make the riches of His glory known to the objects of His mercy - whom He prepared in adv acne for glory... Romans 9:22,23

God does not need to be sanitized. He does not need to be made politically correct. God does not need us attempting to make Him acceptable to our sensibilities.

God is to be revered, worshipped, honored and glorified. One of the main ways that we engage in each of these responses to Him is to take Him at His Word. God says what He means and means what He says.

Christianity is not to make God more like us. It is to conform us more and more to the image of His Son, and our Savior, Jesus Christ.