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“There is Judgement”

Well I think I found the proper term for the articles that are in the bulletins at St. Matthews each week. “Weekly Meditation.” I feel much better now. Here’s one from a few weeks ago. In my opinion Roger handles a very sensitive subject with warmth, grace and biblical accuracy.

THERE IS JUDGEMENT
Divine Anger and Human Anguish

On a visit to Australia in the 1960’s the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, was asked during a press conference to reconcile the fact of a merciful God with the occurrence of natural disasters. The archbishop proceeded to give a slow and thoughtful reply to a difficult question posed by a member of perhaps the most hard-bitten and least easily impressed press corps in the world. At the end of his quiet and reasoned statement the archbishop paused, and then added in his familiar stutter, “Th-th-th-there is judgement“. It was a brave and true response.

We live in a fallen world that is governed by a sovereign God. There is before us constant testimony to the fact that human life is far from ideal and that our environment is not absolutely safe, predictable, or beneficent. Signs of imperfection and evil are only too apparent in human behaviour, in the accusations of the conscience, in the experience of suffering, and in the occurrence of natural catastrophes. Those who wish to view human existence romantically or from the perspective of sentimentality have an impossible task and can only retreat into denial and the fostering of an illusion. For all the blessings lavished upon us by a gracious God there is a measure of bitterness to be endured by all members of the human race, and in many cases the misery is extreme, a considerable proportion of which inflicted by humans themselves either upon self or others through blindness, foolishness, or lack of love. As R.K. Harrison observes, “Jeremiah makes clear a lesson of abiding spiritual importance, namely that the bulk of all we suffer in life is due to ignorance, stupidity, or both“.