Last night, a group of about ten of us wrestled with this concept of grace. If you’re going to wrestle with something, this one is a good match.

We began by considering the statement of a well-known Christian author that grace is the single feature that distinguishes our belief system from every other belief system in human history. I have written of this before. It’s not like the word is all that uncommon. But, it’s the primacy of grace in the whole belief system that sets Christianity apart.

Curiously, while it’s easy to argue that the concept of grace is at the very center of Christianity, it remains a difficult concept to grasp and even more difficult to live by, which should be obvious by how ungracious many Christians can be. Hence the wrestling.

As we’ve discussed, if mercy is choosing not to impose a consequence that is deserved, grace is the free deliverance of a gift that is undeserved. Of course, they are related but there is a difference.

Jesus-followers who have been at this as kind of a full time job for quite awhile nevertheless struggle with how to incorporate this central feature of their/our version of reality into daily practice. While we seek to emulate Jesus in at least some ways, we recognize that we are sadly deficient nearly all of the time. We remain broken vessels, burdened by layers and layers of stuff that would seem to bury us. (This is why so many people who look in the mirror and realize they can be cruel in either thought or deed or carry shame from past events decide they do not merit God’s favor. Many churches do a terrible job of helping in this department. The Gospel … Good News … is that we con’t have to merit God’s favor. It’s already a given.) So, this committed Jesus-following stuff is punctuated by the constant battle between how we are called to be and what we actually end up thinking and doing.

Part of the problem is our inability to be truly receptive to God’s grace. “You mean, even when I know I’ve thought/behaved inappropriately, he still holds my face in his gentle hands and says to me, ‘You are my beloved in whom I am most pleased’?”  If that’s not hard enough an image to conjure up on a regular basis, how about reenacting that posture with others around us? “Love God and your neighbor with everything you have.”

This was part of our wrestling match last night. We’ve given considerable attention over the years to the nature of God’s grace but we still have trouble hashing through how we are supposed to live out this defining characteristic in our own lives.

One of the points we contested was the place of anger in a reality defined by grace. Everyone in that room has immensely kind hearts. They love deeply, have giant reservoirs of compassion, seek to care for those in need, bear their burdens without complaint and recognize, with humility, that they/we need a lot of help. That being said, we sort of rolled up our sleeves and, for a few minutes, wondered if anger was appropriate in light of grace. Lovingly, we were not of the same mind, as I recall.

Now Grace is really pretty crazy. It’s completely counterintuitive in most ways so anyone who is striving to live a life within that context is swimming upstream. (This is to be distinguished from the act of being gracious, which is still a fine thing but not close to the whole enchilada.) The issue for us was not whether we Jesus-followers ever get angry, it’s whether anger and grace can coexist.

To me, if you peel away all of the layers it takes to answer that question, it might boil down to the question of whether God can hate.

(Before diving in full bore on this, I need to say that the opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference. This is significant.)

I need to jump over some valid questions about the nature of God, specifically does he have something akin to human emotions. I think we have to conclude, if God loves us unconditionally, that that is akin to a human emotion.

As I participated last night, had another conversation this morning and am reflecting now, hate is not necessarily the ultimate result of anger unbridled and taken to its extreme. So what is going on and what does this have to do with grace?

You see, unlike some of my dear friends, I believe that anger is not inconsistent with the Gospel and that it can reside in a reality where Grace is the dominant feature. The problem with anger is not that it’s always wrong (for a Jesus-follower) but that it can easily initiate a slippery slope, leading to frustration, seriously judgmental attitudes and a pushing of love into the background if it was ever there in the first place. Furthermore, it can descend into derision, and then contempt, which is really just another way of dismissing another’s humanity and failing to recognize them as God does. No, it’s not that anger is wrong, it’s just that our hearts often don’t know how to control it.

To me, hate can be another manifestation of unbridled anger but it is not the same as contempt. I don’t believe that contempt and grace can occur side by side but I believe hate and grace can. How’s that for a bold statement?

To me, there is nothing wrong with being angry when something is acting forcefully against love and in the cause of destroying sacred (meaning reflections of God) things. While God is always loving, he is not always gracious. His dispensing of undeserved gifts is always available but not always delivered. Why not?

Is God happy all of the time? Is God so consumed by love that he doesn’t object when we mess up? Does he not want to teach us to be more reflective of the beings he designed?

Does God love evil?

Does God treat evil graciously?

No. In fact he is at war with evil and ever since free will became a thing, the war has claimed countless casualties. This is the price of love. True love.

I will argue that true love requires anger. Anger at the things that attack true love, trying to defeat it.

Evil exists. Many people don’t like to say that and many Christians (especially in this pampered American society of ours) don’t have a lot of experience with it. But, it exists. It’s insidious and terrible and it has purpose. Yes, it has purpose. It also has method.

As parents, when we see one of our children, who we love as much as is possible, behave in a way that is clearly destructive to themselves or others, we get angry. We realize quickly that this thing is not as it should be. I’m not talking about little things where we kind of go, “tsk tsk.” I’m talking about a big thing … a gross misbehavior that is a kick to our guts and creates fear and anxiety that, if the thing is left unchecked, the road ahead is going to be terrible. We love no less but we are angry. We stand ready to extend grace if it is warranted (especially if the child is remorseful) but we don’t lead with it.

Does God hate? I don’t know. But, I believe he can be angered. Does he feel contempt? No, for that would mean he is dismissive and God is not dismissive because that is the same as indifference and indifference is the opposite of love, so God can’t be contemptuous, dismissive or indifferent.

I know God loves Adolf Hitler as much as he loves me. He cares about that man as much as he cares about me. This goes the same for Stalin and Mao who, with Hitler, blithely ordered the slaughter of tens of millions of people in order to achieve some fantasy-laden idea of utopia. That goes for the most vicious serial killers and mass murderers today. Is God angry at what we humans do to ourselves and one another so frequently? Yes. Jesus wept, we need to remember. And grief is not that far removed from anger.

There’s a common refrain expressed by many Christians that I don’t particularly like, although I suspect it carries a grain of truth. It is, “God loves the sinner but hates the sin.” Of course, this is meant to reflect that God’s love is never conditioned. It is immovable. However, he can’t stand the things we do to separate ourselves from him. (The main reason I don’t like this refrain is because, to me, it nearly always accompanies a kind of “holier than thou” attitude … a posture of judgmentalism on the part of the one expressing it.) For a very good reason, God gave us free will, for which there can be unpleasant consequences. Evil whispers to us that we should seek the things that lead to those consequences because we are deserving. While I understand there are those who believe that God kind of sits idly by, with no effort to intervene, I disagree. God is never idle. He yearns for us to turn back towards him, for us to return from pursuing the things that separate us. And, if I had to bet, he truly, truly does not like where many of those things lead. Because he does not want to lose us.

So, I can sort of get the refrain. This is why there is such rejoicing in heaven when one who is lost has been found. For reasons I can only fathom in the vaguest sense, God allows Evil to continue to exist for now. Does God hate Evil? Perhaps. But only in a way that an all-loving God can hate.

What I know is that the father was at least aggrieved, if not angry, at the forces that led his youngest son to leave his loving care and venture off to engage in extremely destructive behaviors. Yet, when the son realized his folly and expected nothing in return, just to come back as an indentured servant, pleading for forgiveness, the father ran towards his son, swept him up in his arms and extended a level of grace that is a resounding symbol of the nature of all things.

These are the things worth wrestling with and I am blessed indeed to participate.

Amen.