Will God Abandon Humanity?
Christian posts on social media usually make me squirm. As I scroll through seeing these memes I find myself wishing there was something I could say that could provide comfort or correction to the sharer without sounding too “preachy,” but a few words in a comment usually won’t cut it so I keep scrolling. Please know that if you shared this post or any post I tackle in the future, there’s no judgment here. I believe that the people who share these posts have their hearts in the right place. They’re usually shared in a way that seems to fit the cultural circumstances it’s tackling well. However, there’s also usually an underlying theological issue that needs to be addressed.
These posts have spawned what I hope to be a series of blogs I’m calling “MemeBusters.” This is directly inspired by the Discovery Channel’s show MythBusters. Adam, Jamie, Grant, and Kari tested concepts present in movies and TV shows to see if it was possible in real life. Sometimes the myth was busted. This means that the car trick or whatever else they were trying to do is not possible in real life. The myths could also be confirmed. This means that the event is possible in real life. Finally the myth could be plausible. This means it is possible, but only under a specific, challenging to achieve set up circumstances. I will be following the concept by analyzing different Christian memes. Some of them will be completely false, others will be true, and others will be a mix of true and false. The goal is to promote theological education on social media through these often shared memes.
The underlying theological issue for the post pictured here is that we have messed things up so much that God might leave us. There is fear that if we don’t repent, God will abandon us. To be sure, God hates sin. I believe injustice breaks God’s heart. When we sin, we should repent and allow God to transform our hearts. But God also loves people. The reason Jesus sacrificed himself was to allow sinful people to be in relationship with God.
This was originally published in a shorter format on my Facebook and Instagram. Since posting it I’ve had a couple conversations with friends about how God deals with people corporately versus individually when it comes to sin. I think this is important to talk about. We’ll deal with the corporate question first, and then tackle the individual question (which is what my social media posts were primary addressing).
Here we’ll look to scripture. It’s not hard to find times people sinned, rebelled, and acted unjustly in the Bible. In fact, mankind made a mess of things in the third chapter of the Bible. It didn’t take long. God created paradise, gave man and woman the chance to follow or reject Him, and they quickly chose rejection for some seemingly better alternative. The rest of the Old Testament describes the relationship between a faithful God and unfaithful humanity. Though it’s important to remember that America is not God’s chosen people, I still find it a useful exercise to see how God dealt with Israel in their sin in order to think through this corporately.
You can flip open your Old Testament and you’ll probably be able to find Israel rebelling, God calling them out for their sin, God calling Israel back to Himself, or Israel repenting within a few page flips (perhaps excluding the wisdom literature like Psalms and Proverbs but there’s hints of it there as well). If you want a good example, go to the book of Judges. Boy. Lots of rebellion and poor leadership. There’s a common pattern in these stores.
God does something special for Israel (delivers them from oppression, usually).
God tells Israel to worship Him alone.
Israel is happy and praises God.
Israel gets complacent.
Israel starts worshiping other gods.
God sends a prophet telling them to repent or face judgment.
They don’t, usually.
God sends the judgment He promised.
Israel cries for mercy and repents.
God saves Israel.
Rinse and repeat these 10 easy steps for most of the Old Testament. (You can also find this pattern used in part with non-Israelite nations as well.)
There are times in the Old Testament God says he’s going to divorce Israel. Jeremiah and Hosea both describe this in graphic detail (click here for a helpful resource about God divorcing Israel). The Bible tends to describe events in emotional, passionate, and hyperbolic terms. God uses the prophet’s or writer’s creativity and imagination to vividly and sometimes graphically describe how God feels about a situation and what God’s going to do about it.
On one hand, yes, God “abandoned” Israel to be conquered by other nations in punishment for their rebellion. On the other hand, I believe that God never actually left Israel. If we believe God is sovereign (which we should) then God was orchestrating every act of judgment and salvation for Israel. One of the mind-blowing things about the power, sovereignty, and justice of God is that God can use both the good and evil actions of humanity to accomplish His will without He Himself doing anything wrong (This could be a whole separate blog). For example, God can use the loving witness of a Christian to bring an unbeliever to Christ. God can also use someone’s past trauma to bring them to Christ. The trauma itself wasn’t good, but God in His sovereignty can use it for good. God was able to use other nations, through the good and bad they did, to punish and redeem Israel. God was orchestrating it all. Even when Israel seems harshly punished for their rebellion, God was still right there with them. He heard their cries when they repented. He restored them when they did. God, in His omnipresence and sovereignty, was with Israel through it all.
Let’s bring it back home to the USA. As a reminder, America is not Israel. America is not God’s chosen people. Since I am not God I cannot tell you what God has in store for America. However, there is a major theme that shows up throughout the prophetic books: justice. There a few examples of God dealing with the injustice of Gentile names in scripture two of which we’ll tackle here. First is the ever-controversial Sodom and Gomorrah. The heavenly visitors of Abraham said their “sin is extremely serious” (Gen 18:20 CSB). Later when these heavenly visitors had entered Sodom and become guests of Lot, the men of the town banged on the door of Lot demanding him to let them out so they could have sex with them (Gen 19:5 CSB). The rape of two strangers is indeed an immense sin and gives an example of the injustice present in these cities. God destroyed the cities for their injustice.
Second is God’s judgment of Nineveh in the book of Jonah. The second verse of Jonah reads, “Get up! Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it because their evil has come up before me” (Jonah 1:2 CSB). Jonah then tries to flee, but God in His sovereignty and power delivers Jonah to Nineveh anyway. Nineveh’s evil (also translated “wickedness”) apparently deserves divine intervention. The term translated evil is רָעָה (ra’ah) which means wickedness and often refers directly to injustice. Nineveh’s injustice merited divine judgment. When they repented and turned to God, He relented of His planned judgment.
I believe this meme is attempting to act as the repentant Nineveh. There is certainly injustice present in America. Babies are killed through abortion. Black people face oppression and judgment because of their skin color. Children sit in the foster care system going from home to home to home until they age out of the program with no one to help them. Cancer patients accrue thousands of dollars in debt by trying to stay alive. Children are shot up in their schools. We certainly have our share of injustice.
I don’t know God’s plan for America. I do know God is sovereign. I know that God is always there and He is sovereign over all the events of the world. I also know that God is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love (Neh 9:31, Ex 34:6, Num 14:18, Ps 86:5, Ps 86:15, Joel 2:13). Exodus 34:6-7 shares what God has to say for Himself: “The Lord - the Lord is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth, maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin. But he will not leave the guilty unpunished, bringing the fathers’ iniquity on the children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation” (CSB, emphasis mine). God will deal with injustice, but He is quite patient. Indeed, Jesus himself paid for the sins of the world. On top of the character of God, Christians should remember that our citizenship ultimately lies with the Kingdom of God under the leadership of King Jesus. No matter what happens to this country or any country, we as believers will always belong to the Kingdom of God which is absent of injustice and will never fail. Whatever God has planned for America, I find comfort in God’s sovereignty, justice, patience, and in His coming Kingdom.
Let’s switch to talk about the individual level.
Nations are made out of people. Each person has the choice to follow God or not follow God. Abraham understood this when he pleaded for God to spare Lot and his family in Genesis 18:25. Additionally, throughout the prophets “the faithful remnant” is mentioned as those who remain faithful to God even when God’s people rebel against Him. This means that even when a nation is largely rebellious, the beliefs, actions, and choices of individuals matter to God as well. Even if others reject God, your choice to follow Him matters. Similarly, even when a believer falls into sin (which happens to every believer), God will not abandon them. Again, God is enormously patient. Jesus has already paid the price for your sin. God’s desire to woo the wayward believer back into restoration.
This gets to the heart of what I said on social media. I think most every person who has been a Christian for awhile has had “dry spells” where they felt distant from God. This isn’t always the case, but often that is sin-induced. The feeling of being far from God is valid. It’s a real and empty feeling. But God is never far away. Often repentance is necessary for that feeling of far-ness and emptiness to go away, but God never went anywhere. The Spirit was right there nudging you, pleading with you to turn back to God, loving you the whole time.
Does the love and presence of God mean that there’s no consequences for sin? No. Of course not. Sin has consequences. There are physical, emotional, and/or spiritual consequences for the sinner and often for those around them. Sin is evil. God hates sin, but He does indeed love humanity. God loves humanity so much that God the Son - Jesus - paid the price for sin and injustice Himself. God’s love for humanity is why there’s a Gospel message to share at all. One of the things this picture gets right is the importance of repentance. When we sin, we should repent. But God is not going to completely abandon us until we repent. The Spirit is nudging the unbeliever into saving faith (justification) and the believer into a lifetime of continued salvation (sanctification).
It might sound crazy that all of this is true, actually. It seems wild that after all the sin, rebellion, hatred, and evil mankind has committed, God still loves us. The incredible truth is that God is not going to abandon us. He is not tired of us. He is not going to leave us. He is right here with us.