So what about the true God’s anger and our experience of the storms of life—both metaphorical and tangible? Is most of life best explained by a theology of God’s capricious wrath?

No. God, no matter how he’s portrayed by his critics, does not struggle with anger management issues. Instead the Bible explains God’s wrath by starting with the serpent’s promise in Genesis 3, “You can be like God.”

This bold lie—a claim that replaces God as the single center of reality with a host of alternative centers—was embraced by humanity and instantly distorted every human perception of life.

The distortion is seen in human motives. Adam was made to be other-centered, with God’s love as his ultimate delight. But when the first man embraced the serpent’s premise of being like god it led him to a new self-concerned orientation—to focus on his nakedness and needs. An ambition for autonomy had replaced his prior rest on God’s providential love.

And with the resulting departure of the aggrieved Spirit each of Adam’s offspring now has to be wooed by God. The Spirit is no longer an indwelling companion but now stands outside the soul calling and inviting a response to God’s love and a trust in God is now supernatural. The premise of independence turned human freedom into the ultimate human goal.

This is where human anger emerges. Anger is a motivational defect of an upended metaphysic. From Eden onward our true being as creatures—made by God, for God—is denied. And anger is the sense of being violated while trying to achieve the destiny of a god. Or, more to the point, a given bout of anger almost always points to a circumstance where our ambition to be a god isn’t working.

Yet we must say “almost” because there are times when anger is a proper affection.  Paul warned, for instance, “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil” (Eph. 4:26-27).

So when and how is anger proper?

We need to turn to the Trinity and to the first creation for our answer. As we probe the events of Eden the dispute between God’s word and the serpent’s word involves even more than a conflict about death and autonomy.

We recall the starting point of the debate as “you shall surely die” versus “you will not surely die.” This featured the nature of life. Jesus later exposed the ultimate issue as a contention about whether a life “born of the flesh” is the same as a life “born of the Spirit.” Life, he made clear, actually consists in God’s participation in the soul by the Spirit. The devil was offering a realm of ongoing animation apart from God’s life: a living death. Jesus exposed this as a false option.

There was another implicit element in this debate. How does God’s life actually exist?

The premise of Genesis chapter one is that God exists as a being-in-communion. He is a God who speaks in a plural voice: “let us make man in our image.” The rest of the Bible presents the substance of this statement as the Father-Son-Spirit reality unfolds over time. He was fully present from the beginning but after the fall his reality needed to be restated and demonstrated.

The serpent in his hubris dismissed this relational reality as he invited Adam to a new vision of deity: to singularity and autonomy as the basis of being. Why this arrangement?  Because he needed to stake out metaphysical space for challenging God. And by positing being-as-a-singularity he could deny any need for dependence. In this scheme every “relationship” is strictly utilitarian and self-serving—a negotiation among gods who, when violated, become angry.

So after Eden the functions of individual thought and action were treated as the basis for being. And in this presumed reality deity is linked to every thinking-choosing creature. Taken in biblical terms this meant that any bond between the true Creator and his creatures is re-envisioned.

But the vision is nonsensical—given that God still sustains the creation—even as the devil redefines life, death, being, and morality on the basis of autonomy. He needs God’s gracious docility to make it work. The serpent, in effect, presumed on grace to dismiss grace. He declared each animated being to be a carrier of deity—the stuff of polytheism—and tried to make it work.

Without ever saying so the devil was and still is the guiding spirit in this presumed realm of autonomy. He was, in other words, still deploying the relational bonds of our creation in God’s relational image to slip into the coaching role once held by the Holy Spirit. As an unholy spirit he thought he could devour all God’s people by simply employing his ultimate Lie to redirect faith away from God while calling people to trust his Lie.

Now, back to anger. In John 3:35-36 God sets out the basis for his own anger. It has everything to do with the Father’s devotion to his Son—the bridegroom of the faithful (cf. 3:29): “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hands. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.”

So when is human anger proper? Only in the moments where we have our hearts aligned with God’s heart. When is it improper? Whenever our hearts are aligned with the Lie. That’s the realm of God’s wrath.

As we embrace the triune God, then, let’s allow him to make things right in the end. That means we don’t need to take anger to bed at night because we’ve dismissed the Lie. God is still God.

Sleep well!

The post The Gods are Angry! first appeared on Cor Deo.

Maybe you haven’t, it’s just a pragmatic moment in the morning to make sure your hair looks right and you don’t have anything stuck in your teeth so you look appropriate for work or whatever. But even as I wrote that with the intention to walk a fine line around the motivational conundrum of a mirror, I couldn’t escape the real ambition for looking in a mirror. Me.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be narcissistic. But to look appropriate for a particular occasion isn’t solely for other people either, really it’s about being accepted in a particular occasion. Maybe at my wedding I wanted to look great for my wife-to-be as she did for me, but I can’t help but think I wanted to look good for me too. That is, having other people tell me I look smart or handsome. I’m confident that this isn’t just my problem; we are motivated by performance of some kind. Whether it is looks, success, job, or whatever concoction you prefer, we are all tainted by the me-motivation.

For those of my friends who might be worried where this blog might be going, I’m not going to go stop looking in the mirror in order to get ready for the day. I wouldn’t want people to be tortured by the smell or the disheveled look that this would cause. I can’t imagine many people wanting to learn from me or listen to what I have to say in such a state. It would be a mountainous distraction to say the least. But maybe instead of reflecting about what others may think of me, I could use that time to reflect on and look forward to the bigger picture. A time when there was or will be no need for a mirror.

Just imagine what life was like for Adam and Eve in the Garden. They were naked and unashamed. They had no reason to look at self; they were completely satisfied with the other. They had the Life of God in them. They enjoyed walking with their God together, the One who generously gave them everything they could possibly ever need or want. They were content.

At this moment, a mirror wouldn’t make any sense. There was no need to look to self for anything with a me-motivation. Adam had the eyes of his heart fixed on God and Eve, and in return Eve had the eyes of her heart captured by Adam and God. As Augustine would say, this reality was the “substance of God” in them. The unifying presence of the Spirit directed their hearts to the other. Therefore they didn’t want to look at self and were happy with that! They were naked and unashamed!

So what went wrong?

A simple skeptical look!

In Genesis 3, just after the climatic conclusion to the creation account we find the “crafty” serpent approached Eve with a skeptical question about God and his provision. “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” Now for Eve this was a no brainer kind of a question. She knew that God hadn’t been holding back, she had been given everything she would ever need or want. Not even for a nanosecond had she thought that something was missing. God had given her and Adam the fruit of every tree to eat from . . . except one.

I think this was the point the serpent was getting at. He needed Eve to quickly fix the blatant mistake of the serpent’s question while hiding the subtle one. Eve responded by correcting him, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden . . .” and then looking to the one tree Adam had told Eve God didn’t want them to eat from, she followed up, “God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ” Prior to this, Adam and Eve had no desire to focus on the one tree they couldn’t eat from. They were satisfied in everything else God had given them and they had no reason or desire to distrust God. No to mention, the word “death” was merely a word with no meaning for them. They were happily naked and unashamed.

When the serpent got Eve to look at the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he returned to his skepticism of God’s character.   The serpent enticed Eve with the idea that God was holding out, there was something that she needed that God hadn’t provided. God didn’t want her to be like God (even though she with Adam was the “image of God”). I think when she ignored the prompting of the Holy Spirit, saw the fruit of the tree as good for food and a delight to the eyes, the Spirit was grieved and left her. The fall took place with a simple skeptical look! And Adam gladly joined in.

Here the age of the mirror began. As the substance of God left them, their vacuous hearts curved in on themselves. The Spirit of God was replaced with concupiscence; the lustful desire for self and to violate any prohibition.

Now living in the age of the mirror we can’t fully get away from wanting to make sure our fig leaf is covering our physical and spiritual nakedness. Even with the Spirit living in our hearts, we still live in the time of a broken world and the flesh of Adam.

And there’s the battle, even at the mirror in the morning brushing your teeth. Are you looking forward to the time where a mirror will no longer be needed or do you still want to cover your nakedness?

I can’t wait to live for Christ and others without the gravity of flesh fighting against the Spirit of God who resides in my heart and unites me to Christ.   Where everything is new, where there are no tears, and Christ is there walking with us. Except this time our naiveté will be gone. We will know what death is. What it’s like not to trust God. What it’s like living in the age of a mirror. Praise God, we’ll never want to go back!

The post A Time When No Mirror Was Needed first appeared on Cor Deo.