Cloister Thoughts

One of my pet peeves is from time to time people will talk of God in the Old Testament and God in the New Testament almost as if there were two different gods. “The God in the Old Testament,” I occasionally hear someone say, “is a god of wrath and judgment, while the God of the New Testament is a god of mercy and grace.”

In fact, one of the earliest heresies that the early church had to contend with was started by a fellow named Marcion. Marcion and his followers believed that there were indeed two separate gods, one described in the Hebrew Scriptures, and one who was incarnate in Jesus Christ. The first god was the god who created the world, a god who was angry, vengeful and judged without mercy. The true God, Marcion insisted, did not make his appearance until he was incarnated in Jesus Christ. The second god was a superior god of grace and love and mercy. The early church wisely declared the teachings of Marcion to be heretical, and rejected this dichotomy between the God of the Hebrew Scriptures and the God of the Christian Scriptures.

The only trouble is, after two millennia, Marcionism is still around. It creeps into our theology all the time. Despite our strict belief in only one god, we tend to talk of God as if there were two gods, or as if God had a kind of split personality: wrathful and judgmental in the Old Testament, gracious and loving in the New. Not only is this very bad theology, it isn’t even justified by the scriptures themselves.

If you read Psalm 103 – it comes from the testament that supposedly depicts a god of anger, vengeance, and judgment. Yet the Psalmists describes God as One who “forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit...” “God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” God “does not deal with us according to our sins nor repay us according to our iniquities...” Surely in all the scriptures there is no more marvelous picture of God’s grace.

I recently read a list of songs that music teachers agree every school child should learn. One of the songs on the list was “Amazing Grace.” The beloved hymn was written by John Newton, a man who, like the psalmist, personally and profoundly understood that he was, by the grace of God, a forgiven sinner. Newton was born in 1725. His father was a sea captain, his mother a devout Christian. She took her young son with her to chapel and daily read the scriptures to him. They also sang together the hymns of Isaac Watts, one of the greatest hymn writers of all time, who also happened to live near John Newton’s childhood home. But John’s mother died when John was only six years old. Just a few years later, at the age of eleven, he went to sea with his father. Later he was forced to serve in the English navy, where he had a dismal record of rebelliousness, blasphemy, and eventually desertion.

God “does not deal with us according to our sins nor repay us according to our iniquities...” Surely in all the scriptures there is no more marvelous picture of God’s grace.

After he deserted he was recaptured, and publicly flogged and humiliated. Later Newton transferred to a merchant ship; the merchant ship’s cargo was slaves. Eventually John New- ton became captain of his own slave ship. The unimaginable cruelty of the slave trade hardened and brutalized Newton’s spirit still the more.

On the long voyages, there was a lot of empty time to fill, and any book was regarded as a blessing. John had two books that were a legacy from his mother: the Bible and a book by Thomas a Kempis, one of the great writers on spirituality. Driven by boredom, he read the books during the long days of voyaging from Africa to the colonies.

On one voyage a mighty storm sprang up. It seemed as if surely everyone would perish, but somehow, miraculously, the ship survived the storm. Suddenly the words of Thomas a Kempis and the Bible took on real meaning for John. He saw himself in the story of the prodigal son. Like the prodigal, John “came to himself” as he experienced the reality of God’s unmerited love, forgiveness, and grace. Out of that experience he wrote, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.”

God’s grace is the genuine path for us to journey. May we learn to sing with the psalmist, “Bless the Lord and forget not all his benefits.”