We Become like the God we worship. On a slightly lower level, we tend to imitate our role models, and follow their example. My parents, born a whole century ago, were poor, desperately poor. But they were honest. Never once in my childhood did I ever hear murmuring or a word of complaint. When some pest savaged the vegetables that my father tried to grow in his tiny plot, he would sigh a little but then just pray. It was always “Praise God! Hallelujah!” – never resentment or a fist raised in anger at the Almighty.
My parents’ role model was the Jesus of the gospels, and the God they worshipped was the God of David, a God full of compassion, ready to forgive, gracious, and plenteous in mercy and truth (Psa. 86).
Show compassion, not wrath!
For that reason my parents were merciful people, a brother and sister in Christ among other brothers and sisters who were not only compassionate in spirit, but deliberately showed compassion. It came as — literally — second nature. They knew, and knew about, very few Christadelphians beyond their own ecclesia. If they were asked in passing what Christadelphians taught, they would just say, “Love, my friend. God is love.” And their lives proved it. They taught me about David’s God. Their favorite hymn was number 35, “The Lord our God most gracious is, compassion He delights to show”
Just recently a Muslim friend gave me one of his tracts entitled “Muhammad”. I suppose he wants to convert me to his God. Since bin Laden’s rise to world glory, he and his coreligionists have become very aggressive in preaching about Muhammad. The tract describes my friend’s role model, who, he says was without doubt the greatest man who ever lived.
So I read, “Muhammad was the Messenger of God. During his lifetime he loved beautiful women, fine perfume and tasty food. He took pleasure in seeing the heads of his enemies torn from their bodies by the swords of his soldiers. He hated Christians and Jews, poets and painters, and anyone who criticized him. Once he had a Jewish prisoner tortured in order to learn the location of the man’s hidden treasure. Then, having uncovered the secret, he had his victim murdered and added the dead man’s wife to the collection of women in his harem. He was one of history’s great leaders in the fields of politics and religion. Not only did he deal with matters of religion, but also with issues of law, with the daily jobs of believers, and perhaps most importantly of all, with the organization of an army.”
I asked my friend if Muhammad modeled his life on the God he worshipped. Certainly, I was told. Allah is a God of justice. He wants us to destroy all those who do not submit to his Messenger. His foremost qualities are absolute power and total ruthlessness. So, I thought, you intend to become like him. I told him I feared for his soul. He said I was soft.
Rejoice in mercy!
Our God is just. But His “mercy rejoices against judgment” (James 2:13). I recall that many years ago some of our earlier Christadelphian leaders in the Caribbean were wonderfully compassionate and understanding people. You could confide in them and know that your trust would never be betrayed. I am very hesitant in saying this, but some of our present brethren — and especially some who visit us from overseas — are not so. They like to keep on reminding us of things we did wrong in the past, sometimes long years gone by, and hold it against us. Upholding the purity of the Truth is all-important, they say. But that is worthless without love (I Cor. 13:2-4).
Imitate Barzillai!
That is not the Jesus I know. I am a very old Christadelphian now, like Barzillai, David’s aged friend. Barzillai knew David had brought trouble on himself by his mistakes, and — if he had been like many of us — he could have let David “stew in his own juice,” so to speak, and have rubbed salt into David’s wounds. He did nothing of the kind. He “provided the king with sustenance while he lay at Mahanaim; for he (Barzillai) was a very great man” (II Sam. 19: 32). He provided a “table in the wilderness” like the one before us now.
I would implore our twenty-first century brethren: base your life, your work, your example on God’s compassion, not His wrath. Then you will be sure to receive His mercy in the Day you come to need it most.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One