Recently, while giving a series of lectures, I was confronted by a rather angry man who accused me of being soft on hell, God’s judgment, and God’s justice. “Don’t tell me that all these people who are doing these things—from molesting children to ignoring all morality—are going to be in heaven when we get there! What does that say about God’s justice?”
His lament is, in fact, quite an old one. The prophet Isaiah had the same kind of wish. For him it was not enough that the Messiah should usher in a time of peace and freedom for good people. Along with rewards for the good, he felt, there needed to be too a “day of vengeance” on the bad (Isaiah 61:2). Interestingly, in a curious omission, when Jesus quotes this text to define his own ministry, he leaves out the part about vengeance (Luke 4:18).
There are too many of us in the church and the world today, in both conservative and liberal camps, who like this man have the same burning need. We want to see misfortune fall upon the wicked. It is not enough that eventually the good should have their day. The bad must be positively punished.
To my mind, this desire for justice (as we call it) is, at its root, unhealthy and speaks volumes about the bitterness within our own lives. All these worries that somebody might be getting away with something and all these wishes that God better be an exacting judge, suggest that we, like the older brother of the prodigal son, might be doing things right, but real love, forgiveness and celebration have long gone out of our hearts.
Alice Miller, the great Swiss psychologist, suggests that the primary task of the second half of life is that of grieving. We need to grieve, she says, or the bitterness and anger that come from our wounds, disappointments, bad choices and broken dreams will overwhelm us with the sense of life’s unfairness.
In the end, it is because we are wounded and bitter that we worry about God’s justice, worry that it might be too lenient, worry that the bad will not be fully punished, worry that there might not be a hell. To be fit for heaven, we must let go of our bitterness.
Like the older brother, our problem is ultimately not the excessive love that is seemingly shown to someone else. Our problem is that we have never fully heard or understood God’s words: “My child, you have always been with me, and all I have is yours, but we, you and I, should be happy and dance because your younger brother who was dead has come back to life!” [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “The Prodigal Son’s Brother,” April 1993]
