Got

A few days ago, I watched this video clip that showed a conversation (of sorts) between individuals who follow Jesus and those who do not. The “roundtable discussion” was held to hear various voices across the broader culture interact with large, metaphysical questions. Interestingly, a passing comment callously directed towards the Christians was the notion that God sits on his throne and gets everyone who is evil. 

The reason this critique came was because what we all needed to do was to move away from mental categories of “good” and “evil,” and to see the world as having constructive and destructive forces. But what we must not do is assign moral value to these forces or to anything (be it winning the lottery, getting your car towed, or an event like 9/11). To do so, so the reasoning goes, is a sign of weakness—an inability to see the world as it is. Therefore, to need a God to come and punish evil is a crutch. 

There is much that I would like to interact with regarding these sentiments. I would love talk about the notion of moral ambiguity. I would love to talk about why, I think, Christianity gives a better answer to pain and suffering than functionally ignoring it. But what I want to interact with in the next few minutes is the way this line of thinking sees God as acting toward evil.

I hope I am being fair (I do not mean to malign) to the above perspective on reality in my thoughts below. However, one of the fundamental problems with this way of viewing God is that, perhaps, He (she or it?) remains indifferent except for when punishing needs to be doled out. Then, with a short fuse, he gets off his duff and starts punishing people. In other words, “God’s out to get you.” 

Now, in one sense, the Christian understanding of the way that God acts towards evil is quite interesting. It affirms that God himself, crushed his own Son, so that he will not “get” those who love and delight themselves in Him. Said differently, God “gets” his own Son, precisely so he will not “get” those who otherwise deserve to be “got.” 

There is another sense, too, in the way that Christianity understands God “getting.” Perhaps this slice-of-life will help. I recently was chatting with a friend of mine when his daughter saying, “Daddy, will you get me?”, interrupted us. She took off running and my friend followed closely behind, letting her get a few steps ahead. At last, her speed wasn’t enough and he scooped her up into his arms and planted a big, fat kiss right on her cheek. The little girl was beaming with excitement, enjoyment and laughter. She had been “got,” and it was a delightful thing.

For the Christian, the problem with thinking that God is out to "get us" fails to account for this sort of being “got.” It’s a getting of enjoyment; it is one of pursuit and delight. There is no reason remaining for there to be any sort of punishment whatsoever. Yes, God is out to get you, but you don’t know the half of what He is getting your for!

Lastly, I often wonder if our reasoning gets the best of us. Sometimes we fail to understand something (which is quite okay) and, then, based on this faulty understanding, we reject the (faulty) understanding by creating a reason to reject it. It’s like trying to build a house starting with the roof and, then, realizing that there is no place to put it, rule the roof out as useless. Then, the house is constructed without a roof and we are left wondering why we get wet when it rains. 

The truth of the first Good Friday (which Christians celebrate tomorrow) was that there was a double “getting” that day. Yes, God came after (read: punish) somebody for sure. But it wasn’t you and it wasn’t me. It was Jesus. And, for the reason they call it Good, God “got” somebody else too. But this second kind is “gotten” of delight—both in the “Getter” and the “gotten.” --Ryan