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It's an old question—and a frequently asked one. "How could God allow...?" "Why didn't God punish...?" "How could a loving God permit...?" Almost a year ago, I was asking the question again too.
And God answered me through the book of Job.
Who is this that darkens my counselI was trying to fall asleep with images of a terrible news story in my head. It was a story about the murder of a teenage girl. The convicted man had piles of porn in his home. Not just Hustler trash, it was child pornography depicting horrific abuses to very small children. It sickened me to the point of being physically ill.
with words without knowledge?
Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you, and you shall answer me (Job 38:2-3).
The memories have come back to mind because my husband just returned from a photo assignment in Cambodia. He went with a film crew from Christ In Youth who were shooting a documentary and photo essay about the sex slave trade and human trafficking. Girls as young as five years old are being sold for as little as $500 to men who, twisted by lust and self-gratification, take not only their virginity, but their innocence, childhood, and many times their hope of a future as well.
In Romania, where we minister, more and more stories of the same kind are appearing in the press. Children are snatched up or—even worse—sold by their own parents to be used for sex, for begging, or for thieving—whatever will bring in the most money for the "new owner."
Confronted with all of this evil, how can we not ask God that same old question? I mean, after all, we are talking about children here. The innocent ones. The ones with no defenses and no one to defend them.
How does God restrain Himself? I find it hard to understand how the hope of men coming to know Him can hold Him to His throne. Especially as the evidence of our determination toward sin and ever greater degrees of depravity is overwhelming and inescapable.
God spoke into my questions as I read further in Job 38.
Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone-
while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels shouted for joy?
Who shut up the sea behind doors
when it burst forth from the womb,
when I made the clouds its garment
and wrapped it in thick darkness,
when I fixed limits for it
and set its doors and bars in place,
when I said, 'This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt' (Job 38:4-11)?
Then, starting in verse 22, the Spirit began to help me understand,
Have you entered the storehouses of the snow
or seen the storehouses of the hail,
which I reserve for times of trouble,
for days of war and battle?...
...From whose womb comes the ice?
Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens
when the waters become hard as stone,
when the surface of the deep is frozen?
These verses called to mind the passages in Jeremiah and Psalms that speak of the storehouses of lightning, wind and rain. And His whisper of understanding came. Our God is good. Our God is gracious. Our God is a loving God. His anger does burn.
God's anger against these atrocities burns with an intensity and a fury that I can not comprehend. The fire was sparked when satan invented rebellion. The fire grew when other angels followed in the quest to usurp God. And through the ages, the fire has continued to grow as man follows in his sin nature instead of his creator's image.
I had never considered God's holy anger in this way—as the fuel for hell's fire.
In grace, God created a place—far from us—to warehouse His fury against sin. The storehouse of His fury, His perfect judgment and justice, waits with doors shut by grace, until the appropriate time when satan, and all those who choose rebellion, will be finally flung, finally destroyed, finally finished.
The scriptures speak of God's treasuries of snow and hail. They speak of His storehouses of wind, rain, and lightning. I believe now that hell is God's storehouse of His holy anger, burning against sin. And our rebellion continues to fuel it.
Shakespeare wrote, "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." But hell is fury. It is God's fury against men who would violate the innocence of children in unspeakable ways. It is God's fury against lusts and greediness, against every fruit of rebellion.
There is some comfort though. Because if we hope, as the Father does, that men will come to know Him, to repent at the cross of Christ, and follow Christ in real discipleship, grace will abound.
The Apostle Paul says that as we repent, God's grace is sufficient to cover a multitude of sin (2 Corinthians 12:9). So, even as God's holy anger is being stored up for that final day, justice is His second choice. God always prefers grace. God never ceases to first love.
This is not to say God's nature is to prefer blindly glossing over sin. He is also faithful. In love He disciplines us to bring us to repentance that we might be brought ever more fully into His grace. And this is the hope that holds Him to His sovereign throne.
Thank you Father, for Your grace. Thank You that You are patient and merciful. Thank You that You will set all things right—including things seemingly left undone—even as you hold out mercy while we have time to grasp it.
Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified. —Acts 20:32
