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Faith

Troubling signs

One of the difficulties in the Christian faith comes in trying to reconcile the loving nature of God as demonstrated through the character of Jesus in the gospels with the vengeance wrought on the world as described in Revelation. When the Lamb opens the seven seals, the four horsemen of the apocalypse are released to cause destruction, the stars fall from the sky, and terror sweeps the earth, as described in Revelation chapter 6:

The sky was removed like a scroll being rolled up. All the mountains and islands were moved out of their places. The kings of the earth, the statesmen, the commanders, the wealthy, the powerful, and all the slaves and free people, hid themselves in caves and behind rocks in the mountains. They said to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us, and hide us from the sight of the one who sits on the throne, and from the anger of the Lamb, because the great day of their anger has come, and who can survive?”

While the wholesale death, fear and destruction seem out of character for Jesus, it is important to recognise that death, loss and hardship are an important part of everybody’s life. An image of God in which God only ever does things that we think are nice is clearly out of touch with the obvious facts about the world. While our personal comfort and safety might be important values for us, they clearly do not rank highly on God’s agenda.