New eyes for reading the Bible: Judgement

Last Judgement, Triptych (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What had been intended as one post has been split into a brief series. You don't have to read the rest of the series to get anything out of the post you are about to read, but it would probably help. My connection to these views and why I am writing them are also covered there.

I don't plan to go into any kind of theology about judgment in Christianity, as it's been covered before. And the starting premise is a continuation of the aforementioned post split into different parts, in which the imagery of God as Prophetic Authority is being used to explain what we could roughly compare to the concept of karma. That is, for the all the focus on what God is or isn't going to do to people, a more interesting and potentially useful way of looking at it is that judgement, resulting in a blessing or a curse, is about what people are bringing upon themselves.

The trick here is to put aside the Prophetic Authority image when you do so, or else you get into questions of theodicy. Now if you like that kind of thing, go for it. But otherwise, when thinking of God's judgement in the Bible, de-personalize it and think of it like a law, a law of cause and effect, a law of karma.

This I think helps relieve a good bit of the uncomfortable and often unnecessary discomfort with the way judgment is interpreted by contemporary readers, and it takes a lot of the wind out of the sales of the kind of fundamentalists who revel in a stern and punishing God and who get a thrill in vicariously judging others in the name of God. God isn't sitting on a throne passing judgement; rather, the universe manifests as an aspect of God, with certain natural "laws" or rules of cause and effect. Those who don't understand them or care about them are going to have more problems as they face the consequences of their ignorance or disregard. It can also be compared to being out of harmony with the Tao.

This next change in perspective can be added to the one above or practiced separately. In the tradition of the Desert Mother and Fathers of the early Church, and likely additional groups Christian and otherwise, there is a practice that I am going to co-opt and modify here. The enemies of the Bible, the Pharaoh of Exodus, the ancient Kings of Canaan, and others are taken to represent unvirtuous thoughts and feelings such as terror, hatred, greed, indifference to the suffering of others, and so on.

God is impermanence (the wrath of God)

This is part of a series reflecting on God-talk and Buddhist terminology. It is an opening to dialogue, not a final word on the subject.


We fear impermanence because we try to construct a stable environment for our bodies, hearts and minds out of conditioned (and therefore ephemeral) things; yet impermanence tells us that these things produced by caused and effect are like illusions and cannot be the basis of lasting contentment. The Gospels teach that we must build upon solid rock rather than shifting sand. There are many examples of this notion in the Buddhist sutras and the Bible.

There is also talk in the Bible about the wrath of God, which is tied to God's righteousness, and in the Psalms there are images of mountains, rivers and kingdoms trembling and even melting in the presence of God. (The seen at the end of the Raiders of the Lost Ark comes to mind.) In Second Book of Kings, a great wind, an earthquake and a fire precede the presence of God when Elijah is hiding in a cave, and this imagery is seen again in the Psalms. Even Jesus says his presence won't bring peace but conflict.

Well, that sounds kind of awful, doesn't it? Isn't Jesus the prince of peace? And how could a Buddhist ever sympathize with any of this? The mind boggles and the heart sinks.

But let's ask ourselves, what does happen when we try to build or sense of self and our happiness on conditioned things? Are there no consequences for this? And what exactly might we mean by talking about the presence of God? Why is it sometimes considered to be so destructive and violent and at other times so healing and peaceful? Is there some truth to The Onion's claim that God suffers from bipolar disorder?