Interface

Between Heaven and Earth

Grace vs. Judgment: The Nature of the Christian God

The Bible is a complex and multifaceted text, reflecting the diverse socio-historical contexts and times in which its various books were written. In studying it, many have found a tension between, on the one hand, a seemingly judgmental God who operates on the principle of cause and rational effect—rewarding obedience and punishing disobedience; and, on the other hand, a gracious God who dispenses unmerited favor and love even when punishment seems clearly deserved. Call it cause and irrational effect.

Driven to cognitive dissonance by this apparent contradiction in the nature of God, the rational mind seeks to resolve it. This is precisely why it is the topic at the heart of many theological discussions, including Dr. Weaver’s class discussions. The topic tends, as well, to feature prominently in our individual, personal, reflections on things of the spirit. 

This essay examines the nature of God as gracious versus judgmental. Our examination is not just an academic or intellectual exercise to resolve our dissonance, however: Our understanding of the nature of God has a very practical bearing on how we live our lives. So we’d better get it right!

God of Judgment 

A God of judgment who operates on the simplistic principle of cause and rational effect is evident in many parts of the Old Testament. Deuteronomy 28 presents a list of both blessings and curses (these are all effects) that result from the causes of obedience and disobedience, respectively, to God’s commandments. 

Obedience causes the blessings of prosperity, health, protection from enemies, and abundance. Disobedience causes disease, famine, defeat in battle, and exile. The relationship with God seems transactional here: If you obey, then you’ll be rewarded; if you disobey, then you’ll be punished. It’s a covenant, an agreement: You agree to do this, and God agrees to do that.

The Book of Proverbs, too, seems to promote the idea that righteousness causes success and wickedness causes downfall. It’s pretty simple: Live righteously and prosper… or else! And Deuteronomy and Proverbs are just the tip of an iceberg of cause and effect stories in the Bible. Appendix Table 1 provides examples from both the Old and New Testaments. 

God of Grace

But while appearing to promote the cause and rational effect principle through covenants that operationalize it, the Bible in fact challenges the principle, and nowhere more strikingly than in the book of Job. 

At the heart of the book of Job is the question: Why should a righteous person like Job, who was held to be blessed for his righteousness, suffer at all? What did he do to deserve it? The opening chapters present his suffering as a test of his faith following an accusation by Satan that Job served God only because of the blessings he received from God. Satan’s claim is that Job’s faith is transactional, based on a cause (righteousness) bringing a rational effect (blessings from God). In effect, Satan is saying that God was bribing Job, buying his righteousness with blessings. Satan argues that if Job were to lose the blessings and be cursed instead, he would curse God in turn. 

God does not argue with this. Perhaps, like Satan, we tend to read too much into God’s silence on that issue. Instead, God tells Satan that Job’s blessings are in his—Satan’s—control and he can test his hypothesis by replacing the blessings with terrible misfortunes. 

The Lord said to Satan, “From where do you come?” Satan answered the Lord and said, “From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it.” The Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil.” Then Satan answered the Lord, “Does Job fear God for nothing? Have You not made a fence around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But reach out with Your hand now and touch all that he has; he will certainly curse You to Your face.” Then the Lord said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your power; only do not reach out and put your hand on him.” (Job 1:7-12)

It is undeniable that God neither accepted nor rejected Satan’s accusation of blessings. Arguably, the text even insinuates that blessings are Satan’s prerogative. Certainly, they were Satan’s prerogative in the case of Job.

The reversal in fortune is beyond Job’s understanding, so he confronts God and demands an explanation. God responds with a series of 77 rhetorical questions (Job 38-41) that point to His unknowable nature and imply that Job’s suffering could not be understood through the human judgmental perspective of cause and effect. 

If the plaintiff (Job) could persuade a human jury that he was indeed righteous, that jury would find God liable for substantial damages. But if Job’s friends had been on the jury, they would not have been persuaded of Job’s righteousness. The character witness, Satan, would have convinced them that Job could not be as righteous as he seemed, else he would not be suffering. Since righteousness causes blessing and sin causes suffering, they reasoned, Job’s suffering could only be the result of some hidden sin. Job’s friends hold the Deuteronomic belief that suffering is caused by—is the result of—wrongdoing.

What we learn from the story of Job is that suffering is not (necessarily) the result of sin or moral failure. It can happen without any humanly identifiable cause. It is simply a reflection of the human condition, a fact of life in a world where bad things happen to good people (and good things happen to bad people) for no apparent reason. Suffering is part of the mystery of human existence. Solomon says as much in Ecclesiastes: Life is unpredictable and often beyond human control or explanation. (We’ll return to Ecclesiastes later.)

In sum: In allowing Job to suffer—in letting bad things happen to a good person—God ultimately proves not only that Job’s righteousness is genuine, refuting Satan’s accusation that Job is righteous only for selfish reasons, and refuting Satan’s insinuation that righteousness depends on blessings; but also that Satan’s very premise of cause and rational effect is wrong. Job’s suffering sets the quintessential example of faith and righteousness; but, more importantly, it challenges us to think beyond transactional understandings of righteousness and suffering. 

Which leads us to the God of grace.

God of Grace

Grace is the unmerited favor of God, given freely and not because of anything we’ve done to earn it. This is a radical departure from the cause-and-rational-effect logic of Satan, Job’s friends, and most “reasonable”, rational people.

One of the clearest expressions of grace is found in the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15). While the parable does carry a cause/effect message—that a return to the Father causes restoration of the son’s place in the family (see Appendix Table 1)—that effect is not rational, not reasonable, not fair. Just ask the prodigal’s dutiful elder brother. The prodigal, having disrespectfully demanded the early disbursement of his inheritance, squanders it in reckless living and ends up destitute. Driven by desperation, he returns home, anticipating his father’s anger and his demotion to a position of servitude in his household. This too was a perfectly reasonable and rational assumption of cause and effect. 

But instead, the father runs to meet him, embraces him, and throws a lavish feast in his honor. The father’s response is not based on the son’s actions, which deserve punishment. They are based on his own love and grace. The just and rational effect—punishment—is merited but is trumped by the grace effect—mercy and restoration. Grace is driven by love, not by rational cause. Piety, in the person of the prodigal’s elder brother, is left feeling duped, misled, and angry.

Knowing that the Father in this parable represents God and that the shepherd in the Lost Sheep parable also represents God, it might be objected that a Father/shepherd/God who goes after every lost sheep would do the same for his lost son. The cause (lost soul) and the effect (redemption) are the same; and God’s nature—His love for His creatures—has not changed one bit either. The difference is in the creatures, not in God. 

Unlike the sheep, the son has free will and “agency” and is therefore capable of making choices. He chose to leave home, and he chose to come home. His actual return is the act of repentance the father sought. When the son tried to deliver a carefully prepared speech of repentance, the father cut him off. Evidently, repentance in this form meant nothing to him. All that mattered to the father was that his son came home. We don’t even know from the parable that the son was truly repentant. There’s no doubt he was sorry for himself, but was he truly sorry for what he did to his father? We don’t know, and his father didn’t care. 

The Lost Sheep, in contrast, left home out of ignorance, not rebellion. The shepherd will actively seek out such sheep because he knows they can’t find their way back on their own even though they want to when it grows dark and dangerous without the flock around them. So too with humans who are lost due to ignorance or helplessness: God’s grace is present and ready to actively intervene to bring them back to the fold.

The parable of the workers in the vineyard also challenges the cause-and-rational-effect mindset, showing that God’s grace doesn’t conform to human notions of fairness or merit. Farmworkers hired at different times of the day all receive the same wage at day’s end, regardless of what time they showed up for work. Those who worked the longest complain about the unjustness of this, but the farmer (God) explains that he is generous with his resources. He can’t help it. It’s just His nature.

The Human Tendency Toward Cause and Effect

Despite the Bible’s clear teaching that God is a God of grace, many people—even many believers—gravitate toward a cause-and-rational-effect understanding of God as a God of Judgment. Cause and rational effect are deeply ingrained in our thinking. We see it in the natural world, in our daily lives, and it makes sense to us. “If I work hard, I’ll succeed; if I follow the rules, I’ll be safe.” This logic is comforting because it offers a sense of control and predictability.

But when this mindset is applied to our relationship with God, it leads to a transactional view of faith where people expect (and, indeed, are told from the pulpit) that their good deeds will be rewarded with blessings, and their misdeeds with punishment. “Prosperity Gospel” churches preach that faith (oh, and don’t forget donations to the church) will bring financial blessings, health, and success. This message is appealing because it feeds on our tendency to believe in cause and rational effect and that you don’t get something for nothing, and on our desire for control and our hope for tangible rewards. But it’s a serious distortion of the gospel message, with very serious consequences.

The problem with the cause-and-rational-effect mentality is that when life doesn’t follow the expected rational pattern—when faithful people suffer, when prayers go unanswered, when bad things happen to good people—it can lead to disillusionment and a crisis of faith. If we expect God to operate on a simple formula of reward and punishment, we may well find ourselves questioning His goodness or even His existence when He doesn’t get with the program; or we blame ourselves for being deficient in faith or righteousness and fear for our immortal souls.

Balancing Grace and Justice

So, where does this leave us? Should we abandon the idea of cause and effect entirely in our understanding of God? Not at all. The Bible teaches that our actions do have consequences, and it teaches that God is just and has perfect judgment. But the justice of God is not the impersonal, algorithmic program we take it for. It’s intertwined with His grace, mercy, and love in a balance almost too delicate for us to emulate, but not too delicate for us to recognize in the life and teachings of Jesus. 

Jesus doesn’t dismiss the importance of obedience or righteousness. On the contrary. He calls us to live in a way that reflects the values of the Kingdom of Heaven—gracious values of love, mercy, humility, and justice. But He also teaches that these virtues are not a means to earn God’s blessings. Rather, they are an expression of the grace we have already received.

In the Beatitudes (part of his Sermon on the Mount—Matthew 5-7), Jesus speaks about the blessings that come to those who are poor in spirit, who mourn, who are meek, who hunger and thirst for righteousness, who are merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, and those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake. These blessings are not rewards in the conventional—material—sense. The Beatitudes reflect a reversal of human values, in which the last are first and the first are last, challenging the idea that material success is a sign of God’s favor.

God’s grace is greater than our rational human need to earn forgiveness (We believe “There’s no free lunch!” but there is!) And God’s grace is greater than our actual ability to earn it. The Father of us prodigal children doesn’t need and doesn’t want our tear-stained but often insincere apologies, our hard-to-keep promises of servitude, our sackcloth and ashes, or any other act of penance. He yearns only for us to come home, embracing us before our hearts can even fully articulate their repentance. 

This is grace.

The Impact of Grace on Our Lives

Grace does not bring blessings. Just ask Job. Blessings and grace are related but distinct concepts. Blessings usually refer to tangible or spiritual benefits or favors such as prosperity, health, success, and peace, and are generally conditional upon human behavior or actions. God’s promises in Deuteronomy 28 relating to obedience are of blessings, not of grace. Blessings can be both physical (e.g., material wealth, offspring) and spiritual (e.g., peace, favor with God). 

Grace, in contrast, is unconditional, essential for salvation (Ephesians 2:8-9), and primarily spiritual rather than material. It is the foundation of forgiveness, redemption, and the transformative power of God in a believer’s life. 

The idea that blessings operate on the cause and rational effect principle, with obedience and faith leading to tangible rewards, is an understandably popular view that has probably enriched the lives of many a prosperity gospel preacher and filled the collection plates of many a church. They seem to forget the story of Job, and to have missed Solomon’s notes in Ecclesiastes pointing out the absence of any direct correlation between righteousness and material reward. Note Solomon’s despair and bewilderment:

“In this meaningless life of mine I have seen both of these: the righteous perishing in their righteousness, and the wicked living long in their wickedness.” (Ecclesiastes 7:15)

“There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: the righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve. This, too, I say, is meaningless.” (Ecclesiastes 8:14)

“The race is not to the swift, or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.” (Ecclesiastes 9:11)

The blessings of the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12)—”the kingdom of heaven,” “comfort,” “seeing God”—are spiritual rather than material rewards. Jesus himself advises against material treasures—see the story of the Rich Young Ruler (Mark 10:17-27). Martin Luther and John Calvin were critical of the idea that we can earn God’s favor through our actions, emphasizing instead that any good we receive is a result of God’s grace.

Still, it is our human tendency to think otherwise. We continue to pray for health, financial success, or personal safety in the belief that our faith and obedience and prayer will bring about these outcomes. Our overemphasis on material blessings distorts the deeper spiritual messages of the Bible, including the message of grace and the very nature of God.

The transactional expectation of material rewards for good behavior leaves people feeling abandoned or disillusioned when they feel that God does uphold his end of the bargain, does not get with the program; or it leaves them feeling guilty and in despair for having lacked sufficient faith. Worse, they might question God’s goodness or begin to doubt His existence. 

Ultimately, the source of doubt and despair stems from misinterpretation or selective reading of the Bible. For sure, it has been a source of profound spiritual insight, moral guidance, and comfort for billions of people throughout history. Perhaps its complexity and its apparent contradictions are intended to take those who study it beyond simplistic understandings. Its contradictions challenge readers to think more deeply, to engage with the text and with God in a more meaningful way. Rather than doing more harm than good, with good guidance these challenges can lead to spiritual growth and a more robust, resilient faith. People should be encouraged to approach their Scripture with some scepticism and a desire to understand its broader, more nuanced messages.

Conclusion

The Bible’s seemingly contradictory perspectives are not a flaw but a feature that reflects the complexity of the divine–human relationship. While some may misunderstand or misuse its teachings, leading to harmful views, the Bible also offers the tools needed to develop a more balanced, grace-filled understanding of God. As always, the key is in how the Bible is interpreted and taught—encouraging believers to seek a deeper, more nuanced understanding rather than settling for easy, but potentially dangerously misleading, answers.

Embracing the concept of grace (cause and irrational effect) over justice (cause and rational effect) has profound implications for how we live our lives and how we relate to others. We are loved and accepted by God not because of what we do, but for who we are. And who are we? We are God’s children. By inalienable nature, God is a doting Father. There is no point in trying to earn the favor of a doting Father already falling all over Himself to do us favors, but when we open our hearts to the unfathomable depth of His gracious love, we cannot but feel gratitude and humility.

That feeling of gratitude and humility in turn transforms our relationships with others. Instead of seeing others through the lens of judgment—asking whether they deserve our kindness, our forgiveness, or our help—we begin to see them and love them as God sees and loves us: as beloved sisters and brothers to whom we owe compassion, generosity, and forgiveness, whether they deserve it or not. This is the true meaning, the full import, of turning the other cheek. Could it get more doting than this: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16)?

So it is that when we ourselves face suffering, setbacks, or unanswered prayers, we can trust that God’s love for us is not a bit dependent on our circumstances or our performance. The knowledge that grace and love are the very essence of God’s nature provides peace and resilience in the face of life’s difficulties.

To sum it all up: The Bible seems to present us with a God of two natures: One, a God of Justice; the other, a God of Grace. But the overarching message of Scripture, especially as revealed in the life and teachings of Jesus, is that God is a God purely of grace. Grace does not bring blessings, does not negate the importance of justice, and does not mitigate sin. It brings redemption for the Fall, it turns us away from that original sin and starts us on our journey back home to the garden from which we fell when we claimed our inheritance—the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil—before it was our due.

Sharon: The core essence of grace is God’s love for us as His sons and daughters. Nothing we can do helps us earn that, and nothing we can do causes us to lose it. The prodigal son analogy shows how a God who truly loves us as deeply as we know He does—those of us who have experienced it know—but you pointed out so clearly that it’s not based on what we do, but on what He did. Thank you.

Don: But isn’t it quite disturbing that we can’t control God’s actions with our prayers, our piety, our study, and our good behavior? The idea that somehow I can’t control God with my prayers is very unsettling. I’ve been raised to pray and to petition God, to have prayer meetings, to have oil placed on my forehead for healing, and the notion that none of that has any consequence is very disturbing. Or is it?

David: Isn’t it a function of how the Bible has been interpreted? I don’t think it’s innate in us to think that way; it’s what we’re led to think. If we were left to our own devices, to our own relationship with the God inside us, or if we were led to study the Bible in a deeper way than the shallow way we tend to be taught, then I think we wouldn’t feel that way. It wouldn’t be a problem. But I agree it is a problem, and I think there’s a great deal that could be done within churches to set that right. But how you turn around the great big ships of religion to do that, I don’t know.

Reinhard: When God created humans, of course He wanted them to behave in a certain way. Remember, for several thousand years, God didn’t interfere; He didn’t give the written law. He only dealt through some prophets. We know God finally appointed a certain people through Abraham. When God gathered His chosen people through Israel, we see their response when He directly led them out of Egypt and through the 40-year journey to the Promised Land. We observe human behavior—the reactions of these people—even when God intervened directly with all these miracles, with the pillar of fire and the cloud, they still didn’t act the way God wanted them to.

So finally, that’s the way God had to deal with humans in the beginning—you know, these very hard, stubborn people. Back to the flood and everything, because human behavior is very uncontrollable, similar to now. When we come to the New Testament, we see that God deals with humans in a different way. Of course, God through Jesus, who is God Himself—that’s the way we see the pathway of God dealing with people. Finally, He showed this is the true God, with His love and His grace. But the people at the time, especially the Jewish people, their mindset was so much in the cause-and-effect relationship—you know, obey the law and the consequences, either curse or blessing.

Their mindset was such that when Jesus came, they could not believe the way He acted—sort of breaking the law, healing on the Sabbath, and things like that. Actually, the true God was showing man that this is the way of life—the beauty, the plan of salvation, how God deals—God’s love with humans. And of course, through the epistles of Paul especially, we see the true God, the true nature of God, how He deals with humans, how we are the believers.

Eventually, because we live on this earth, everyone is going to die unless we’re still alive when the Second Coming takes place. But we’re going to go through this; someday we’re not going to exist in this world. Of course, we know why—because of the sin in the beginning. God already said that the time you eat the fruit, you will die, which eventually happened to all the descendants of Adam, including us.

But overall, God is still going to give us the final reward. Even though we as humans do a lot of unwanted or undesired acts that God doesn’t like, I think the final reward is salvation, the life after this earth. God promised that if you follow Him, we’re going to receive blessings—through health, through financial gain—although not everybody experiences this. Maybe you feel that you are worshiping God in truth but are still going through bad times. But I think the bottom line is that if we are close to God, salvation or the life after—that’s the most important.

We can see why people die young, even when they are good people, people who are close to God—we don’t know. That’s the mystery—why God allows it. You said that bad things happen to good people. Of course, bad things also happen to bad people, and good things happen to good people. Sometimes we only emphasize the bad things. But there are many good things happening to good people, to us. Look at what we are doing now. We are blessed. We can still meet all these times. Sometimes we kind of discount the blessing of God.

Of course, we learn from what happens to good people who experience bad things. But all in all, I think God’s grace—there are many more things I’d like to say—but if we stay committed to God, His grace gets closer to us. Then we have to respond. Grace is given to everybody. We have our part; we have to embrace it, and we will be blessed.

Back to the difference between “turn the other cheek” in the New Testament and, going back to the Old Testament, “tooth for tooth, eye for eye”—you see again the difference in how God deals with us. In the past, I think God had to deal harshly with people to teach the right way because they were stubborn, especially in the Old Testament. We’ve seen many instances there. Of course, God Himself showed true love and care for us through the parable of the prodigal son. That’s the true character of God.

And again, I think it’s easy—when we see that we are free thinkers, we can do anything within the law of God. When we obey Him, I think the blessing will come with it. Again, not everybody experiences the same. There are unwanted and undesired effects, but that’s the way it is. You mentioned, interestingly, cause and irrational effect, but we have to take that by faith.

Again, faith is what we need, even when we see impossible things that God does with us. But as believers, that’s what we need—the idea that some believe in the universality of forgiveness, that eventually everybody is going to be saved because of God’s grace. I don’t believe in that—only for those who follow Him. Because the Bible repeats that no wicked people are going to enter heaven, knowing all the kinds of behavior they did.

So again and again, to me, it goes back to the promise. Even the epistles of Paul mention many things—you know, how we Christians have to behave because, after all, we are looking for the promised land—I mean, life after. So whatever we are going through here, we have to deal with it, and we have to submit to Him. The closer we are to God, the more secure we are that someday we’re going to receive the reward.

Donald: I think we would all agree that the world is a wicked place. Are people wicked, or is the world wicked? I don’t know; that might be something worth pondering. But the thing I really wanted to share with you is, as David was sharing this morning—as I have said many times about light and darkness—that darkness is the absence of light. It’s not like you shine in darkness; you shine light, and darkness disappears. And I think we would all agree that darkness is the default position on this earth. It wasn’t when God was present, and that’s where I was going.

Don, it’s a pretty strong thing to say that God withdrew. But maybe God certainly changed His position with human beings when sin entered the picture. And so if, in fact, God withdraws, sin prevails—it just fills in. It’s like water. And so that supports my perspective that we live in a war zone, and we keep praying as though we can change things. You know, if you were part of Vietnam and you were in the swamp and being shot at—praying is an important thing, I’ll grant you that, but I don’t think it’s going to change much. You’re in a war zone, and so maybe our perspective needs to be that God has withdrawn to some degree, and sin is going to play havoc, and it plays havoc with some people and not others. I mean, it plays havoc with everybody because we all die, but some people die earlier. Some people have tragedy in their life. But then we start saying, “Well, that is because,” and that’s the dangerous thing—it’s because we live in a war zone, and that’s because the relationship between God and man has changed since sin entered this world. I left you speechless. Are you thinking that was a crazy proclamation?

Don: David emphasized the relationship between us and God as being His children; we’re part of God’s DNA. That’s not something that can change. And according to the Apostle Paul in his epistles, there’s another way that you can become God’s children, and that’s by adoption. So the notion that I’m linked to God, either by adoption or by the actual DNA, is a strong notion of belonging. But that doesn’t change the war zone you referenced.

Donald: The relationship is there. If you have a child and they’re out driving around, your love for that child is unlimited. However, they could have a traffic accident because this is just the way the world operates. It’s not because you don’t love the child—you want to protect that child—but we live in a war zone. God has a different role with human beings today than He did in the Garden of Eden and throughout Earth’s history. It’s not that God doesn’t love us. God, the father of the prodigal son, loved his son so dearly that there’s no conversation about “Would you come back? Should you come back? And what you’ve done?” The relationship is such that nothing can change it, but the son has freedom of choice and made some horrible decisions. Well, the father didn’t go after the son.

Sharon: I think the relational piece is so important. And I think prayer is probably for our benefit. The Lord already knows what we need, and we don’t need to articulate it to Him, but we may need to articulate it. Steps to Christ says prayer doesn’t bring God down to us but brings us up to God. So I think if we really thought about the role of prayer as communion with our friend, and then asking for the requests and pleading, that may be catharsis for our human war battle—our human response to being victims of the war. It gives us an opportunity as social beings to articulate to our Father the needs that we have and the wants and the urgencies that we feel. So I’m not sure that the role of prayer wasn’t designed to create a communication void where, until Jesus gets back to us in person, we have an opportunity to have best-friend discussions with our Maker.

Reinhard: If we go back to the Old Testament, we see the direct relationship between blessing and curse. If somebody obeyed God, there’s a reward—we see that. And if we disobeyed, there’s a punishment or judgment. But in the New Testament, we don’t see that. Of course, when we are close to God, bad things happen, either now because of what we study or what we hear about—the food we eat, our behavior, or people using drugs—things like that caused by humans themselves. We cannot deny that. Again, our body eventually, after a certain age, starts decaying. We have to accept the reality that we cannot live forever after Adam’s fall. I believe that’s why “you will die”—not die instantly, but there’s a process.

Interestingly, if this world is controlled by the dark power—in this case, Satan—if you go back to the story of Job, it’s interesting. When there’s a meeting of beings, including Satan, you see that Satan cannot touch us without God’s permission. So if we are close to God, Satan cannot do anything in terms of giving us bad things, either physically or spiritually. People who don’t know God are open, I think—like an open field for Satan if he’s going to do something.

When Solomon mentioned good people and bad people, at the end, everyone goes to the tomb, which is—that’s not the case. Solomon doesn’t talk about life after because we know in the New Testament it’s not very much mentioned about the resurrection. So people in the Old Testament, when they followed God, the reward was a good life; nothing bad happened to them.

So again, the situation now about illness and disease—that’s, I think, back to the point that we cannot live forever. There’s one way or the other. If premature death happens to some people, we don’t know—that’s the mystery. There are times we see miracles—where there’s a bad accident, but people still survive. Maybe God intervened there. But there are times, even with small accidents, some people didn’t make it. So we don’t know—that’s the mystery—is either God picks and chooses certain people—that’s a mystery for us.

But for sure, if we stay close to God and submit, I believe we should always be thankful to God every day with the air we breathe, with the health we have. Although we go through certain deficiencies in our body, we still have to be thankful God is with us. We cannot stay here forever. So there’s a mystery, but again, by faith, I think that’s what’s important, because the reward, like Jesus mentioned—”Blessed are those who stay close to God, because the enemy can kill only the body, but God can kill the body and the soul”—that’s what we need to know, that eventually life after death is the promise mentioned again and again. That’s the promise we are looking forward to. After all, we may live 100 years on this earth, but the endless life after that is unimaginable at this time, but I think that’s what we’re looking forward to eventually.

Donald: I think we could all agree that we live in a wicked world. You can take yourself out—you can kamikaze yourself by consuming wicked things. There’s no doubt that there is cause and effect. If I do drugs, if I smoke, I’m destroying myself, and I’m more likely to find myself consumed—taken out, if you will—by wickedness. I live in a wicked world, so I consume it. There are lots of ways we could do that and take ourselves out. You can explain that away—you can say, “Well, you know, that person self-destructed.” I’m not saying they brought it upon themselves, but they self-destructed. Now, there is the reality of other people—the air we breathe, as Reinhard said—some people in this world are not breathing very clean air, but that’s all they have available to them.

Reinhard: That’s true. As Christians, we have a shield to go into this wicked world, but unfortunately, the reality of this world—the progressive view of many people—is a tendency to go away from God. Every day, it’s dangerous. Maybe that’s why it’s better if Jesus is going to come soon. But the situation in this world, if we look at the news—everything—the humanistic view that tends to be away from God is increasing, especially with the influence of technology. People sometimes only rely on this equipment, whatever product comes out every day. I’m afraid the influence on our minds is going to take us away, and we start forgetting about God. We can be prone to deception. I think that’s why, when we meet like this, we encourage each other—we’re still talking about this topic. I think God is happy when He sees His people discussing Him. It’s important to be people who are always looking for God, always trying to submit, trying to get closer to God in their daily life. That’s what we need. This reminds us—the wicked world out there can easily slip into our lives, influence our minds. We have to watch.

Donald: But don’t you think that people who are striving to be followers of Christ still live in a wicked world, and you can do your level best to not be taken out by the world in which we live? But the reality is that this is the case. And until Christ comes again and we have a new world, these will be our realities. I think what Sharon expressed in terms of relationships and prayer is key to this conversation. I’m doing a study right now with another group of men that I’ve been with for years, and they’re starting Revelation. These are non-Adventists, a non-denominational group, and we’re doing Revelation. I looked at this reading we read last week, Revelation 22:12: “Because I, Jesus, am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me to give each one according to the merit of his deeds”—and in parentheses, it says in my Bible, “earthly works”—whoa. You know, Adventists have had a very distinct perspective on Daniel and Revelation. Doing this with non-denominational people is interesting. It was presented in the opening of Revelation, which I thought was quite interesting—that Revelation is, as we know, the last chapter in the book. Would you ever read a book and not read the last chapter? We get through the Old Testament, we love the New Testament, but then we want to stop right there. We don’t really want to do Revelation because it’s a little overwhelming to us again, and so that’s expressed in the study I’m doing—that the last chapter only explains what the purpose of the entire book was about, which I thought was fascinating.

David: I think it’s worth continuing the discussion about the wicked world because I’m not sure I agree that we are living in a wicked world. But if we are—if we’re in a war zone, and particularly if we’re in a foxhole—there is one comforting thought: There are no atheists in a foxhole. When the bombs are falling around you, you turn to God. There’s nowhere else to turn. It’s the Beatitudes all over again. When life is at its worst, grace is at its best.

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Appendix Table 1: Cause and Effect in the Bible

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