February 27, 2010 - Romans 9:13-16 "God's favoritism"

"As it is written, 'I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau.' What then are we to say? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means! For He says to Moses, 'I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.' So it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy."

There is so much in this passage that I find profoundly disturbing. It reminds me of Job in a way. When Job demands that God tell him just what he did wrong to deserve this kind of treatment, God pretty much says, "Who are you, little man, to question Me?" Like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, don't look too closely, don't question, don't ask. None of your business. I'll do whatever I jolly well please and how dare you question it?

Well, He made us to question. He made us with minds to think and the ability to reason and wonder and act, and even to doubt.

Let's start in the beginning. The very idea that God hates someone, a person that He created, I find very disturbing. God HATED Esau? In another passage we are told that God shows no partiality, but by golly, this looks pretty partial to me. The footnotes in my Bible say that "hate" does not mean an emotional feeling, but simply a preference. Now, if I read Aramaic or Hebrew and could figure out what this passage really means, that would be great. But I don't, so I'm stuck with what a translater wants to tell me it means. The passage doesn't say He hated what Esau did; He hated Esau. What on earth do I do with that? It's hard to wrap my head around it. It makes God seem petty and small and biased.

So. There we are. How do I reconcile a God whom I see as loving and kind, a protector and comforter and friend, with a God who hates His own creation and has ordered the slaughter of entire villages?

Perhaps what should bother me is not so much that God hated Esau, but that God shows partiality at all. Genesis 4:4,5 tells us that "...the Lord had regard for Able and his offering, but for Cain and his offering He had no regard." Later He orders the slaughter of men, women, children and animals of entire villages. Didn't He create them, too? And what did the animals do wrong that they should be condemned to death? Job's children are killed because of a bet between God and satan. What kind of a God does that? And what about David? A womanizer and murderer who is still the "apple of God's eye?" How can this God and that God be the same God?

God hates. There it is. Black and white. Words on a page. Over and over and over again God shows partiality - one man over another, one tribe over another, one village over another. But Jesus tells us that "God is Love." Which are we to believe? Either Romans 2:11 ("For God shows no partiality.") is an out-and-out lie...OR my understanding is limited, faulty, and incomplete.

I'm not a scholar. I don't read Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic. And as much as I would like to be able to, I can't sugar-coat this passage and make it say something it doesn't. God hates. And sometimes He hates His own creation, His own children. God is Love. He's a "Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." (Isaiah 9:6)

Can it simply be that God is all that? And more? Can God be a stern disciplinarian and a loving Father at the same time? Can God love his children, and hate them too? At the risk of anthropomorphing God...can you? Do your children make you crazy where you just want to pop them a burlap sack and head for the creek, while at the same time love them so much it hurts? If your child wanders into the road, do you not go after them, even if you yell at them later? If the bully down the street goes after your kid, are you not the first one out the door to straighten things out?

God is. God is love. God hates. The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. He causes the sun to rise on the just and the unjust. And most importantly for me is that God knows stuff I don't. I don't know Esau's heart. Was Esau's heart like Hitler's? Was Esau's heart evil and wicked and mean? Was Esau's heart so dark that God knew he couldn't (or wouldn't) ever be redeemed? I don't know those things.

So what I am left with is faith. Faith in the God of my understanding. Faith in the God that comforts me and holds me and loves me. And faith in knowing, one-hundred-percent, that God loves me. And maybe, just maybe, that has to be enough.