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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Life After Death (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 60. God's Fixed Principle of Action
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God's Fixed Principle of Action
Take another look at the Book. There is a principle underlying God's treatment of men who set themselves against Him. It is a settled principle. He never varies from that principle by so much as the narrow width of a slender hair.
It is not a principle of punishment, primarily. Though the fact of punishment is tied up with it. It is not a using of God's superior power against these men. And it. is not an arbitrary imposing of His will upon those unable to resist or get away. Indeed it is not an arbitrary principle in any way.
I use that word arbitrary in the good sense, of course. It may mean capricious or unreasoning. But in law it means such action or decision as is properly settled upon by the personal judgment of opinion of a judge or tribunal. It stands in contrast with decisions settled by certain established rules or equities. It should be noted that' arbitrary action is recognized as quite proper. And God might act in what would be called an arbitrary way, with full justice and right.
Yet the principle that controls him is not arbitrary. It goes deeper. It has more of the heart element in it. I might say it has more of the good human element in it. I mean the sympathetic fellow feeling element, that feels with a man in his difficulties and surroundings.
It is not on the level of law and right, merely. It is not merely what God might properly do. No, the controlling principle is up on the level of love, a strong controlling love. It is a matter of what He prefers to do. It is not the principle controlling a severe judge, perfectly proper in itself. It is rather the principle that controls a wise father.
Some one thinks here of that Twenty-fifth of Matthew. In the judgment scene depicted there, the King on the throne, who is the Son of Man Himself, acting as judge, says to some, "Depart; under a curse," and so on. That does indeed seem like a properly arbitrary judgment of the King.
Yet as one fits it in with all other passages dealing with the same matter, it is seen to be simply the judge's statement of how the scales swing. The judge holds the scale steady and true. The man's action tips them this way or that. The judge announces which way the scales tip. His action is recitative rather than arbitrary.
That fixed principle that controls God in His dealings with the man who sets himself against God, as with all men, is this: every man shall be utterly free to think ,and act as he chooses. That was the dominating principle in Eden. It is the dominating principle as God breathes creative life and spirit being into every babe born. It will remain in absolute control in the future, wherever a man may choose to go. God has never taken that gift of free choice back. He never will.
To appreciate keenly how finely true this is one must brood over the character of God. He is not a judge, merely. He is that indeed, in the finest sense. But He is more than that word makes us think of. He is indeed, as the old phrase goes the moral Ruler of the universe. But with God the whole thing is on a higher, deeper, tenderer, humaner, level.
It will help get at the thing to recall some of the earlier ideas of the word "father". There are ideals inherent in the word which we westerners have lost, in some measure. The father was the head of the family. He ruled. There was no exception possible to his rulings. He was the priest of the family. He led its worship. He stood to the family for God, and stood to God for the family.
He was the teacher, instructing, disciplining, training and moulding. And with these, mingled inextricably was the tenderness of the father for his own child, companionship with the child, devotion to the child, an intense ambition and pleasure in. the future of the child, and in an emergency any sacirfice needed for the sake of it.
That old idea carried to its fullest degree, re-fined to the utmost, is the one word for God. He is peculiarly the Father. And be it keenly noted, He retains that relation creatively toward every man regardless of how that man treats God. He can't, of course, do all He would do except as the man voluntarily, gladly lets Him.
It will surely help here to make a contrast. Black put beside white looks blacker, or shows how black it really is. In contrast with the true meaning of father as seen in God, look at a weak human father.
David let his son, Amnon, go unrebuked and unpunished, though his wrong was as bad as bad could be. David let his favorite son Absalom also go free of rebuke or discipline or punishment. Yet Absalom was a murderer as Amnon was an adulterer. So lust and violence, two of the worst demons, were let loose in his kingdom.
Yet David was a wise ruler. But the father in him overcame the king in him. His emotion blurred his judgment. He knew full well as king, how evil the thing was, and how disastrous to his rule and kingdom. But the emotion in him dimmed his eye, and unsteadied his usually shrewd judgment. The result was that lust and blood ran riot. In the bad mix-up, he actually let the weakened fatherly traits in himself de-throne him as king. That's an illustration of weak fatherhood.