There are some stories in the Bible that stay with you.
For some, inspirational stories — multiple accounts of Jesus’ compassion and healing, stories of redemption, and lives being made anew — keep their spirits up and these stories help when times get hard.
For others, what creates an impression are awe-inspiring tales of God’s power and majesty such as Moses parting the Red Sea, or Joshua commanding the Sun and Moon to stand still (!!).
And for those with even more peculiar interests, anecdotes of human-angelic hybrids in Genesis or apocalyptic visions in Revelation might tickle their fancy.
In my (much) younger years, the stories that wormed and burrowed into my brain were accounts of God being unfair or cruel. That’s my jam.
Take Lot’s wife, for example. They were in a desperate escape from a cataclysmic event. She looked back (of course! it was a freaking never-seen-before event!), and got turned into a pillar of salt for that act. It wasn’t mentioned whether Lot’s wife had more transgressions than that one act, but God’s reaction was unerringly swift and brutal.
Then there’s Uzzah. One day while the Israelites were transporting the Ark of the Covenant, the oxen carrying the Ark stumbled, and my man Uzzah — possibly in concern, or maybe just an instantaneous/unthinking gut reaction — put out his hand and caught? steadied? took hold? of the Ark and BOOOOOOOOOM. The Lord struck him where he stood, right beside the Ark he tried to save.
Now, even a cursory search on these two stories will yield you a ton of commentaries justifying why God acted that way.
Maybe Lot’s wife died because she valued her old life so much that she hesitated in obeying the Lord. Perhaps she identified too much with her city — and so joined their fate. Possibly, her death may even be just a simple consequence of her reluctance to leave her old life behind, a manifestation of her heart’s demurral in turning away from its sinful ways. Or maybe she was crying for her neighbors and spared a glance out of sympathy.
The reason for Uzzah’s demise is a little starker. First, the Ark was a Big Deal — essentially, it was The Presence of The Lord while on this Earth. They had a slew of rules and exact instructions on how it was to be made, carried (only by Levites, and only from a specific family), and treated. Even if we give Uzzah the benefit of the doubt and think that he touched the Ark with noble intentions, it was clearly against what God said they should do.
Second, Uzzah’s actions could be questioned. Maybe he got too accustomed to the Ark because it stayed in his house and he forgot the holiness it represented. There was also an element of self-importance there. Maybe he felt that without his intervention, God’s presence and dignity would have been tarnished. Certainly, he thought he was holier (and therefore more worthy) to touch the Ark than the ground (which is incapable of sinning).
But even with these reasons, it’s not a stretch to have moments where we sympathize with these two. Couldn’t have God acted more mercifully? It was a momentary lapse. They may even have had good intentions.
You see, that doesn’t matter.
God said don’t look back. God said don’t touch the Ark. Lot’s wife and Uzzah did those things so they died. That’s something that’s hard for us to accept: the fact that God doesn’t need to be justified.
See, this is what happens when we treat God’s word casually. Like it’s something we can negotiate with and argue about.
Everything in the universe — from galaxy-spanning black holes and unfathomably vast supernovas to the smallest quantum particles — exists because God said so. The laws of physics stand or are overturned according to His Word. What makes us think it’s safe to ignore what He says?
What makes us think that our opinions matter more than His Word? That our situations can bend His instructions? How big a fool are we to think that our desires, our wants, our sorrows trump what He said?
When did we get bigger than God? When did we get more important?
It’s hard, I know, because this world keeps telling us that we’re Number 1. That we should go for what we want. That we should be understood. That we matter.
We don’t. Not if what stands on the other end of the scale is God’s Word.
In the fantastically-written Lucifer comics by Mike Carey, there’s a page describing God’s (spoken) Word as something that does not decay. I love that. I absolutely love the thought of that. Everything in this cosmos changes — that’s the hallmark of existence. Worlds end. Stars go out. But the Word of the Lord? It endures forever.
