(Joshua 1:1-15)
The Travel Channel, before it turned into the travel to paranormal locations channel, used to have a show titled Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern. For those of you who have not seen that show or don’t remember it, each week Zimmern would travel around the country and around the world and find weird “delicacies” to try. And then eat them right in front of the camera. Among the bizarre were foods like Rocky Mountain oysters, coconut tree grubs – skewered and grilled, giraffe weevils, and Hákarl (which is spoiled Greenland shark since the fresh shark is poisonous). Of course, based on Andrew’s reaction to that one, I’m not convinced it was any less poisonous after spoiling.
But then, his reaction and ours was the point of the show: Andrew describes bizarre foods in a matter-of-fact way, making sure to include pertinent points about aroma and appearance that you might not fully appreciate from your living room couch, and then enhances the pleasure by describing the texture and taste of these foods as you watch him eat them, often through splayed fingers with your hands over your eyes. In all honesty, while I love the show, there have been times when I could not bear to watch Andrew chow down.
Is God similarly squeamish? Not quite. But the Bible does tell us that sometimes, even He cannot bear to look. Habakkuk 1:13 says, “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil.”
When it comes to sin and wrongdoing, God isn’t even looking between his (metaphorical) fingers. He just can’t stomach it at all. The second part of the verse in Habakkuk confirms this: “You cannot tolerate wrongdoing.” It’s not that God finds such things unpalatable or distressing – it’s that he literally cannot even bear to look at them. That does not mean that He maintains a blissful ignorance, unaware of the evil going on in his world. We’re told elsewhere that “the eyes of the Lord are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good” (Proverbs 15:3). Rather, the verse in Habakkuk highlights the strength of God’s loathing of evil (rather than the extent of His knowledge of it). He cannot tolerate it even for a second. For the Christian, this is simultaneously enormously sobering and, in the end, profoundly comforting – although the comfort to be found here is at the end of a difficult and challenging journey.
The Bible begins with one undeniable, non-negotiable, ultimate fact of reality: God Himself. The story of creation in Genesis 1-2 has a definite shape to it. The first six days are actually in three pairs, as God fills what He has formed: days one and four belong together (day and night; sun, moon, and stars), as do two and five (sky and sea; birds and sea creatures), and three and six (land and vegetation; animals and human beings). On day six, God’s work of creation culminates with the creation of man and woman in God’s own image.
We often think that this is the end of the story, but a better candidate for this role is actually the “rest” that God enjoys on the 7th day. Unlike the other days it has no pair. It also, curiously, lacks the “morning and evening” that describes each of the other days. The implication seems to be that the 7th day describes a permanent state of affairs. Rest is the goal of the creation.
The concept of the Sabbath – and of enjoying God’s blessing of “rest” – is central to Scripture’s account of what it means to live as God’s people. Jesus’ famous invitation in Matthew 11: 28, which we just read, is not an isolated saying simply addressed to the felt needs of his audience. It picks up a thread that runs through the whole Old Testament. The settlement of the people in the Promised Land is described as “rest” at both the beginning and the end of the book of Joshua.
True rest, then, can only be found in the presence of, and by relationship to, the God who made us. That is why there is “no peace … for the wicked” (Isaiah 48:22). The great 4th century theologian Augustine put it like this, “Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they rest in you.”
So, the question rightly arises: If God made us to enjoy His rest, why are we so restless? I mean, look around at our world: a restless place, cut off from a relationship with the God who cannot bear to look at evil. If God’s plan in creating was to share his rest with his human creatures, what went wrong? And how can we get home?
You recall in the Garden of Eden, that we are introduced to two particular trees. One of these trees offers eternal life, the other a forbidden path to knowledge. It is the decision of the man and woman to take that forbidden path in Genesis 3 that explains the restless brokenness of the world. We do not inhabit the perfect place of rest God made for us, because he can’t even bear to look at us. In fact, the whole of creation is restless, because the man and woman, crucial to the fulfillment of God’s plan for his creation, have turned away from him.
That alienation from God is the heart of our problem. Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden, the place of God’s rest. What the writer of Genesis does so brilliantly in telling us this story of our restlessness is to show us how serious our problem is. We cannot simply go back.
The rest of Scripture hums with this tension: God has made human beings in His own image – they are dear to Him, and they have an innate loveliness and dignity; but they have chosen this path of rejection that alienates them from Him and brings them into an apparently unresolvable conflict with His very character. Humans cannot see God and live. God cannot bear to look on the evils of humanity. So, wherever God interacts with His people, there is a burning question: how can this holy God live with unholy people? How can this tension be resolved? For most of Bible history, the best hope seems to be a complex dance of hiding and relationship. Indeed, since the moment sin entered the world, human beings have followed Adam and Eve’s lead and have made constant futile attempts to hide from God.
The end of the book of Exodus is that God comes to dwell among His people. Yet half the preceding chapters are devoted to the design and building of the Tabernacle that makes this meeting even possible. The Tabernacle functions to keep God’s people at a safe distance. The simultaneously glorious and terrifying conclusion of the book sees God’s glory come down on the tent of meeting, but even “Moses could not enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle.” The God who cannot be seen, and who cannot bear to look, found a way to be with his people. But in that very moment of triumph, the problem of their alienation is still plain in the great lengths that have had to be gone to in order to make sure a meeting is possible.
Still, for now there is a comfort even in the disturbing remembrance that God is not tame or indulgent. More than that, His judgment is utterly impartial; it is always perfectly right and fair. This is so different from how we make judgments. We judge behavior differently according to how we feel about the person in question. Our judgments about the world are full of bias and partiality. What we excuse in ourselves and minimize in those we respect, we condemn in those we dislike. We are experts at finding and pointing out the faults of others. Far from experts in even acknowledging that we might have faults of our own.
And this is why it’s good news that God cannot bear to look. God is so utterly, morally pure, so deeply committed to justice that it will “roll on like a river” with “righteousness like a never-failing stream.” One of the greatest pains of living in our broken world, especially for the disenfranchised poor, is that justice is so often not done. It will not always be so. God’s complete inability to tolerate injustice or wrongdoing of any kind is a comfort and assurance to any who long to see the world put right. As poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once wrote:
Though the mills of God grind slowly;
Yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience he stands waiting,
With exactness grinds he all.
This is a great comfort when we are victims of injustice ourselves. God knows, and God cares. He wants justice, and He will bring it. So, when you lie awake thinking about what has been done to you, you don’t need to believe the lie that you don’t matter, or that what has happened to you doesn’t matter, or that you are not worthy of justice. God says that it does matter, and justice is right to pursue. Equally, if justice in this life is unlikely or impossible, you don’t need to lie awake plotting away to get revenge yourself, nor do you need to sink into despair – God will most certainly bring justice, and perfect justice at that.
To those of us who are not on the receiving end of injustice, these are challenging truths. To know God’s concern for righteousness should spur us to be people who seek to see justice done, particularly for those who lack the privilege to demand it for themselves. We can hardly claim to be devoted to God, who cannot bear to look at evil, if we are indifferent to it ourselves.
At the same time, though, God’s concern for justice allows us to live at peace in a world of inequality. Because God cannot look on evil, He will not overlook evil either. One day, He will make all wrongs right and turn our upside-down world right-side up again. We can sleep at night, knowing the end of the story; and we can rise in the morning, and seek to do what we can to put right the gut-wrenching wrongs that exist in even the best-governed societies.
