jammin' with    God
a Christian musician’s perspective by Pete Caputo

You see… people have tried to convince me that God is more than just love; that there are many other aspects to God’s character.  That He’s not all about being warm and fuzzy, unconditional lovey-dovey.  They try and convince me that God has many facets to his nature… that He is at times jealous, on occasion, angry, and always sovereign.

Well to all that, I say… poppy cock!

The problem for me is not accepting that God has many character traits… the problem I have is with most people’s definition of love.  Because, not only can Love be sweet and kind, but love can also be difficult to understand, tough or even mysterious… and at times, love can appear to be downright ruthless.  And the moment you think you understand how love’s going to react, well that’s when you realize how little you really know about it. 

But does love really possess the attribute of wrath?  Well if you believe that God is Love, then you’ve got to believe that Love has a wrath side, just like the warm and fuzzy side.  However, it’s still a tough nut to crack, because just saying God is Love makes it hard to see a dark side to this wonderful word we call love.

As Christians, we understand what happens when we live and die without God in our lives.  There is an eternal price to pay.  Instead of embracing the grace of God, the only open arms left to run to, are the empty clutches of space and time, as a defiant spirit takes its place in eternal darkness and in total separation from God.  The wrath of Love has spoken without saying a word.

Seems cold and cruel.  Yet, that’s just how it is.  Love is the single lit candle in a pitch-dark room.  You either go to it, or you stay in your darkened corner.  And when the light decides to move, you can either follow it or you can stay in your darkness.  Take a look at the gospels and you’ll see time and time again, that Jesus warned us that there would be a consequence to our some of our actions.  He spoke of a place where there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth”, and He spent much of his earthly ministry telling us how to avoid such a place.  In a word, it’s grace… remember.

And because of this good news, we can be fully persuaded “…that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the Love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.”  (Romans 8:38, 39)

So why would anyone not want to ask Love into their heart… right?  Perhaps, it’s because we may not be totally aware of the wrath of Love.  Here’s what I mean.

In this life, there are some obstacles… mistruths or even half-truths that keep us from truly understanding all of the aspects of Love.

The first obstacle is the mindset that that tells us… “Love is only one of the many facets of God’s character”.  You may not see this as a big issue.  I know many Christians who look at love, this way.  But here’s the pitfall, and we all do it.  It becomes so easy to endow God with our human character traits when we think like this.  Suddenly God is created in our own image.  We think about love, and we imagine God loving similar to the way we love, while we tend to forget He’s the author of love.

But, it’s the same thing with hate.  We imagine that God hates, because we’ve learned to hate, so the obvious conclusion is God has this attribute, as well.

Let’s jam on hate, for a moment.  The bible is clear that God hates sin.  And in other passages such as Psalms 5:5, 11:5, Hosea 9:15, Proverbs 6, Romans 9:13 and a few other places, scripture goes as far as to imply that God actually hates certain people. 

But before we go any further with this train of thought, let’s remember what God says in Isaiah 55:9… “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”  Now if there was ever a scripture that really brought an entire subject into perspective, it’s this one… because we’re reminded of how the human capacity to hate is so different than God’s.

So, the obvious conclusion is, Love does have the capacity to hate.  But He hates in a way that we cannot truly understand, nor fully appreciate.  This thinking however is not good enough for some people.  There always have been, and always will be, a certain few in our midst that love to use the hate card, especially while on their soapboxes, to describe how God is going to crush all those who don’t agree with their brand of religion… Christian or otherwise.

It’s convenient for them to keep hate as an individual facet of God’s character, because then God is as angry and as close-minded as they are.  They would never see God’s hatred as part of His love because then they would have to admit that it’s a mystery, just like Love.  And ultimately, they would have to accept that God’s wrath is different from than their wrath.

Take a look at the time when Jesus drove the moneychangers out of the temple, in John 2:14-16.  Most of us have seen the paintings and movie scenes that show an angry Jesus with whip in hand and face full of rage, as He pushes his way through the tables… doves flying, coins spilling and confused merchants running for cover.

But before He went on this rampage, John tells us that Jesus first took the time to make the whip out of small chords.  What this tells me, is Jesus was very cool and collected about what He was about to do.  He didn’t just act out of anger or hatred.  His actions had a purpose, His rage was controlled, and His wrath came out of His love for the lost and out of respect for the house of God.

If most of us were there as Jesus went off into a corner to fasten his whip, the last thing we would have expected was that He was about to go postal in the temple courtyard.  We would have thought that He was going to use that rope as a prop in one of His parables or as some kind of metaphor in some deeply spiritual lesson.

Well that is what Love was doing.  And the lesson was… “don’t ever lose site of why you come to my Father’s house.  You’ve been told to bring your sacrifices here, but you’ve brought your rituals, instead.  You forget that the sacrifice must come from your heart, not from your pocketbook.  Your praise and worship has become a game of supply and demand for those who praise the market place and worship gold.  So to those of you who know not Love, I chase you out with the only way you understand… brute force.”

Love is still God here, but He’s simply utilizing the best facet of His character… wrath.

There is another, and more dangerous, obstacle.  It is the belief that human love has nothing to do with God.  I know people who have told me that they find it demeaning or just a manipulative religious tactic to say that God is Love.  They believe that love is a human condition, born in our hearts, and it has nothing to do with an external deity, force or Supreme Being.  And trust me.  It’s more than just an atheistic philosophy.  There are also lots of other sources teaching the same thing.  But they all adhere to the same basic principal, and that is… love is a conditional human character trait that is learned, and has nothing to do with an external God.  Anything different is simply a religious attempt to control and influence the masses.

Well, if that’s what you believe, all I can say is… I’m really sorry you feel this way.  In fact, it’s really kind of judgmental to presume someone’s true intentions like that.  Obviously, I can only speak for myself, but God knows I have no desire to manipulate, indoctrinate, inculcate or play religion-mate.  I don’t even like religion.  It really doesn’t benefit me whether you believe it or not.  I just want to share with as many people as possible, the greatest treasure in my life, the greatest gift that I know this life has to offer… the understanding that God is real… and that He wants us to be connected to him… always, and in all ways. 

And Love is the key, because it’s the best way for God to show Himself to us.  It’s the most tangible human way to explain God because even without saying a word, most of us will accept Love into ou    r lives in one way or another.

But here’s what happens with the “human love only” obstacle.  As we all embark on our own spiritual journeys, most of us take a stroll through the vast banquet table of religions, just to taste of the smorgasbord of philosophies and beliefs.  But what usually happens when the subject of love comes up? 

Well, we’re usually directed to the dessert table, full of fancy treats, sweets and comfort foods.  There, we’re told that love is all you need, and given a tree to hug.  Well, this may sound similar to what I’ve been jammin’ on, but it’s not,  (I don’t hug things that don’t hug me back).  The “human love only” belief is just a high calorie sugar coated lie, intended to do nothing else but eventually clog the arteries leading us back to the heart, the true source of love and life. 

Philosophies and religions that espouse the “love within,” mantra may sometimes even go as far as to say… “that’s God within you.”  And it may become very difficult to know the difference between this and the truth that God is Love.  Later in our jammin’ exercise I will try and offer a helpful way to see the difference.

But the biggest problem I believe we all face is the realization that this life is still full of pain, suffering, injustice, disease, afflictions and fear.  This is the third, and for most of us, the toughest obstacle to overcome.  Because we all know that God still allows all these things to happen to the world around us, and at times in our own worlds, as well.  Once again, we’re reminded that God’s ways are not our ways, and we either choose to accept the sovereignty of Love, or we move further away from Him. 

I find it interesting that our initial responses to calamity and hardship are usually not much different than Job’s, in the Old Testament.  In chapter 1 verse 21, after suddenly hearing of his entire family and possessions being ripped away from him, he said, “… the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away…”

Well who could blame the poor guy for saying that?  And in the following chapters, it get’s worse, as his so-called friends lead him further down the street of broken dreams, until Love puts the breaks on his bad road trip.  But what Job and company thought was the wrath of God, turned out to be something totally different.  We know right from the first chapter that there was some other deeper, more eternal purpose to Job’s suffering. 

We know that when Satan told God that he can’t get to Job, because of the hedge of protection around him, God responds by saying,   “…behold He’s already in your hands.  Just don’t harm him or try to take his life.”  There’s a reason that God would allow hell to fall on his child.  We’re not quite sure why, but maybe it’s not for us to totally understand. 

More importantly it comes down to what God finally told Job.  He told him something like is this... “Hey buddy, listen up.  For you to totally understand everything that I do is impossible.  Just remember that you are my child and I will bring you through this experience, and you and I will be cool when it’s all said and done.  (That’s the Pete translation).  But don’t believe me.  Check out the end of the book of Job, where he winds up with even more blessings than he had before his troubles began.

This does not mean that we’ll have larger bank accounts after we all come through our calamities in life.  Now, that’s not the point.  Although God does restore what the enemy has taken away, Love is doing something far greater here.  He’s getting us to recognize all three of the above-mentioned obstacles so we can ultimately arrive at the place where Job found himself.  He was finally connected to Love, perhaps for the first time in his life.  Even through all of his previous bounty and prosperity, when all his hardship came, his initial opinion was that of an angry God.  But finally when he looked at God through the lens of Love, Job was able to rest, knowing that his Father had everything under control.

Unfortunately, this is not the case for everyone.  We’re reminded that some people may never accept this, and we must never forget that the wrath of Love is stored up, and it will be poured out upon those who refuse to accept Love in their hearts.

And no one likes to use the word Love there, instead of God, not even me.  It makes me uncomfortable.  Makes it hard to talk favorably about Love.  Makes Love look like an unfair, un-loving, angry, vindictive, merciless God that pleasures in our demise.

Let me close with one more thought.  In an earlier jam, we mentioned free will.  I don’t think there’s a better place to appreciate the roll of free will than here, because when we experience the wrath of Love, we’re made painfully aware that we do have a part to play. 

And while our human nature and our close confidants may interpret our tough luck as either an act of God or as something we brought on ourselves, there’s a deeper meaning and lesson to be learned, that only Love can reveal to you.

It’s true.  Sometimes the hardest question to answer is…  “Did we bring our troubles on ourselves because of our free will… or was it predestined to happen?”  Well, although our logic and reason don’t get it, the answer is always the same… both.

But don’t despair.  Because within the wrath of Love, there’s always a way back to the Father… a way for us to stay connected.  There’s still a way to come out even better than you started, and the ultimate lesson we learn is, nothing can separate us from His love… nothing.

Finally, there’s only one thing, left to do... repent.  This is always the best way to exercise our free will.  We simply come to the throne and say… “You were right.  I was wrong.  I’m sorry Lord.  I have learned from this experience.  And now I can freely jam with you in the future, when this situation comes up again.”

When this happens, we may still not totally understand the wrath of Love, but in true repentance, we can rest assure knowing that we’re still found in the arms of Love.

Jammin exercise:                           The three obstacles mentioned earlier become more easily recognizable as we spend time before the throne.  Here’s a perfect example of how developing your prayer language, beyond your human limitations, helps to make you aware of every pitfall and counterfeit the world has to offer.

But, it starts with knowing God’s word.  There’s no substitute for jammin’ with the right crowd.  Not knowing what God has to say about any given subject is like playing a song in the wrong key, or in a different time signature.  Take the time to find Love’s opinion on a subject.  Read the scriptures, fellowship with trustworthy Christian leaders and friends.  Then you will find Love’s true intentions, and apply it to your present situation.

And, the next time you hear about a senseless calamity or disaster in the news, think about all the opinions that are presented by the talking heads on TV, your friends and acquaintances.  Did they say it was it an act of God?  Was it a result of someone’s sin?  Whatever the consensus is, do you see an angry God stepping back from the crime scene with arms folded saying, “See, I told you so…”  or do you see the arms of Love wide open, ready to heal and restore life?

I pray that you never know the wrath of God, as anything more than simply a facet of His Love.