I was in a meeting with other Lutheran clergy and we got to discussing the ancient problem of the witness of scripture to a God who would slay gazillions of people on what appears at times to be the slightest of whims. I suggested that my belief in Jesus as the human face of God would indicate that such horrific activity was the antithesis of what Jesus was revealing. I further stated that I had long ago stopped reading passages from the Bible that seemed to me to describe God as nothing more than the big bully on the block.

"What right do you have to alter scripture and the ancient canons of our church?" someone asked me.

"Only what my faith in Christ demands," I countered.

My study of scripture and particularly the life of Jesus points me to believing that Jesus had a very different understanding of God than many of the religious folk of his day...and, judging from my own experiences like this past week, that continues to this very day.

One of the pastors sat straight up and declared,

"We need a God of wrath in order for Jesus to appease Him by his death."

I stared at him trying to decide if he was really serious or not. He was and, I have to say, he was also, according to the tradition and doctrine of our faith, correct.

I just don't believe it to be true.

Somewhere along the line the church became consumed with explaining the death of Jesus in ways that were decidedly different from the message of Christ. When you start telling people what they must believe in order to be loved you have, I believe, moved light years away from Jesus. Oh, you can make it sound holy and sacred, you can add all kinds of rationales and reasons but if it doesn't sing of the beauty of God's unconditional love, it is not from the God described and revealed by Jesus.