‘Balance’ is the favourite unbiblical word of many people who teach and claim to believe the Bible. Yet neither the word nor the concept of balance is anywhere to be found throughout the whole testimony of scripture.
‘Balance’ usually means that we stop short of taking an idea seriously when it feels disturbing or uncomfortable to our pre-existing internal equilibrium. When an idea takes us to the point of feeling unsteady or unsure of our footing, we have arrived at that very threshold between transformation and regression. Too often, ‘balance’ is an elastic cord tethering us to our smaller, pettier selves, a warning siren and bunker that promises protection from the fearful threat of transfiguration.
Let me give you my favourite example: reasonable Christians like to say, ‘Don’t be unbalanced brother. God is love, yes, but he is also just! You go too far with the love of God that you lose balance with his justice’. First, I note that ‘love’ is a noun whereas ‘just’ is an adjective, so even if these two were to be balanced against each other they would not sit in the same category of ideas. I have rarely (if ever) heard anyone say ‘God is loving but he is also just’, or ‘God is love but he is also justice’, although either of these statements would at least be categorically consistent. No doubt it is because Bible-believers know that ‘God is love’ is a direct quotation of scripture – indeed one of the pinnacle statements of the whole canon. At the same time, no one wishes to say ‘God is justice’ because somehow this doesn’t feel right, and the more scripturally literate would be aware that no such Biblical claim is made.
The irony is that Christians are ‘close to the kingdom’ when making this statement but shrink bank at the suggestion of selling all to lay hold of it. Allow me to fix it: ‘God is love, and therefore he is also just’. God is not merely ‘loving’, as if love is one of his many attributes. Love is God’s essential nature, the core of his being out of which all his attributes flow. By breaking our codependent need for ‘balance’, we are free to encounter the full force of this reality and be transformed by it. Because love is the essential nature of God, all other divine attributes must be characterized by that same love. To put love and justice on opposite ends of the scale is to propose that these two act in opposition to one another. The only form of justice possible in this scheme is a non-loving justice, since justice is then a counterbalancing opposite to love. But this is precisely why so many are afraid to cross the threshold, because you cannot accept that God is love without sacrificing all your preconceived notions of retribution, payback, and punishment – and we want a God who at least leaves some room for retributive punishers, lest we find that our dirty rags do not befit the Bridegroom’s table.
On what basis can such a monumental claim be made, that God the creator is love and therefore the foundation of all reality is love? This is what the apostles saw and contacted in the person of Jesus Christ, who opened their eyes and ours to the divine love that is the Holy Trinity. Nowhere in history do we see this more powerfully than at the crucifixion. The cross is not the act of a ‘balanced individual’, but a fiery extremist hell-bent on rescuing Their creation.
One Response
Well said. I love how you said “God is love, and therefore He is just”. That fixes it perfectly well.
I was also reminded that “mercy and truth have kissed one another (Ps 85:10). Whatever the truth about me may be, it doesn’t stand apart from Mercy.
A wise man I once knew told me that balance is a point you pass on your way from one extreme to another.