Metaphor 13 - Defense Mechanisms

It’s time to turn back once again and consider the Chain of Being.

We can perceive in nature that every creature in the Chain of Being has a means of maintaining itself in its environment against threats to its being. As with the complexity of the creature, so is the complexity of its defenses.

The amoeba has within its nature and its power the ability to ooze slowly away. The fish has within its nature and its power the ability to swim quickly away and be very slippery. The hound has its teeth, its cunning, and its instinct to band into a pack with it fellows, while monkeys and apes have their roaming societies which operate in a yet a more complex fashion than dog packs.

And humans have become supreme in their maintenance of themselves, even to the extent of it being at the expense of many other species. Humans can "get at" any other species in the creation.

Should it come as any surprise to us that God has within His power and His nature a means to maintain His personal integrity in the face of a nightmare?

That means has a technical name. As a human metaphor we call it "wrath." It is a good metaphor in that it correctly conveys a vital emotion that a threat to one’s integrity would call forth. Where it falls down is the fact that we have known human beings in our lives who have been unreasonably and unjustly wrathful.

The thing to keep in mind about wrath in reference to God is that, since He sits at the top of the Chain of Being and is perfect and righteous and holy, any anger that is kindled in Him and any wrath that is provoked out of Him, has all three of those attributes, and will be perfectly in line with the rest of His character, and therefore just.

Now, here is the kicker. You will recall that when something happens in a moment in time, it becomes, to an eternal being, as if it were always happening, never fading away. Since God is eternal, anything that happens in a moment in time that activates His wrath will cause that wrath to fall with the that same attribute that God has, i.e., it will be as everlasting (beginning in a moment of time) as God is eternal (having no beginning and going on forever).

And since God is in eternity and all the moments of time are as one to Him, the time His wrath will eventually fall is up to His convenience and not that of any creature in His creation. His sword is truly the sword of Damocles. And His defense of His integrity is a more fearful thing than any weapon of man or beast.