Are We Experiencing The Passive Wrath Of God?
Tracey Tiernan, host of Your Day Brighter™ Podcast, was recently able to talk with pastor and author Dr. Tony Evans about our identity as Christians, the role of the church, the racial tension in our country and what the Bible has to say about all of it. Read below for an excerpt from their powerful conversation.
Tracey: Can we transition for a moment to a different kind of grief? The pain of the racial tension in our country and our world. I mean it it’s it’s been here for a long time, but it seems like it comes in waves when it’s on the forefront of everyone’s minds. As you have processed what’s been going on just in recent months with the murders George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor – the list goes on and on… How do we come together as the body of Christ, in all of our different hues and shades and colors, to make the correction and the change that is so desperately needed? And how do you process what’s going on as a follower of Jesus first? Can you give us some understanding on the heart of God in all of this and how we can be a part of how God is working?
Dr. Tony Evans: Well, I’ll start with 2 Chronicles 15:3-6. The passage says the Spiritual have been marginalized and so there was no peace to the individual or to the family or to the cities. Then it goes on to say there was no peace to the nation. In verse six it says that “God troubled them with every kind of distress.” Now, you would’ve thought, with all of that chaos, it would’ve said the devil troubled them, but it doesn’t. It says God troubled them.
I think we are experiencing the passive wrath of God. The passive wrath of God is when He has been so marginalized that He releases us to experience life without him. And at the core of that marginalization that verse three talks about is the failure of the church. It talks about how the priests were not functioning properly.
The racial climate in our country is really driven by a failure of the church. The churches have not properly addressed this issue. The church has been illegitimately divided therefore allowing the culture to not be able to fix the issue. So until God’s people decide that our identity in Christ must trump our racial identity, how we were raised, the color of our skin, our personal preferences, so that we will allow our identity as Christians to overrule anything else; Until that happens, then God is not comfortable enough with us to use us to heal the culture.
In verse four of 2 Chronicles it says in their distress, the distress that God has caused, in their distress they cried out to the Lord and he let them find Him. So, I believe that what God has done, is He has allowed this chaos to give the church a fresh opportunity to model before the culture His heart of unity that Jesus prayed for, which will allow his glory to be manifested in a problematic situation.
To listen to the rest of Tracey and Dr. Tony Evans’ conversation, check out the full Your Day Brighter™ Podcast episode “Dr. Tony Evans and Trusting God in the Dark”
