So to share a bit regarding Kevin (@Trippy_Elixir) and Randy (@Randy) on their earlier discussion to which i was recently made aware…
If helpful, this is where i begin, I tend to start elsewhere and thus why i bring probably a different perspective… Take the things Jesus threatened, the eternal judgment against the “goats”…
However one interprets his words, however one lightens them, allegorizes, understands them as hyperbole… they remain terribly harsh… the rich man being tormented in flames, the angels bringing the damned into the fiery furnaces, the enemies being slaughtered in front of the king, the goats being sent into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels, etc.
Bottom line, I can’t see Jesus being “offended” by the judgments that were given in the Old Testament in various contexts, in the same way that us moderns tend to be… given his own use of language, his own promise of judgments… If anything, the judgments he promised were worse… and even if someone wants to interpret them in a most metaphorical way, his metaphors were still worse than what is described in the OT. If we are going to be offended at what we read there, then we have to be offended at Christ’s words as unjust as well. I can’t go there myself, hence my overall position.
Another thing that gives me pause is simply remembering that God has determined that all men die, and not one of us will fall to the ground at any time apart from the will of our Father in heaven. Many people for instance point to how unjust God was in the Genesis 6 flood… but, and i hope this doesn’t sound crass, or as if i am discounting real pain of destruction, natural disasters, and suffering… but at the same time, all those people who died in the flood were going to die anyway. none of them would be here today in any case. So to use Uzzah’s example… If God decides to bring about someone’s death through a miraculous judgment for touching the ark when he was (say) 40 years old, is that somehow inherently more “unjust” than if Uzzah had died of dysentery when he was 35, a heart attack at 45, or cancer at 55?
My bottom line, God has the right to take the life of any one of us at any time he wishes for any reason he deems fit. Some cause us more grief, some are more striking, some make the news and some dont, but all of us die, and all of us die by the hand of God at the time and in the manner he sees fit.
And when some of those deaths take place in a more obvious, striking, or attention-getting manner, like that of Uzzah, in order to highlight how important it is that we honor him as God… I don’t see what basis I have to complain.
My $.02, if interesting.