What a motel fight taught me about the character of God.
Years ago, I witnessed a fight that has stayed with me ever since.
It did not happen in a back alley or in a crowded bar. It happened at a motel.
A drunken man came looking for someone he wanted to beat up.
He entered an open motel room where the man he was looking for was not staying. Outside that room, three other men were sitting. One of them was staying there.
When the drunk came back out, the men questioned him about walking into the room. But the real issue was not the room. The real problem was that he kept insisting he was looking for another man so he could beat him up.
The conversation grew heated.
Finally, one of the three told him to leave or he was going to beat him up.
Instead of backing down, the drunk bragged that he could take on all three men at once. He began emptying his pockets, getting ready to fight.
Before he finished, one of the three began hitting him. He continued until another man stepped in and stopped him.
There was nothing noble about the violence itself. I am not telling this story because fistfights are admirable. They are not.
But that moment impressed something on my mind that I have not forgotten.
If someone had arrived only at the moment the blows began, he might have completely misunderstood what he was seeing.
He would have seen only a man being hit.
He would not have seen the threat that came before it.
He would not have heard the warning that had been given.
He would not have known what the drunk had come intending to do.
He would not have understood what the others believed they were stopping.
He would have seen the ending without knowing the story.
And that, I believe, is often how we read some of the most troubling stories in the Bible.
We Often Judge by the Last Thing We See
Many people struggle with certain passages of Scripture.
God sends the flood.
Sodom is destroyed.
Egypt is struck with plagues.
The Red Sea closes over Pharaoh’s army.
Nadab and Abihu fall dead.
Korah and his company are swallowed up.
Nations come under judgment.
And because we usually step into the story at the moment judgment falls, God can appear severe, harsh, frightening, even cruel.
We see the blow.
But we do not always see what came before it.
We do not see centuries of patience.
We do not see every warning.
We do not see every hidden act of cruelty, oppression, rebellion, violence, corruption, or spiritual ruin that God has already endured.
We do not see all the lives being harmed.
We do not see what would have happened had He not acted.
And we certainly do not see the end from the beginning.
But He does.
That does not make every hard Bible passage easy. Some stories still unsettle us. Some still leave us with questions. But perhaps the problem is not always that God has acted without love. Perhaps the problem is that we are trying to evaluate His actions without having access to the whole story.
We are creatures of moments.
God is Lord of the whole timeline.
We see one scene.
He sees all causes, all consequences, all motives, all warnings, and all possible outcomes.
What looks cruel when seen only at the end may look very different when we understand what came before it.
God’s “Strange Act”
Isaiah 28:21 contains one of the most revealing descriptions of divine judgment in the Bible. It calls judgment God’s “strange act.”
That is a remarkable phrase.
Why would judgment be called strange?
Because destruction is not God’s natural delight.
It is not what brings Him joy.
It is not what He longs to do.
It is not the deepest expression of His heart.
Ezekiel 33:11 says He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. He would rather that the wicked turn from his way and live.
That means judgment, however real, is never something God performs with cold delight. It is not the pleasure of a harsh ruler enjoying punishment. It is the reluctant work of a God who loves life, values freedom, and yet will not allow evil to continue forever unchecked.
If we could see everything God sees, perhaps we would not spend so much time wondering why He acted so severely.
Perhaps we would wonder how He could have been so patient for so long.
That may be one of the great hidden truths behind many of the Bible’s hardest stories: not that God was too quick to destroy, but that He was unbelievably slow.
The Red Sea: Judgment or Rescue?
One of the clearest examples is the Red Sea.
The Israelites had not wronged Egypt. They had been enslaved by Egypt. Their children had been threatened. Their lives had been controlled by a cruel power that refused to let them go.
God did not strike Egypt without warning. He sent Moses. He appealed. He confronted. He warned. He gave repeated opportunities for response.
Even during the plagues, there were Egyptians who responded to God’s warnings.
Then came the sea.
Israel stood trapped with nowhere to go. The army behind them was not coming to wish them well. Pharaoh’s forces were not pursuing them to apologize. They were coming to bring them back into bondage.
God opened a way for His people through the waters.
Then the same sea that became salvation for one group became destruction for another.
How we describe that event depends greatly on what part of the story we focus on.
If we focus only on drowned Egyptians, we may conclude that the main thing God was doing was killing.
But if we see the whole story, we realize that the main thing God was doing was saving.
He was rescuing slaves.
He was protecting the vulnerable.
He was ending a violent oppression.
He was stopping an army that intended to drag people back into suffering.
The destruction was real.
But it was not the whole meaning of the event.
The deeper meaning was deliverance.
That is why, when we read difficult stories, it may help to ask:
Whom was God protecting?
What evil was He stopping?
What warnings had He given?
What does this reveal about His desire to save?
Those questions do not explain everything. But they often bring us closer to the heart of what God is doing.
Judgment Is Not Simple
We do need to be careful here.
Not every divine judgment in Scripture can be reduced to one simple formula. God’s judgments are not always explained only by immediate physical protection. Sometimes they involve entrenched rebellion. Sometimes they expose sacred hypocrisy. Sometimes they reveal the deadly seriousness of sin. Sometimes they function as warnings to others. Sometimes they mark the end of a long history of mercy rejected.
And at the final judgment, God will not merely be interrupting acts of violence in progress. He will be bringing the entire history of evil to an end.
So this article is not arguing that every act of judgment can be explained in exactly the same way.
It is saying something else.
It is saying that we should be slow to interpret divine judgment apart from divine love.
If we do not understand God’s character, we will almost certainly misread His actions.
And if we interpret His judgments without remembering His mercy, patience, sorrow, and desire to save, we will end up imagining a God unlike the One revealed in Jesus.
Jesus Is the Key
If we want to know what God is like, we must keep our eyes on Jesus.
Jesus did not come to soften a cruel Father.
He came to reveal the Father truly.
“He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).
That means the One who wept at Lazarus’ tomb shows us God.
The One who touched lepers shows us God.
The One who forgave sinners shows us God.
The One who welcomed children shows us God.
The One who wept over Jerusalem shows us God.
The One who prayed, “Father, forgive them,” while being crucified shows us God.
This is crucial.
Whenever we read a story of judgment in the Old Testament and wonder what it means, we must not interpret it in a way that contradicts the character of Jesus.
Jesus shows us that God is not eager to destroy.
He is eager to restore.
He is not indifferent to suffering.
He enters into it.
He is not careless with sinners.
He loves them enough to warn them, pursue them, and, if they will let Him, save them.
The cross proves this more than anything else ever could.
At Calvary, God did not stand far away from human violence and merely comment on it. He entered our world and bore its cruelty in His own body. The One we fear may be harsh is the very One who allowed Himself to be nailed to wood so that those who deserved death could be offered life.
The cross means that whatever else we say about judgment, we must say this: the Judge loves the guilty.
And He has proven it.
The First Death and the Second
Part of our confusion also comes from how we think about death.
From our earthly perspective, physical death feels like the greatest tragedy. And in one sense it is. It tears families apart. It causes grief, fear, and pain.
But the Bible speaks not only of the first death, which all humanity faces in one way or another, but also of the second death, the final end of sin and rebellion.
Jesus told His followers not to fear those who can kill the body but cannot ultimately destroy the soul. In other words, the worst thing that can happen to a person is not merely that he dies now. The worst thing is to be eternally separated from the life of God.
This does not make present suffering small. But it does put it in a larger frame.
Sometimes God’s acts of judgment are part of a larger work of protecting His people and moving history toward the final destruction of evil itself.
There are times when His children suffer.
There are times when they die.
There are times when rescue does not look immediate.
But for those who trust Him, the first death is not the end of the story.
Resurrection is coming.
That means God’s commitment to protect and save His people must be measured not merely by what happens in this brief life, but by what He is preparing forever.
There Is Always More to the Story Than We Can See
That motel fight stayed with me because it showed me how easy it is to misread an event when we have only the last frame.
A person walking in halfway through would have formed an opinion based on very limited information.
And that is exactly what we do so often with God.
We arrive at the scene late.
We see one hard moment.
We hear of one act of judgment.
We feel one emotional reaction.
And then we decide what kind of God He must be.
But what if we have not seen enough yet?
What if behind that single moment are years of mercy?
What if behind that judgment are countless warnings?
What if behind that severity is a love that has already gone farther than we can imagine?
What if behind what terrifies us is a God protecting others from horrors we know nothing about?
What if the real wonder is not that God has acted, but that He waited so long?
That does not answer every question.
But it changes the spirit in which we ask them.
Instead of asking only, “How could God do that?” we begin asking better questions:
Whom was God protecting?
What evil was He stopping?
What warnings had He given?
What does this reveal about His desire to save?
Those questions do not erase mystery. But they guard us from reading God’s actions through the lens of suspicion alone.
They help us remember that with God, there is always more to the story than we can see.
The God You Fear Is the God Who Is Working to Save You
Many people have been taught to fear God’s power before they have learned to trust His heart.
That is one reason difficult Bible stories can be so unsettling. Without the larger picture, judgment appears to be the action of a God who is against us.
But the Gospel tells a different story.
The God of Scripture is not against humanity. He is against the evil that is ruining humanity.
He is not against life. He is against the sin that destroys life.
He is not hostile to sinners. He is hostile to the disease that is devouring them.
And in Jesus, He has shown how far He is willing to go to save.
So the next time we read a frightening story in the Bible, perhaps we should pause before we pronounce judgment on God.
Perhaps we should remember the part we may not yet see.
Perhaps we should remember that His judgments are called strange because destruction is not His deepest desire.
And perhaps, if we could see everything He sees, we would not wonder why He acted so severely.
We would wonder how He had been so patient for so long.
With God, there is always more to the story than we can see.