A friend of mine was here a week or so ago and we talked of various and sundry things. One of them was the many-faceted ways in which God reveals Himself in the Scriptures. I offered two examples from different ends of the spectrum. One comes from the parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18, in which the master, having forgiven his servant a huge debt and then discovered that this same servant refused to forgive a fellow servant a tiny debt, “handed him over to the torturers.” Jesus goes on to say that his Father will do exactly the same thing to us if we do not forgive from the heart. The other example was that of the father of the prodigal son, who forgave him without even asking for an account of his evildoing—indeed, not even giving him a chance to confess but immediately lavishing abundant love and gifts upon him.
So, I mused, this very same God will hand someone over to the torturers in one case and overflow with mercy and love in another. Yet it is not for us to embrace one image of God and reject another, because they are both found in the Scriptures and hence are both true revelations of who God is and what He does. As I wondered aloud about all this, the conversation went as follows. She said:
“Isn’t it simply a matter of the heart?”
“What do you mean?” I cluelessly queried.
“Well, the way God dealt with them depended upon what was in their hearts. The evil-hearted man was punished and the one with the repentant heart was warmly received.”
So, the nature of our encounter with God will largely depend upon the condition of our hearts. That flicked the switch of a little interior light and gave me pause for further reflection (and hence for this blog post!). Perhaps we sometimes strain our brains wondering how God really is when we ought to be paying more attention to how we really are! God is God; we’ll never fully figure Him out. His ways and thoughts are not ours. But we do have many examples of how He deals with people, and that ordinarily depends on, well, people!
God responds to us according to what He finds in us. It is true that without 
his grace we cannot be saved, so in the fundamental order of things He takes the initiative. But very much depends on us when it comes to the actual outcome of our lives and hence our eternal destinies. God alone is the Judge, but our very lives provide the evidence. The content of our lives is what will manifest one or another aspect of God’s face in our regard. Look at the parable of the Last Judgment (Mt. 25). How did those who refused to minister in some way to the needy encounter God? It was quite terrifying: “Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels!” But how did those who spent their lives serving others experience God? It couldn’t have been more warm and joyful: “Come, you who are blessed by My Father, and inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world!” God is the same God in both cases. But He found different things in the hearts of those gathered before Him—in some He found evil and in some He found good. So the same God was in some cases like the master who handed the wicked servant over to the torturers, and in other cases He was like the father who received his long-lost son and held a banquet for him.
A priest I know once told me that God is primarily just in his dealings with us. If we don’t take the trouble to implore his mercy, then we will receive strict justice. But, since God is love, He wants to pour out his mercy upon us. He’s just looking for hearts that are open to his benevolence, who ask for his grace and mercy—in short, hearts that are turned towards Him and are thus ready to do his will. The face of God that we encounter has a lot to do with what is already in us. We should never think or assert that any image of God given us in the Scriptures, whether Old or New Testament, is not a true one. But we should also be aware that it is largely up to us whether or not it will be necessary for us ever to encounter the fiercer ones! The face of God is frightening to the wicked, because its searching light uncovers the evil in their hearts (see Jn. 3:19-20). Those who are intent on doing evil, who refuse to love or forgive or serve others, who serve rather their own pride or greed or lusts, will reject or at least ignore God. God will not seem pleasant or loving to them, because He must rain on their parade in his efforts to try to open their hearts and get them to return to Him.
But if our hearts are already with the Lord, if we love Him and do our best to cooperate with his grace as we love and serve others, then we will know his loving kindness and mercy. We will not need to entertain any fierce images of God (even though for some they are true, at least temporarily) simply because we don’t provoke God’s wrath. It’s a matter of the heart and what the heart bears within it. God punishes not repentant prodigals but unforgiving and ruthless hirelings. A pure, faithful, and loving heart will know God as He most wishes to be known: a loving and merciful Father, a strong and gentle Savior, the Source and overflowing fountain of life and love. If there’s no place in one’s heart for all this, one will not recognize the love of God. In that case God may have to employ a sterner strategy to shake a little sense into us, before it’s too late and we’re standing with our hardened hearts before his throne of judgment.
Where your treasure is, there your heart will be, said the Lord. He’s trying to tell us that it’s a matter of the heart: our life, our image of Him, our relationship to Him, and his dealings with us. If God is our treasure, there will be plenty of room in our hearts for Him, and He will act appropriately toward what He finds in us. But if there is evil in us, He will attempt to get it out of us, and He may not spare us the pain of the surgery, especially if we are somewhat resistant. But let us at least not be as those over whom the Lord lamented to St Faustina in a vision (and these were monks and nuns!), whose hearts were so hard that He said that even though He still granted them his grace, it was like water poured over a rock and never penetrated their souls.
Perhaps it is time to summon the courage to take a look within our hearts and see what we find. See if there is anything in there that is distorting our image of God or that provokes something in Him that He’d rather not have to direct toward us. God loves us but He hates evil, so he will be unrelenting in going after any evil that is concealed within the hearts of those whom He loves. For He wants to welcome us all into the Kingdom He has prepared for us.
So let us not pick and choose only our favorite images of God from Scripture. They are all true, though it is not necessary that we personally encounter them all. But let us be careful about what we believe and how we live. If you want to meet only the gentle and kind and merciful Lord, it’s up to you. For it is a matter of the heart. Yours.
