Is God cruel?

And it is with such a God as this we have to do; cruel for a moment, in order that He may be henceforth and eternally kind. He does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men; and if He is compelled to afflict, it is His love that compels Him, for it is to do good in the latter end to those over whom His rod had been lifted.

As in Judah 's case, God may cause grief - deep and heart-rending; but He will still "have compassion according to the multitude of His mercies. For He doth not afflict willingly (or, from His heart), nor grieve the children of men"(v.32, 33). Not for His own pleasure does He chasten, but that we may be partakers of His holiness. He is too loving to lay upon us one unnecessary burden: He is too holy to omit one needed stroke. Unrighteousness He cannot tolerate. "To crush under His feet all the princes of the earth, to turn aside the right of a man before the face of the Most High, to subvert a man in His cause, the Lord approveth not" (v.34-36). All His ways are equal. It is only man's defective vision that makes it appear otherwise. When at last He takes us by the hand, and goes over all the path with us, letting the light of His own glory shine upon every step, we shall understand, as we cannot now, how just and true were all His ways as He led us through this scene.

Though God has borne long with evil doers, patience is not indifference, and patience must eventually give way to awesome judgment, when once the evil is exposed as being altogether incurable. The Great Tribulation will bring clearly to light the determined guilt of mankind, the stubborn rebellion that refuses every advance of kindness. Men will have no regard for the works of the Lord nor the operation of His hands. Since they reject every effort on His part to build them up, the only alternative is to destroy them. Does this mean He is no longer a merciful God? Not at all! Rather, it is mercy on His part to act in judgment against evil: it is mercy that relieves His creation from the tyranny of wicked men — men who despise mercy as though it were weakness.

The instructions were clear and unequivocal. Samuel said to Saul, "Jehovah sent me to anoint thee King over His people, over Israel: now therefore hearken thou to the voice of the words of Jehovah. Thus says Jehovah of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt. Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." Thus nothing whatever was to be spared. Adversaries of Holy Scripture have sometimes declaimed against the severity of Jehovah's instructions to Israel concerning their foes. If God is love, why should He bid His people act in such a manner? The answer is very simple, "God is light," as well as love. The nations in and around Canaan were so deeply impregnated with such terrible evils that they constituted a moral ulcer in the midst of the earth, and it was mercy to others, as well as righteousness in God to destroy them utterly, after enduring them with much long-suffering. How much of a cancer does the knife of a skilful surgeon spare? It was largely due to Israel's failure to do their work thoroughly that they soon became so corrupt themselves. The evil influence of their neighbours in time brought down the judgement of God upon His own people.

How fearfully God has been misrepresented by the devil, and with what blinded willingness has man listened to the lie that He is austere, hard, careless of our good, exacting from us that which we should no doubt yield but cannot, punishing for trifling faults, and judging without mercy. So has Satan suggested, and so have our foolish hearts believed.

At the same time it was perfectly inexplicable to him that he, who had daily feared God, should be so abandoned to anguish. Any challenge as to the rectitude of his conduct he was prepared to meet; and if the miseries were not a judgment for misconduct, it seemed as though the Creator had become cruel to him for nothing, and that he was set as a target for the arrows of the Almighty from mere caprice.

But if this be true of us in our fallen and selfish natures, what must it be to the living God, whose faithfulness and infinite compassions shine forth in all His dealings with His rebellious creatures, to have these compassions met with reproaches, suspicion and mistrust? To think that He who has in His hand the disposal of His creatures, who is able to kill and make alive; to whom the creature can give nothing, and from whom he can take nothing away; against whom he can practise no evil with the least hope of inflicting damage; who can be neither enriched nor impoverished by anything the creature can give or withhold: that He should be suspected of carelessness regarding His creature’s happiness, indifference to his miseries, jealousy of his advancement, and only waiting a favourable opportunity of casting him down to destruction, is surely beyond measure provoking.

However, in speaking of these things, it was the intention of Moses to encourage Israel to be unafraid to enter the land of Canaan and dispossess their enemies there. The terrible, indiscriminate slaughter of a whole culture may seem to us naturally reprehensible. But God is wiser than we. He knows what He is doing. He had told Abraham years before, "The iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete" (Gen.15:16). But now the time had come when it was complete. Idolatry and demon worship had risen to such a height that there was no hope of recovery (1 Kings 21:26). Little children would be better dead than exposed to the evil indulged in by their parents, and parents would be better dead than left to continue in the abominations that were prevalent in their whole society.

God does not cause the suffering to His own, but He allows it to happen, so that His servants can benefit from the experience (e.g. increase their faith), and also for His own glory. Two examples are: Job, whom Satan tested to the uttermost, see Job 1 & 2, and Peter, whom Satan desired to sift as wheat, Luke 22:31.

In His providential dealings with us He either orders or allows all that comes into our lives. He has the almighty power to prevent anything from happening, so if it happens, He has allowed it. Therefore, complaining is the same as saying that we know what is best for us better than God does, or else that God does not care enough to give us what is best. One is pure pride, the other is distrust of His motives.