Does God Hate?
By Eric Holmberg
Click here: Malediction to listen to one of the most awesome songs ever composed… written by our friend Kemper Crabb.
MALEDICTION
Lyrics: Kemper Crabb
Music: Kemper Crabb & Frank Hart
The judges sat outside the law
And in their pride no evil saw
In setting teeth to Satan’s jaw
And feeding him our children
A curse a curse the Law it cries
A curse a curse on mankind’s pride
A curse on him who would deny
God’s image in mankind
When viewed in terms of cost and ease
An unborn child is a disease
A holocaust seen fit to please
Our own convenience.
Torn from out their mother’s womb
Denied the sky, denied the tomb
Conceived in lust to their own ruin
A sacrifice to pleasure
A curse, a curse their blood cries out
A curse, a curse the heavens shout
A curse, a curse on him who dares to flout
God’s image in mankind.
The doctors with their blood red hands
Who love their money more than man
With greed their god they lay their plans
The butchers of mankind.
O rid us of this evil, Lord
And turn our hearts by cross or sword
Our nation cannot long afford
To live beneath Your anger
A curse, a curse upon their heads
O save them Lord or slay them dead
And fill our country with your Dread
And turn away Your anger.
A curse, a curse upon their heads
Oh save them Lord or slay them dead
And fill our nation with your dread
And turn away Your anger
Lord, turn away Your anger
Lord, turn away Your anger
(Kyrie eleison; Christe eleison)
Lord have mercy
Christ have mercy
What is a malediction? Its Latin prefix mal means “evil” or “cursed” and diction has to do with “speaking;” hence its meaning: “speaking evil” or more commonly “a curse.”
Its antonym benediction has as its root bene, meaning good and and therefore means a blessing. At the end of traditional church services a spiritual leader usually pronounces a benediction or speaks a blessing on behalf of the Lord to the people.
Are Christians ever supposed to pronounce maledictions? Many (most?) believers would likely say, “No.” After all doesn’t the Bible say, “Bless and not curse”? Plus it doesn’t seem very loving or “nice.”
Well, tell all that to King David, the author of the Psalms. They contain dozens of maledictions pronounced on God’s enemies, which just so happened to also be David’s enemies.
The fact is there is no justice without righteous wrath and punishment. To love all indiscriminately is to minimize if not even destroy the critical distinctions between good and evil. We can not love hard work and thievery at the same time. We can not love our children and love killing them, too. To love good also means to hate evil.
We must learn to love the things God loves and hate the things God hates. Does God hate?
Proverbs 6:16-19
How can we say we love our children and kill the “inconvenient” ones? Will a just God not avenge innocent blood?
Of course, we are not God. Furthermore, we do not know which of those who shed innocent blood, or condone its shedding, are people upon whom God will have mercy and one day redeem. (I happened to be one such man.) And because “there but for the grace of God go I” we are called to love our enemies. Or to put it in the words of the Apostle Paul:
“Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” 1 Cor. 6:9-11
So does that mean that David was wrong? Are we to only bless and not curse?
In David’s day, before the atoning work of the cross and the Gospel’s wonderful powerful being released into the earth, Satan was “alive and well on Planet Earth”, and often the best way to restrain evil was to see evil people destroyed. That explains why God told Joshua to go into the promised land and kill every man, woman and child that had been marinated in the “deep things of Satan” for so many generation. The Jews did not have the power to cast out demons and liberate their enemies. Better to destroy them than to see the spiritual pollution than was in them gradually corrupt the people of God.
But after the cross and Pentecost — now that “He that is in us is greater than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4) (Satan may still be alive, but he is no longer well. He’s stumbling about with a tremendous head wound caused by a certain Man’s foot!!) — we can, through the Gospel — see God’s and our enemies redeemed. So we pray a “good word” over them — that ironically also carries a Davidic curse: “Save them, Lord, through the power of your mercy and grace as made manifest through the cross. But if you will not have mercy on them, if they will continue to sin and cause others to stumble (or, as in the case of abortion, to die) and hence only heap up a greater weight of Your wrath on themselves for the Day of Judgment, then stop their evil ways as you see fit. And if that even means killing them, that is far more merciful than to allow them to continue.
As Kemper so prophetically sang:
A curse, a curse upon their heads
Oh save them Lord or slay them dead
And fill our nation with your dread
And turn away Your anger
Christian, join with me in singing that song to the Lord.
Amen.