Bad Theology

Text for today: II Chronicles 36 xi-xxi

King Zedekiah incurs God's displeasure by refusing to grovel before either the prophet Jeremiah or King Nebuchadnezzar, and by letting his officers and people fall into filthy foreign habits. Unable to prevent them polluting His house, mocking His messengers and scoffing at His prophets, God employs the king of the Chaldeans to destroy Jerusalem and kill or carry off to Babylon all of His chosen people.

Beyond Zedekiah's sins of independence and tolerance, neither easily forgivable by the Father, we are told that he hardened his heart; which naturally incurs God's wrath as it usurps His divine prerogative. Although God has considerable experience in hardening hearts, it appears that for all His omnipotence He has considerable difficulty in softening them; even His Son, for all His protestations of love and forgiveness, could never long refrain from hurling threats of fire and brimstone.

Enraged by His impotence before His adopted children, God employs the king of the Chaldeans to punish them. Besides humbling the master race, the Chaldeans are allowed to loot the baubles in the house of God and rob the priests of their worldly treasures, exactly as King Zedekiah and his followers had done. The self-evident moral difference is that the Chaldeans do so in order to fulfil the prophecies of Jeremiah, while Zedekiah and his people do so because of the unauthorised hardening of their hearts.