Bad Theology

Text for today: II Chronicles 26 iii-xxi

Ascending the throne in Jerusalem at the age of sixteen, King Uzziah does what is right in the eyes of God and enjoys a long and prosperous reign. He massacres various lesser breeds, exacts tribute from the Ammonites, and builds settlements for the master race in the territory of the Philistines according to the eternal real-estate plan. After fifty-two years of basking in God's favour, Uzziah enters the temple to burn incense on the altar, and meets resistance from a phalanx of eighty-one priests whose leader lectures the irritated king on the merits of division of labour. When Uzziah becomes angry with the priests, God afflicts him with leprosy, and he ends his days an invalid and a pariah.

The career of King Uzziah was doubtless known to the Saviour, and may well have been prominent in His thinking as He evolved His new covenant of arbitrary reward and apocalyptic punishment. Just as a person can sin for a lifetime and be saved at the divine whim through a single act of repentance, so a person may be virtuous for half a century and suffer calamitous punishment because of a single transgression. Particularly relevant to Jesus' doctrine of thoughtcrime would have been the chronicler's assertion that Uzziah is afflicted not when he enters the sanctuary, but when he becomes angry with the priests. In other words, God punishes him not for committing unlawful actions, but for experiencing an unlawful emotion.