What a motel fight taught me about the character of God
Years ago, I witnessed a fistfight that I have never forgotten. There was nothing particularly remarkable about the fight itself. No large crowd had gathered, and there was certainly nothing heroic about the violence. Yet something happened that day that would forever influence the way I understood some of the most troubling stories in the Bible.
It helped me see something about God's love that I had never fully appreciated before.
A Man Looking for Trouble
A drunken man arrived at a motel looking for someone. He wasn't there to visit a friend, settle a misunderstanding, or have a peaceful conversation. He had come looking for a particular man because he intended to beat him up.
Outside one of the motel rooms, three men were sitting together. The door to their room stood wide open, and the drunken man walked right in. When he came back outside, the men questioned him about entering their room. He explained that he was looking for someone, but the conversation quickly turned away from the room itself.
The real problem wasn't that he had entered someone else's room. It was his determination to find another man and hurt him.
As the discussion became heated, one of the three men warned him to leave or the police would be called. Rather than backing down, the drunk began boasting that he could take on all three of them at once. He started emptying his pockets, preparing himself for a fight.
But before he had even finished, one of the three men began hitting him. The blows continued until another man stepped in and stopped the beating.
The man who had arrived looking for someone to hurt had become the one receiving the blows.
I have thought about that scene many times since, not because I enjoyed seeing someone get hurt, but because it raised a question I had never considered quite the same way before.
What happens when we witness only the ending of a story?
When We See Only the Ending
Imagine arriving at that motel just as the fight began. You see one man repeatedly striking another who isn't even fighting back. You know nothing about what happened beforehand. You haven't heard the threats, witnessed the confrontation, or learned why the drunken man came to the motel in the first place.
All you see is one man beating another.
You might naturally conclude that the man throwing the punches was a cruel bully. And based on what you witnessed, that conclusion would be understandable.
But you would be missing something important.
The man receiving the blows had come looking for someone to hurt. He had been warned to leave, yet instead of walking away, he had prepared himself for a fight.
Knowing those facts doesn't necessarily justify every punch that was thrown. But it certainly changes how we understand what happened.
And that experience made me wonder whether we sometimes do something similar when reading the Bible.
Throughout Scripture, we encounter accounts of God bringing judgment upon individuals, cities, and entire nations. People die, cities are destroyed, and sometimes the judgments seem so severe that we struggle to reconcile them with a God who claims to be love.
We read about what happened, and we wonder how a loving God could do such things.
But how much of the story are we actually seeing?
We don't know every warning God had given, every opportunity for repentance He had provided, or every hidden act of cruelty that had taken place. We cannot see all the suffering His intervention may have prevented, nor can we know everything that would have happened had He chosen not to act.
We are creatures of moments, but God is Lord of the whole timeline.
We see one scene while He sees the entire story. Our understanding is limited to what we have witnessed, experienced, or learned. God knows the past, the present, the future, and the intentions of every heart.
That doesn't make every difficult Bible passage easy to understand. Some stories still trouble us and leave us with questions. But the problem is not that God acts without love. The problem is that we are attempting to evaluate His actions without seeing the whole picture.
We can be uncertain about why God did something without being uncertain about His character.
And when we judge His actions by our limited understanding, we risk misunderstanding the very God who loves us enough to give His life to save us.
to watch people repeatedly choose a course that brings suffering upon themselves and others, while continuing to offer them an opportunity to turn away from it.
God's patience is not indifference to evil. Neither is His mercy evidence that He approves of what is happening. His patience demonstrates how deeply He desires to save, even while He recognizes that allowing evil to continue indefinitely would eventually destroy everything good.
There comes a point when further delay would mean allowing evil to continue its destructive work. Judgment then becomes necessary, not because God has stopped loving, but because His love cannot remain indifferent to the suffering that sin produces.
This helps us understand why judgment is described as His strange act. The God whose heart longs to save must sometimes act to stop those who refuse His mercy and continue harming others.
And that leads us to a remarkable thought.
If we could see everything God sees, we might not wonder why He acted so severely. We might instead wonder how He could have been so patient for so long.
The Red Sea: Judgment or Rescue?
Consider what happened when the Israelites escaped from Egypt.
For generations, God's people had suffered under Egyptian oppression. They had been enslaved, mistreated, and forced to labor under cruel conditions. Pharaoh had even ordered the killing of their baby boys, hoping to weaken a people he feared might someday threaten his power (Exodus 1:15–22).
God had witnessed their suffering. He had heard their cries, and He determined to deliver them.
But He did not bring judgment upon Egypt without warning. He sent Moses to Pharaoh with repeated appeals to release His people. When Pharaoh refused, additional warnings followed, accompanied by increasingly serious demonstrations of God's power.
Even during the plagues, opportunities for mercy remained. Exodus 9:20 tells us that some of Pharaoh's officials took God's warnings seriously and brought their servants and livestock into shelter before the hailstorm. Others ignored the warning and suffered the consequences.
God's concern was not limited to the Israelites. His warnings gave Egyptians opportunities to respond as well.
Yet Pharaoh continued resisting. Even after finally allowing the Israelites to leave, he changed his mind, gathered his army, and pursued them.
Imagine the scene as the Israelites stood trapped between the approaching Egyptian army and the Red Sea.
Behind them came soldiers and chariots. Before them stretched a body of water they had no way to cross. Families with young children, elderly people, livestock, and everything they possessed stood helpless before one of the most powerful armies in the ancient world.
The Egyptians were not coming to apologize or offer assistance. Pharaoh intended to bring the Israelites back into bondage.
But God intervened.
The waters of the Red Sea parted, opening a path through which the Israelites could escape. They crossed on dry ground while the Egyptian army continued its pursuit. When the soldiers followed them into the sea, the waters returned, and the pursuing army was destroyed.
Now consider that event from two different perspectives.
If we focus only on the Egyptians who drowned, we might conclude that God was simply destroying people because they had disobeyed Him. We see the terrible ending and wonder how a loving God could allow it to happen.
But when we consider everything that preceded it, a much larger picture emerges.
God had patiently warned Pharaoh, repeatedly offered opportunities to change, and demonstrated His power in ways that left little doubt about His ability to deliver His people. Yet Pharaoh continued choosing oppression, finally pursuing the Israelites with an army determined to return them to slavery.
The destruction of that army was not the beginning of the story. It was the end of a long history of cruelty, rebellion, warnings, and rejected opportunities for mercy.
And while the Egyptians experienced judgment, the Israelites experienced deliverance.
The very same event that brought destruction to one group brought rescue to another.
This doesn't make the loss of life insignificant. But it helps us understand that God's purpose was not simply to destroy an army. He was rescuing defenseless people from those determined to enslave them again.
Sometimes protecting those in danger requires stopping those who refuse to stop harming them.
When Love Must Put an End to Evil
But God's protective love extends far beyond the events of the Red Sea. In fact, the final judgment reveals a much greater purpose behind His determination to bring evil to an end.
Consider what would happen if God allowed sin to continue forever.
What would eternity look like if selfishness, cruelty, deception, hatred, and rebellion were permitted to exist without end? Could heaven ever be completely safe? Could God's children truly live without fear if the possibility of suffering remained? Could the universe ever enjoy lasting peace while the very things that produce misery continued to exist?
The answer is no.
As long as sin continues, the possibility of suffering continues with it. Even if evil were restrained for a thousand years or a million years, the danger would remain as long as rebellion against God's love could continue unchecked.
God's final judgment, therefore, is not simply about punishing those who have rejected Him. It is also about protecting His creation from the suffering that sin would otherwise continue to produce.
Revelation 21:4 promises a world without death, sorrow, crying, or pain. Nahum 1:9 assures us that affliction will not rise a second time. These promises could never be completely fulfilled if sin were allowed to continue forever.
And this brings us to an important principle that helps us understand God's judgments throughout Scripture.
Sometimes He intervenes to protect people from immediate danger, as He did at the Red Sea. At other times, His judgments may protect future generations, preserve truth, or prevent evil from spreading into areas where it could cause even greater destruction.
Consider Ananias and Sapphira, whose story is recorded in Acts 5.
The early Christian church was experiencing extraordinary spiritual growth. Believers were sharing their possessions, caring for one another, and demonstrating the transforming power of the Gospel. Into this atmosphere of generosity and trust, Ananias and Sapphira introduced deliberate deception.
They wanted the recognition that came from extraordinary generosity without actually making the sacrifice they claimed to have made. Their dishonesty threatened the integrity of a young church whose witness depended upon genuine faith and the transforming work of the Holy Spirit.
Scripture does not tell us everything that might have happened had God not intervened. But it does tell us that His judgment brought a profound awareness of His holiness upon the church.
The circumstances were very different from those at the Red Sea, yet in both accounts we can recognize a concern for protecting what evil threatened to destroy.
At the end of time, that protective purpose becomes even clearer.
God will not allow sin to rise again and destroy the safety and happiness of those He has redeemed. He will bring its destructive history to a permanent end.
Yet we must never forget that He takes no pleasure in the destruction of the wicked. Throughout human history, He has patiently offered forgiveness, mercy, repentance, and eternal life. He has done everything necessary to make salvation available, including giving His own Son to die for those who had rebelled against Him.
The same love that moves God to save sinners also moves Him to bring sin's destructive history to an everlasting end.
His judgments do not mean that He has stopped loving. They must be understood in the light of the love Jesus revealed.
And when the last trace of evil is gone, God's children will finally live in a universe where nobody will ever again have reason to fear.
Jesus Is the Key
If we want to know what God is like, we must keep our eyes on Jesus.
Jesus did not come to soften a cruel Father or persuade an unwilling God to love humanity. He came to reveal what the Father has always been like. When Philip asked Jesus to show the disciples the Father, Jesus responded by explaining that whoever had seen Him had seen the Father (John 14:9).
Think about the Jesus revealed in the Gospels. He wept beside the grave of Lazarus, touched people whom society considered untouchable, forgave those crushed beneath the weight of their sins, welcomed children whom others considered interruptions, and wept over Jerusalem as He contemplated the destruction its people were bringing upon themselves.
And when His enemies nailed Him to a cross, He prayed for their forgiveness.
Every one of those scenes reveals something about the character of God.
But Jesus did more than demonstrate compassion. He actively protected people.
When religious leaders brought a woman accused of adultery before Him, they were not merely seeking justice. They were attempting to trap Jesus, using the woman's shame and possible execution as part of their scheme. Rather than abandon her to her accusers, Jesus intervened, exposing their hypocrisy without excusing her sin (John 8:3–11).
Later, when soldiers arrived in Gethsemane to arrest Him, Jesus stepped forward and identified Himself. But He also told them to let His disciples go (John 18:8–9). He was willing to face what lay ahead, yet He remained concerned about protecting those who had followed Him.
And when His enemies turned their violence against Him, Jesus did not retaliate. He willingly suffered rather than fight back.
There is something remarkable about the love revealed in these events. Jesus was willing to endure suffering Himself, but He was never indifferent to the suffering of others. He protected the vulnerable, warned those heading toward destruction, and grieved over people who refused the safety His love offered them.
Then, when the appointed time arrived, He gave His own life to rescue ours.
This is crucial to understanding God's character.
Whenever we encounter a difficult story of judgment in the Old Testament, we must remember that the God who acted is the same God Jesus came to reveal. We cannot properly understand His judgments by imagining that the Father has a character different from His Son.
Jesus shows us that God is not eager to destroy. He is eager to restore. He does not stand indifferent to suffering, because He entered our world and experienced it Himself. And He does not regard sinners as worthless, because He loves them enough to warn them, pursue them, forgive them, and offer them salvation.
The cross proves this more clearly than anything else ever could.
At Calvary, God did not remain far away from human suffering, merely observing the tragedy of a world ruined by sin. Through His Son, He entered our experience, endured our cruelty, and accepted the consequences of a rebellion He had never participated in.
The One we may have been taught to fear is the very One who willingly allowed Himself to be nailed to a cross so that we could receive eternal life.
Whatever else we may say about divine judgment, the cross establishes one truth beyond question: the Judge loves the guilty.
And He has proven it.
The First Death and the Second
Part of our difficulty in understanding God's protection comes from the way we think about death.
From our earthly perspective, physical death seems like the greatest possible tragedy. And it certainly is a terrible enemy. Death separates families, brings heartbreak and loneliness, and leaves behind people who must learn to live without someone they love.
But Jesus taught that there is something even more important than preserving our present earthly lives.
In Matthew 10:28, He warned His followers not to fear those who could kill the body but could not bring about the final destruction of the whole person. Revelation describes that final destruction as the second death (Revelation 20:6, 14).
The distinction matters because the first death is not the end of anyone's story.
Jesus promised a resurrection. He told His listeners that a time was coming when the dead would hear His voice and come forth (John 5:28–29). And when Martha stood grieving the death of her brother Lazarus, Jesus assured her that those who believe in Him will live, even though they die (John 11:25).
For those who trust Him, the first death is a temporary separation, not the permanent end of life. They rest in death until the resurrection, when Jesus calls them to live again.
The second death is entirely different. It is the final destruction of those who ultimately reject God's gift of life. There is no resurrection from that death.
Understanding this distinction helps us see the much larger purpose behind God's protection.
He has never promised that His children will be spared every hardship or that faithful people will never be persecuted, injured, or killed. Jesus Himself warned that some of His followers would lose their lives because of their faith.
Yet He promises something far greater than temporary physical safety.
He promises eternal life.
Those who belong to Christ may suffer the first death, but the second death will have no power over them (Revelation 20:6). Their future is secure in the hands of the One who has promised to raise them from the grave.
That means God's commitment to protect His children cannot be measured only by what happens during our brief lives on this earth. His plans reach far beyond the suffering of the present world, toward a future in which suffering itself will be abolished.
Sin will be gone, death will be no more, and those who trust Him will live forever in His presence.
God's ultimate protection is not simply keeping us alive for a few more years. It is making certain that evil will never again threaten the happiness of His children.
There Is Always More to the Story Than We Can See
That motel fight has remained in my memory because it demonstrated how easily an event can be misunderstood when someone witnesses only its final moments.
A person arriving halfway through would have formed an opinion based on very limited information. Without knowing what led to the confrontation, the observer could easily have misunderstood the circumstances and the intentions of those involved.
And that is often what happens when we read difficult stories in Scripture.
We encounter a terrible moment, learn of an act of judgment, react to the suffering or destruction described, and then decide what kind of God must have been responsible.
But we have not seen everything.
Behind that single moment may be years of mercy and countless warnings. Behind the severity may be a love that has already gone further than we can imagine. And behind what frightens us may be a God protecting others from dangers we know nothing about.
We do not know every reason behind every judgment, but we do know God's character. We know He is patient, that He desires repentance rather than destruction, and that He loves sinners even when they reject His love.
Above all, we know what He revealed about Himself through Jesus.
So rather than asking only, "How could God do that?" we can begin asking questions that help us understand His actions more fully.
Whom was God protecting? What evil was He stopping? What warnings had He given? And what does this reveal about His desire to save?
These questions do not remove every mystery, nor do they give us knowledge of things Scripture has not revealed. But they help us approach difficult passages without assuming that God has acted contrary to His loving character.
They remind us that the small portion of the story we can see is not all that God knows.
And with God, there is always more to the story than we can see.
The God You Fear May Be the God Who Is Working to Save You
Many people have been taught to fear God's power before they have learned to trust His heart. They have heard about His judgments before understanding His mercy, and about His anger before discovering His extraordinary patience.
Some have spent much of their lives trembling at the thought of standing before God without ever realizing how deeply He wants them to live with Him forever.
But the Gospel reveals something wonderful.
God is not against humanity. He is against the evil that is destroying humanity. He is not opposed to life or happiness, but to the sin that robs His children of both. He does not hate sinners. He hates the evil that is ruining those He loves.
And in Jesus, He has shown just how far He is willing to go to save us.
When I think back to that motel fight, I remember how differently someone might have understood what happened if they had witnessed only the final moments. That memory reminds me how easily we can do the same thing when reading about God's judgments.
We see destruction without fully understanding the danger being prevented. We read about judgment without knowing every person or generation God was protecting. We encounter the end of someone's rebellion without being able to see all the years of patient mercy that preceded it.
But God sees the entire story.
And His love reaches far beyond our brief lives on this earth.
He is not simply protecting us from the dangers of today. He is preparing a universe where danger itself will no longer exist, where cruelty and deception will never again destroy trust, where suffering and death will never again separate those who love one another.
Imagine living in a world where nobody needs to lock a door, fear a stranger, worry about an enemy, or wonder whether someone they love will be taken from them.
A world where children can explore without danger, families can enjoy one another without fear of separation, and every relationship is built upon love that will never be betrayed.
A world where God's children will never again need rescuing.
That is the future Jesus came to make possible. That is why He gave His life, and that is what He has promised to accomplish.
If we could see everything God sees, we might not wonder why He acted so severely. We might instead wonder how He could have been so patient for so long.
For God, protecting His children is not merely about helping them survive today. It is about making certain they will be safe with Him forever.
And that is the wonderful promise of the Gospel.
God's ultimate victory is not simply that evil is destroyed. It is that evil is gone forever, His children are safe forever, and love can flourish without fear forever.
With God, there is always more to the story than we can see.
Scripture for Further Reflection
Exodus 14:13–14; Isaiah 28:21; Ezekiel 33:11; Nahum 1:9; Matthew 10:28; John 5:28–29; John 10:27–29; John 14:9; 2 Peter 3:9; Revelation 20:6, 14; Revelation 21:4
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