There is something deeply unsettling about watching a man stand on a stage with a Bible in his hand, speaking with the cadence of a preacher while slowly dissolving the very attributes of God that make the gospel necessary in the first place. Not in one violent motion or overt act of apostasy where he rips pages from the Scriptures and throws them into the crowd like confetti. But far more subtle, polished, and marketable.

More “pastoral.”

That is what makes comments like this from Churchome pastor, Judah Smith so dangerous. He speaks of God’s wrath the way modern liberals speak of Confederate statues—embarrassing relics from a less enlightened age that need reinterpretation before the sophisticated people arrive.

God’s wrath must be softened. Judgment must be reframed. Hell must be blurred out like a cigarette in a California television rerun. And so God becomes a trembling cosmic therapist whose highest aspiration is emotional affirmation.

You can almost hear the subtext beneath the sermon:
“Surely God isn’t actually angry about sin.”
“Surely judgment language is metaphorical.”
“Surely wrath is beneath a loving God.”

Meanwhile the Bible sits there on the pulpit refusing to cooperate with any of it.

“The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men…” —Romans 1:18.

Revealed. Present tense. Not just future and not symbolic. Revealed. Right now. At this very moment.

That verse alone detonates the entire sentimental framework modern evangelical celebrities are trying to construct around God. Paul does not say wrath was revealed. He does not say wrath will one day be revealed only in the final judgment. He says it is revealed from heaven.

How?

By God “giving them over.”

That phrase should send chills down a preacher in torn skinny jeans’ spine. Three times in Romans 1, God gives people over. Gives them over to sexual impurity. Gives them over to dishonorable passions. Gives them over to depraved minds.

The judgment is not always a lightning bolt from the clouds. Sometimes the judgment is abandonment. Sometimes wrath looks like God removing restraint and letting people plunge headlong into the very rebellion they demanded.

Just look around. Look at the civilization we have built. A world where children are chemically sterilized in the name of compassion. A world where wombs are rented like Airbnbs.

A world where fertility clinics routinely create excess embryos only to freeze them, discard them, experiment on them, or selectively destroy them like defective products rolling off an assembly line. Or even worse, incubate them in rented wombs to be trafficked to homosexuals cosplaying as parents.

A world where pornography has become the catechism of young boys before they can even drive a truck. A world where people livestream degeneracy for applause while pharmaceutical corporations medicate the psychological fallout afterward.

A world where drag performers dance before children while pastors lecture Christians about “kindness.”

A world where human trafficking has exploded into a global industry so massive and vile that most people deliberately avoid thinking about it because the reality is too nauseating to hold in the mind for more than a few seconds.

And these polished celebrity preachers want to stand there and tell us wrath is not being revealed? What exactly do they think Romans 1 is describing?

What do they think it means when the world loses the ability to distinguish male from female? When people boast openly in rebellion? When lawlessness spreads like gangrene through institutions? When governments become clown theaters of corruption, debt, espionage, propaganda, and moral incoherence? When people celebrate mutilation as progress and call insanity “courage”?

Paul already told us, “Claiming to be wise, they became fools.”

Not might become. Became.

Wrath is not always fire raining from the sky. Sometimes wrath is a civilization handed over to its own appetites until it devours itself from the inside out like a rabid animal chewing through its own flesh.

The modern church cannot preach this because the modern church desperately wants to be liked by the very world system God says stands under judgment. So pastors become public relations agents for divine sentimentality. They speak of love detached from holiness. Mercy detached from justice. Grace detached from repentance.

But the cross itself becomes incomprehensible once wrath disappears.

Why was Christ crushed?
Why the blood?
Why the agony?
Why does Isaiah say it pleased the Lord to bruise Him?
Why does Jesus sweat blood in Gethsemane?
What cup was He trembling before?

Modern evangelicals talk endlessly about “love” while sounding almost embarrassed by propitiation. They treat the atonement as though satisfying God’s wrath is some primitive doctrine we should outgrow like flip phones and dial-up internet.

Yet Scripture says plainly that Christ was put forward as a propitiation for sin. Meaning wrath-bearing. Judgment-bearing. Curse-bearing. The Son drank what we sinners deserved. That is the glory of redemption.

And the hatred modern people have for the doctrine of hell reveals far more about modern people than it does about God. Everybody wants justice until justice threatens them personally.

People scream for judgment against murderers, traffickers, tyrants, abusers, rapists, corrupt elites, cartel executioners, child predators, and genocidal maniacs. They want wrath when evil inconveniences them. They want accountability when blood is on somebody else’s hands.

But once the conversation shifts toward their own sin, suddenly judgment becomes “unloving.” Funny how that works.

The doctrine of hell is hated because mankind hates the idea that God possesses ultimate authority over His creation. Hell is the final public declaration that God is not mocked forever. That rebellion has an end point. That moral chaos does not reign eternally unchecked.

And honestly, even now, people get tiny previews of hell every single day. Addictions that hollow men out until they resemble walking corpses. Sexual depravity that escalates endlessly because sin never stays still. Paranoia. Hatred. Violence. Envy. Broken minds. Broken homes. Broken nations.

People medicated to the ceiling because modern secularism promised liberation and instead delivered despair wrapped in rainbow branding and pharmaceutical side effects.

Hell is not an overreaction from God. Hell is the final destination of unrepentant rebellion fully matured.

And though I’m not a huge fan of C.S. Lewis by any means, he was right about one thing. He wrote that the doors of hell are locked from the inside. There is truth there. Sin deforms people until they no longer merely commit evil—they are lovers of evil.

Romans 1 says they “approve of those who practice them.” That is where wrath leads when restraint is removed. And I am sickened by pastors pretending otherwise.

We are watching the world crack apart under the weight of rebellion while preachers in designer sneakers reassure people that God is mostly just disappointed and eager to affirm them through the healing journey.

Meanwhile Scripture screams from the page like a storm front rolling across black Carolina skies in August.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

Not the embarrassment of the Lord. Not the rebranding of the Lord. Not the therapeutic reframing of the Lord.

Fear. Holy fear.

Because the same God who flooded the earth, destroyed Sodom, judged Egypt, struck down Herod, and promises final judgment is the same God modern pulpits are trying to reduce into an emotionally needy life coach who exists primarily to validate the self-esteem of suburban Americans.

But God is not a mascot for human self-actualization.

He is holy.

And unless people recover the reality of divine wrath, they will never understand divine mercy either. Mercy only shines against the black backdrop of judgment. Grace only astonishes people who know what they deserve.

The pastors who spend all their energy sanding the edges off God’s wrath are not helping people. They are removing the alarm system from a burning building while smoke fills the hallways. They call it compassion. Scripture calls it deception.

And the terrifying thing is this.

Romans 1 says wrath is already here. The giving over has already begun.

Hell is simply where that road finally ends.