“Sinner, you better get ready / Sinner, you better get ready … Hallelujah”

You’ve been told. It doesn’t matter where you are; the warning of God’s judgement has reached your ears. The billboards can be found anywhere in America and beyond, from the most rural parts of the Bible Belt to the gayest, most liberal cities on the coasts. They interrogate you: “Are you ready to meet Jesus?”

Judgment Day has been near for quite some time. In the 18th century, the Millerites were selling all of their possessions and climbing onto their roofs to await Christ’s return on the precise date the prophecies in the book of Daniel had foretold. Even now, despite its repeated postponement, many Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, LDS, FLDS, evangelical Christians of many denominations, and more believe the end of the world will come in their lifetime.

And maybe you’ve heard the good news as well. The non-denominational churches with their aesthetic graphic design packages usually emphasize that part a little more, but even the most fire and brimstone Saint will tell you that God loves you. Even more, God is in love with you. He loves you deeply. He even let his son get murdered just for you. He would do anything for you. All he requires in return is everything.

I don’t mean to imply that there is a contradiction between God’s fiery wrath and the unconditional love in His New Testament PR campaign. They can coexist. In fact, it’s the fact of their coexistence that makes Christianity special. The pagans, whom Christians fervently distinguish themselves from, worship impersonal forces. The Aztecs made human sacrifices so that the sun would rise every morning. Although, from Judges 11, we know that the Christian God accepts human sacrifices in exchange for certain outcomes as well. (And wasn’t Jesus Himself a human sacrifice?). It seems that Aztec’s only fault was that they never believed the sun loved them. Pagan gods can be anthropomorphic too. Every god on Mt. Olympus has their own quirks, but, while you can pray to Zeus for justice, no one in their right mind would say he’ll always have your best interests at heart. Jehovah, on the other hand, is the only ancient deity that lays a claim to perfect love and perfect, blazing justice.

Lingua Ignota’s Sinner Get Ready is the soundtrack to the intimate violence of God’s judgement. It expresses what it’s like to be in an abusive relationship with an ancient God. Through a collection of dark hymns, the album explores the special nature of the Christian God and his Judgment: that it is both global and intensely personal. God is not only some awesome force which will destroy the world as we know it in order to finally defeat evil. He’ll get up close, look you in the eye, and with a single tear, cast you in the lake of fire himself.

“Hide your children, hide your husband,” the artist sings in the first track, “THE ORDER OF SPIRITUAL VIRGINS.” “For all who dare look upon me swear eternal devotion.” She elongates the final sound, as if it were an Islamic call to prayer. This first song approaches the problem of God’s love at an unexpected angle; it highlights how it’s the kind of love that can destroy the recipients’ other relationships. It’s all-consuming. It’s a prison that separates you from other people. I’m reminded of the various versions of shunning / disfellowshipping / excommunicating apostates that each fundamentalist sub-religion of the Judeo-Christian system practices. Even my father, though excommunication isn’t much of a thing for Baptists, once remarked to me that we shouldn’t be friends with unbelievers. God’s love has the peculiar quality of being exclusive, not in the sense that God doesn’t love everyone, but that those who love God seem to restrict their remaining love accordingly.

Simply think of Issac. Never mind that God stayed Abraham’s hand at the crucial moment. (We’ve already mentioned that God doesn’t turn up His nose at human meat, in general.) Think about the test itself. God, omniscient and infinite as he is, wanted to know if a particular human being loved Him more than he loved his child. Wouldn’t any therapist tell you that a hallmark of an abuser is that He will make you sacrifice your other relationships for Him? That He will constantly force you to choose? Abraham was one of the Lord’s most faithful servants in all of history, yet God pushes further, trying to find the bounds of His control over him. It’s grotesque that God asks, and it’s tragic that Abraham obeys.

The first track of the album pairs well with Lingua Ignota’s cover of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.” A seemingly random choice of a cover to release as a single, it soon makes complete sense. With just a change of intonation, the artist uncovers the song’s more theological meaning. Why does Parton feel the need to say, “Her beauty is beyond compare?” Why does she feel the need to detail the beauty of and to worship this all-powerful “Jolene,” who can take her man any time she wants? Is she simply being descriptive? Or, does Parton’s subjection to someone with the power to take away anyone she loves at will - just like God - force Parton to prostrate herself in front of Jolene in a way that makes it sound that she loves Jolene just as much (or more than) her man? By making the song sound like something that belongs in Catholic mass, Lingua Ignota’s cover teases out the relationship between Jolene’s omnipotent irresistibility and Parton’s extolling of her virtues.

The second track on the album is a call for revenge, an attempt to unleash the wrath of God on another person. “If I cannot hide from you, neither can he,” the artist begs. Revenge is an important piece of the Christian puzzle. After all, God’s delayed Judgement is the main Christian response to the Problem of Evil. Why does evil reign? Why do Nazis kill God’s chosen people? Why do the most fervent saints get crushed in this sinful world? Because, it’s said, that God has chosen to withhold his wrath against evildoers until the appointed time. This gets at something crucial: for the believer, judgment day is for other people. A believer will have something like TSA Pre-check when God’s wrath comes. In one flavor of Christian eschatology, for example, God’s people are teleported away before the nightmare confluence of world events the Anti-Christ will bring. For the believer, the dissonance between God’s anger and his love is resolved: one is for me and one is for others. The unbeliever, however, receives both.

The position of the unbeliever is the focal point of “Many Hands,” which I consider the lynchpin of the album. The chorus is terrifying: “The lord spat and held me by my neck. I would die for you I would die for you he wept … I wish things could be different he wept.” In this way, the unsaved get the full brunt of God’s bipolar disorder. God claims that he wants everyone to be saved, that he ‘wishes things could be different,’ yet he prepared an eternal torture chamber for uncooperative souls. Is this the action of a Being who is planning to welcome everyone into his arms? This is the same God that destroyed the whole earth in a great flood, and then he promised - promised - never to do anything like that again. Won’t you trust me, baby? Here’s a gift, here’s a rainbow, I love you and I’m so so sorry. You know I didn’t mean it. I love you so much…. It’s textbook, isn’t it? Don’t go back to that Man, you’ll just get hurt again. He’ll impale you with the edge of His perfect goodness.

God loves you, and he will kill you. When, in “PENNSYLVANIA FURNACE,” the artist asks us softly, “Do you want to be in hell with me?” I may not be so bold as to say yes, but I do have some concerns about being in heaven with Him. When the signs warn me, “Are you ready to meet Jesus?” I want to say back, “Yeah I do, I’ve got some issues to take up with him.” Sinner Get Ready has a warning for us too: An ancient god is not a healthy partner in modern love. But that’s not catchy enough for a billboard, I suppose.