The last two weeks have been interesting. The coming together of a lot of different input into my brain has resulted in the crystallization of some ideas I've been mulling over for a long long time.
First, I've been in isolation since I got off the plane having arrived back in New Zealand from Korea, I've been planning my trip home and onwards for over a year. Since going into isolation I've been joking to my friends and family that my timing is terrible, this virus has disrupted all my plans. And then I tell myself God is in control, I will trust His timing, everything will be fine.
Second, while in isolation I've had plenty of time to read up on Covid-19 and see the response of governments, of the general public, and of my friends, both the Christians and the non-Christians. And then I tell myself God is in control, I will trust Him, everything will be fine.
Third, I've been listening to a series of lectures about Revelation. Really interesting, thought provoking. The prophecies in Revelation give the big picture, and they confirm that God is in control, we can trust Him, everything will be fine.
God is in control. All things are under His power. Nothing happens unless God wills it. He has planned all things from the beginning.
But here is the thing, all these thoughts and inputs in my brain have been banging around and the conclusion I've come to is that my idea of God being in control is nothing more than a comforting lie.
We tell ourselves the various versions of this comforting lie, and we tell each other “God either did it, or He allowed it.” In my mind allowing it is the same as doing it. But we see that so many of the things that happen on this world are terrible. How can a God who tells us He is both loving and just do or allow these terrible things to happen? So then we seek to justify God’s seemingly terrible actions by saying things like, “It is God’s Will.” Or “It’s all in God’s Plan, we’ll understand it when we get to heaven.”
And, our comforting lie gives rise to much harder questions.
Consider,
If God is in control then He is allowing this virus to spread around the world and kill thousands of people and in His infinite wisdom He is standing back and doing nothing, even though he has the power to eradicate it with a word. Why?
If God is in control, why did He do nothing except watch when my 12 year old student was held down and raped by four men?
If God is in control, then He chose not to intervene when my high school friend committed suicide. Why did He make that choice?
If God is in control, why didn't He step in and heal my grandmother who was dying from cancer?
If God is in control ...
My list of the injustices of a God who chooses not to exercise His power to right the wrongs in my life, in the lives of my family and friends, and in the world in general, is long.
Long!!
If God is in control then He is responsible for all the evil in the world. It all comes back to Him. And, He is choosing not to fix it. His choice. That god is neither just, nor loving.
I would not want to be connected to a god like that.
A god like that is not worthy of worship.
But ...
What about if He's not in control?
What if there are things in our universe, in our lives that are out of His control?
Then God is excused from responsibility, other factors are in play, other entities are responsible.
Is it possible for God to be all powerful, all loving, completely just, and yet not be in control?
My thought is that yes, it is possible that God has found Himself in a position where His hands are tied, where He has both the power, and the desire to change situations, but He is unable to do so.
How can that be?
It comes back to Gods nature, God is both loving and just.
One facet of love is that it does not force itself on the focus of its affections. Love requires consent. God is a gentleman, He requires consent before He acts in our lives. He tells us what He desires from us, He tells us the glorious results if we consent to be united with Him, and He warns us of the terrible consequences if we reject His offer and go our own way. And then He steps back and He lets us make our own decisions. And He honours those decisions. In all things.
Also consider, the devil is a living being. A creature that God created just like us. God’s nature requires that He cannot disregard the devil’s freewill the same as He cannot disregard ours. God requires consent from the devil just as much as He requires it from us. And the devil refuses to consent. (Exploring the implications of that are for a different essay.)
Another aspect of God’s character is His justice, and justice requires that beings with freewill have the opportunity to exercise that freewill. All beings must have a real opportunity, no matter how small, to chose either to go along with God's will or to disregard it, to consent to His plan or to reject it, to trust His will or to make their own way. Even though the devil has enslaved us, even though he hides from us the truth of our God given choice, it is still there. The Holy Spirit is charged with the task of gifting us with the knowledge of our choice, gifting us with the desire to choose God, and gifting us with the ability to surrender to God even in the midst of our enslavement. And so, in this manner, God's justice is preserved.
Now I have another question for you, is everything that is happening, or has happened in this world God's will, God's desire? Because if God is in control then only His will can occur. It is my utter conviction that the answer to that question is and must be no. Many many things that are happening, or have happened are not God's will and are in fact against His very nature of love and justice.
It was not God's will for my grandmother to die.
It was not God's plan for my high school friend to commit suicide.
It was not God's desire for my student to be raped.
It is not God's will for Covid-19 to kill thousands of people.
God desires none of these things, they are not in God's will, He does not desire them and He did not plan them.
"But," I hear you thinking, "You're just saying that because you want it to be true." Ok, then lets examine a couple of Bible stores.
Was it God's will that Adam and Eve ate the fruit that caused this whole mess? (Genesis 3)
No, it most definitely was not. He explicitly told them not to eat the fruit, and He warned them that if they did they would die. He did not will, plan, or desire their fall from grace. But, He did not stop them when they chose to go against His will and eat the fruit. In fact, He planted the tree in the garden, He set up the opportunity for Adam and Eve to decide to go against His expressed will and do the one thing He had told them not to do, because His justice required that there had to be a chance, however small that Adam and Eve could choose against God and His sovereignty.
Was it God's will that Cain murdered his brother Abel? (Genesis 4)
No it most definitely was not. He warned Cain about the consequences of His thoughts, what would happen if He continued to think a long those lines. Cain chose to ignore Him, Cain chose to kill his brother.
Was the flood that destroyed the earth and killed the entire population of the earth except for Noah and his family God's will? (Genesis 6-9)
Actually yes, this one was God's will. In fact He caused the flood. He caused it in response to the wickedness He saw in the world. He desired to cleanse the earth. It was not part of His original plan, if Adam and Eve had not eaten the fruit the flood would never have occurred. But, he also announced a warning that the flood was coming, and He prepared a way so that anyone who wanted to could escape from the flood. While the flood was God's will, It was not His will that anybody should die in that flood. However those people chose to ignore the opportunity of salvation that was offered to them, so they died, against His will.
There are many stories in the Bible that tell of things happening against God's will, stories that show events where God's will was thwarted and not carried out, things happening that were expressly against His will. Therefore the only conclusion we can come to is that God is not in control. If He was, then only His will would be carried out, we would be experiencing Heaven on earth, and we are not.
So where does this leave us?
With a loving and just God with no power?
My answer to this is "No, He has the power, but He is constrained." He is constrained by two things, first our lack of consent for Him to act on our behalf, and second by the devils lack of consent and utter enmity towards God and humanity. (Both of these are topics for another essay.)
So He is a powerful, loving, and just God who is constrained. How is that any better than if He had no power?
It is immensely better.
While God cannot act on our behalf without our consent, He is still free to act on His own. Like with Noah, He made a plan to cleanse the earth and still retain the life of the earth. He communicated that plan to Noah, He prepared a way for humanity to escape the results of His actions, and then He did exactly what He said He would do.
The Bible is full of Gods promises. Some of them require our consent, they are conditional on our asking, on prayer. Some of them do not require consent, they are His actions alone and He will carry them out whether we ask or not. For example. the second coming. It has been promised that Jesus is coming again and the word will be cleansed again, this time with fire. This is going to happen, but like with Noah a way has been prepared for those who wish to escape this destructive event. However that escape package, it requires our consent. God will not save us against our wills when He does exactly what He has said He will do.
And in the mean time, while we wait there is one promise we can hold on to. An anchor in the storms of life...
"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." Romans 8:28
He's not in complete control in our world, there are going to be many things that happen that are both unjust, and unloving, He has to balance the needs of all of humanity, and work around the actions of the devil, but if you have consented to be united with Him then you can expect Him to be at work in your life, you can trust that "all things [will] work together for good" for you. He will take those terrible things that happen, and he will work with them, add actions of His own that don’t require our consent and one day we’ll look back and say, “That terrible thing that happened, it’s still a terrible thing, but I can see the good that came from it.” And we will praise our loving and just God.
