How much is God involved in the problems and struggles of our daily lives? Does He direct all events, all outcomes and all decisions? Is every moment of our lives pre-planned? Does God get involved sometimes, or does He stand back completely and just wait for the end result?
I heard Todd Friel, the host of “Wretched Radio”, state with considerable confidence one day that “everything is ordained”. If that’s literally true, it means that when your car collided with another one, and when aunt so-and -so came down with cancer and passed away in short time, God himself was the cause. It means that riots, wars, sickness and family break-ups are all planned by the Lord of love and light. Perhaps not many Calvin-lovers will go so far as to agree fully or openly with this view, and perhaps they have a clever way of explaining it away, but I’m not buying it.
FOREKNOWLEDGE AND PREDESTINATION
I’ve no doubt that God knows all things. He knew long ago before I was born what I would do and what I would say. That’s why He “hated” Esau; why he knew who would betray the Christ; why he knows how our present age will end, and how Pharoah was going to react to Moses. I’ll admit that He guides many events towards His chosen ends. I’m also in on the belief that God is involved in our lives and sometimes steps in even when we aren’t aware of it, but I have to confess to being one of the billions mystified as to where He gets to when you need Him the most.
A DECEIVER?
When God placed Adam and Eve near the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, was he setting up the Fall, in which billions of people would suffer and die due to the resultant Curse? Hard-liners on the subject of free-will will tell you not only that this is true, but that it was an act of love. Sending billions to hell while a small minority, arbitrarily chosen because we’re all so rotten to the core anyway, go to the place of bliss for all eternity is an act of love. Why of course! Only a God of love would send literally billions of people to hell without giving them the chance of redemption!
A LOVING GOD?
I found myself on the subject of free-will today because I’ve been pondering to what degree God is involved in situations and outcomes in our lives. As painful as it is, I’ve wrestled with this question for the forty plus years I’ve been a follower of Jesus Christ. When things don’t go your way in life, is it because your creator is making them not go your way, or is something else at work?
It seems to me that a Savior who would say “Go, and sin no more”, is allowing for the option of sinning or of avoiding it. It seems that a Master who would tell people to “Follow me” is giving them the option of following Him, rather than making them do it. Otherwise, such counsel is really nothing more than a sham and a deception. If, when God told Adam not to eat from that tree He knew all the time He was leading Adam to do it, He was in fact setting up a deception of cosmic proportions, in practise and in word. In this case everything in our Bible has to be re-interpreted with the consideration that God doesn’t mean what He says and that He’s not to be trusted. Judas was created to betray Jesus and then kill himself and go to hell. Is this a loving God? No, it is not.
THE CAUSES OF SUFFERING
Bringing this all down to a more personal level, we see events and outcomes in our lives which at the least frustrate us, and at the worst damage us deeply. Where do they come from? I’ve written extensively on suffering. There are a number of causes of suffering, unless you truly believe that “all things are ordained”, in which case the ultimate cause of all suffering is God. Isn’t that blasphemy? Human sin and the resultant Curse brought suffering and death. Beyond that, my conviction is that we have considerable power over our own lives. Sin leads to harmful consequences, while a righteous heart produces good fruit.
Therefore if or since we have free-will, so does everyone else around us. In this case our conclusion has to be that people are free to hurt and to fail each other and themselves, otherwise free-will is not free-will at all. If we ask the Lord to do away with wrongdoing, we’re asking Him to take away our freedom to choose and to reason. The sinner has to be free to commit his sin or his crime in every way, be it physical, emotional or spiritual. God “stands back” and watches the robber take what isn’t his, and doesn’t send a lightning bolt to stop him. Afterwards, God gives him time to repent of his wrongdoing, and so he goes on in apparent freedom, at least for the time being. God spared Cain. God is merciful.
WHEN THINGS GO WRONG
When life fails and when things go wrong, what happened? I don’t want to dismiss the will of God, whose will does indeed trump our own. He can do what He wants. He has the right to direct our lives. He is God and we are not and never will be. He is Lord, and we are His servants. However, our own free will, a gift of His to us, allows for all kinds of problems and troubles. When those troubles come, we tend to think God has let us down. Were He really a loving God, and if He really loved me (we think) He would never have let that happen. The truth is that He allowed human free will and its consequences to flow, within His own. Sometimes we wish that He did not.
We have a gigantic paradox at work in our world. God can do all things, but He doesn’t. God can make our lives into a bed of roses, but He doesn’t. God can stop bad things happening but He doesn’t. God could make people be nice to us but he doesn’t. Life is one huge mish-mash of consequences caused by our own actions and decisions and those of others, by natural laws, by spiritual forces, by the Curse, and yes, by the work of God. To what extent those are at play in any one situation we can’t always tell and probably never will. However, we do know this one principle which we need to hold fast to:
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).
God doesn’t make us sin or make stupid mistakes. He therefore doesn’t stop others sinning against us and making stupid mistakes which affect us, all the way up to leading us into war or slavery. Neither does the Lord stop everything bad that happens to us, though I do believe there are times when He steps in. In all events and consequences of life God is there – the Rock of our salvation – guarding those who love Him, and guiding us home. Ultimately, if we are in Christ, we cannot lose. All that goes on around us and in us will culminate in the revealed will of God anyway, and in the perfect solution to our troubles. Every tear will be wiped away. All wrongs will be righted.
God knows the future, but He doesn’t cancel it on that basis: He gives it fulfillment so that reality and truth can be expressed and seen to be as it should be. Nobody will ever be able to accuse Him of unfairness.
In the meantime what matters is the condition of our hearts, and the Lord is testing us, or if you like, has already tested us through His infinite knowledge. Do we love God and HIs only son Jesus Christ or not? Will we follow him no matter what? Will we obey no matter what happens around us and in our bodies; no matter what so-and-so does to us, and no matter how absent and uncaring our Father sometimes seems to be? It can be a painful and lonely process, but the end result, if we endure, is our perfection, holiness, and completion.
Fuel for Faith, Food for Thought 