I have been thinking a lot recently about two specific questions that we have been looking at in our youth group. They are two questions all of us will continue to ask at various points throughout the rest of their lives:
"Why does God let bad stuff happen?"
&
"Do the things we do actually matter?"
These are two of the central questions of faith, and dramatically effect the way in which we understand God, and our relationship with him.&
"Do the things we do actually matter?"
The prime mover in both of those questions is that God is in control.
We may not always understand it, but when we look back, we can see God moving even in the midst of tragedy. God's will is always what happens. God's desire is for there to be no suffering and for the world to be perfect (what will ultimately be achieved).
The discrepancy between the two is free will combined with our broken human nature. God's love for us gives us "free will," and sin uses that freedom in ways that cause suffering. While God doesn't desire us to suffer, it is still within God's will (what he allows to happen).
Essentially, you can't have broken humans executing their own free will and not have it lead to suffering. Likewise, you cannot really have love without some sense of free will.
It's similar to parents teaching kids to ride a bike: their desire is that the child learn to ride the bike and to not get hurt. Their will, however, is what they allow to happen, and we understand that in order to ride a bike, everyone has to fall. While that is not the parents' desire, it is still their will, in order to achieve the end result. Yes, the parent could simply push the child around all the time, ensuring that they are never hurt, but that wouldn't involve any action from the child, and ultimately, the child would never grow from that.
God is in control.
All the time.
Even when it seems like he's the most out of control.
Look at the Passion.
The greatest suffering and chaos of all time, especially to those who experienced it. Followers of Jesus watch him die like a criminal, and they have no idea that he is coming back. They are scared, lost, and disillusioned. They fear for their lives. Their whole understanding of the world has failed them. Or so they thought.
As we can see it now, the Passion was one of the times that God is most active in all of history.
God was in complete control, doing exactly what needed to be done to save us.
Yet to the disciples and followers of Jesus, they felt about as alone as ever.
God was in control then.
God is in control now.
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I'm not sure about what you say above———is it "truth", or is it "protecting" God and His image?!
ReplyDelete1/ If men/women truly have "free" will, it can be outside of God's will. Isn't saying, "God allows us to fail, so it's still God's will" just covering for God?
2/ You imply that anything we enact as free will will be bad, failure on our part. Can't men/women's acts of free will also lead to good? Isn't it possible that men/women have a spark of good in them from the Creator as well as the tendency for selfishness/sin? Not everything we do on our own is evil, is it? Or, is anything we do apart from God evil? That sounds like a Creator problem? In that case "free will" is not really free. Doesn't He want us to learn to choose "good" on our own? Doesn't He want us to learn to ride that bike?
3/ I tend to think that "God's Will" is what God wants definitely to happen. God's Plan. God's Desire.
4/ I tend to think that God allows us to express our own thoughts and desires, outside of His Will. We act on our own "free will." He lets go of the bike and we act. Sometimes we do "good" and He smiles: we have learned from the Master. Sometimes our "free will" is not influenced by God's touch/direction: we are selfish and we fail. We fall and skin our knee . . . and usually come running back to Our Father. Failing is outside of God's Will, God's Plan. But He allows us to fail because He allows us free will, to choose.
5/ Romans 8:28 says: "All things work together for good, to those who love God." It doesn't say "all things ARE good," but that "all things work together for good." God takes the bad that happens and turns it into good for us, if we trust Him and involve Him.
6/ God's Will is always good. Not all things that happen to us are good. Expressing our free will leads too frequently to something bad. Therefore not all things are God's Will, and many of our frequent expressions of free will are not God's Will.
7/ God's Love takes the selfish/bad that sometimes results from our free will and works with our hearts to convert it to good, restoring us and it to God's Will.
8/ God's Will/God's Plan does not always happen, because God give His children the free will to choose. Sometimes we choose NOT to follow God's Will. Sometimes our free will decisions trump God's Will. God allows all, but not all is God's Will.
9/ The beauty of the Passion is that God does not remove Himself from us when we choose not to follow God's Will. He pays the price through the atoning blood of Jesus, the one who ALWAYS chose God's Will, to put us back on track and restore us to God's Will.
10/ God's Will is not our free will. He allows us to fail; He allows us to stray from His Will. Yet, like the cars on the Turnpike at Kennywood, His Grace doesn't allow us to stray too far from His Will and allows us to recover from those decisions we make that are against His Will.
So . . . God's Will is always good. Not all of our free will decisions are good. Not all that we do is in God's Will. But . . . God's Grace, expressed most clearly in the Passion of His Son Jesus Christ (J 3:16) restores the bad we have done—— and our hearts, our selves——to God's Will.
I think . . .
• I'm not really sure who this is who made this comment, which while I really appreciate the response, that makes it a little harder to respond to.
ReplyDelete• I do not believe that all human will is evil or bad, but that left to our own devices, the ultimate destination is sin. We are drawn to it, and without God, given a long enough timeline, we are destined to fail on our own. This is a far cry from claiming that humans can do nothing that is truly good by their own volition. To claim that this can be apart from God's will, however, limits God.
• I think this may be more a matter of semantics, your having a problem with my distinction between God's Desire and God's Will. God's Desire is always for God. God's Will is always ultimately resulting in good, but bad stuff still happens in the midst of it.
Roman 8:28 is the prime example of this, which makes it surprising that you would use it to claim that bad things are outside of God's Will. That verse is saying that God is working all things, both good and bad, for good. The ultimate result is complete goodness - God's desire. But God is working all things to get to that ultimate goodness.
To say that we can work apart from God's will means inherently that we have power apart from God, that we can work out side of God's power. This would mean that God's power is not all encompassing, that God is not completely omnipotent, that God is not omnipresent. This view both limits God and elevates humans, giving us power that has nothing to do with God.
• If God is allowing something to happen, then there is a reason. There are only limited options as to what that reason could be:
- God allows it to happen because he can't stop it. (limiting God's power)
- God allows it to happen because he doesn't care/isn't paying attention. (changing the very nature and understanding of God)
- God allows it to happen because he has a larger purpose for this, that it will ultimately work for the good of all human kind, even if we cannot see it at the time.
• Again, I think The Passion is a good example of the will of God in full effect. The events from human standards seemed to be complete chaos and disaster. Yet God is in complete control of it, working all of it for good. We don’t ever think about the Passion thinking that if only Judas hadn’t screwed up God’s plan, Jesus never would have had to die. Or if Caiaphas hadn’t led the religious leaders in such a rancorous fervor against Jesus, or if Pilate had refused to allow him to be convicted, or if the crowds hadn’t chosen Barabbas. Each of these events are clearly people working against the desire of God, doing things out of their own weaknesses, whether it is impatience, selfishness, fear, or anger. Yet, we see the entire Passion as the Will of God, prefigured throughout the Old Testament, most notably in Psalm 22. Clearly this is the Will of God, and yet there are incredibly bad human errors that happen in the midst of this, which God uses to make this ultimate good arise. This is an example for us of how God is working throughout all history. Even when we feel alone and overwhelmed by tragedy, God is still working all that for ultimate good.
• The ultimate reality of this is that, if God is not in control when bad things happen, then what does that say about God? If bad things happen that are outside of God’s Plan, is that really that good of a plan? Is God simply reacting to us, or is he working through us?
I don't know . . .
ReplyDeleteIt still seems a little bit as if you are protecting God, and not visa versa.
Can't the Creator be powerful enough to give His creation a "free will" that is exercised apart from His immediate sponsorship/approval?
Is it a weakened God that gives the created a measure of autonomy, desiring that those created will grow and "choose" to commit heart and soul and mind and strength to God? Or, is it a greater God?!?
Maybe I'm just asking the age old question: Can God create a boulder so large that He cannot lift it?
Yet maybe, just maybe, it is a more powerful God who gives us the "free will" to act apart from His Will, then guides us to choose Him and His ways——His Will——with that freedom He has given us.
If every action we do, good or bad, is God's Will, then where's the "free will": where's the choice? That sounds more that we as men and women are just puppets, with God choosing at random what strings to pull. That sounds like "free will" in name only.
I have to believe what happened to your sister Kirby was not God's Will. I have to believe that the suffering that you and your other sister, and your dad and your mom, experienced was not God's Will.
I have to believe that God's Will did not occur——that God did not cause that death. I have to believe that God was as full of sorrow as you and your family were. I have to believe that God cried too that day, as did so many of your friends. If family cried and friends cried but God did not, who's greater?! I have to believe that God DID cry! I have to believe that something like that was NOT God's Will. God was NOT in control!
Otherwise, God is just an ogre, playing with our emotions and our minutes to suit His fancy.
Which is the greater father: One who forces his kids to do everything and regiments their development, or One who gives them instruction and opportunity to learn, but ultimately allows his children to become their own individual persons? The second, to me, allows more development. He takes more risk but has greater reward.
Which is the greater God: One who allows nothing to transpire outside His purview, or One who gives the Other opportunity to develop and grow, and then choose to be part of the One. (or even choose not)?
I guess I'm not a Double Predestination kind of person.
Not all things are good . . . God's Will is always good . . . not all things are God's Will.
That to me doesn't indicate an impotent God, but an All-Powerful God, who chooses to relinquish some of His Power in the Hope that it will not be returned to Him void. It takes more Power, more Love, to allow His children to go free——have "free will"——than to orchestrate every move and decision, making absolutely everything God's Will.
Isn't that what the Cross was for? To provide atonement for the times we as God's children choose not to act in His accord, His Will? Isn't that why the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory? To help us make that choice to become His children, as verse 12 indicates? To accept His Passion so our sins do not bog us down in our own passion?
God's Grace assures me that we can be restored "back on track" [Kennywood] with God's Will when we empty ourselves of our "selves" (kenosis) and take on the mind of Christ. (I Cor. 2:16) Not all things are good . . . not all things are God's Will . . . but the All-Powerful God can allow His children to stray and have confidence in them that they will come back. Isn't that why Christ died, to open up that avenue? The All-Powerful God brings our "free choice" failures back into line . . and makes the evil we do restored to good. Not "all things are good" but "all things work together for good" (Romans 8:28)
It takes a more powerful God——ALL Powerful——to "trust" rather than "control." When we trust . . . have faith . . . we are restored to God's Will.
I think . . . .
Once again, I respond, but with a sense of frustration at not knowing who this is (especially with the personal tone the last comment has taken).
ReplyDelete- Your recent comments show that you aren't actually considering what I'm trying to say, but simply inferring that I am saying specific things that you want to dispute. In your recent comment, you seem to be essentially saying the same thing you said before, but this time with more ellipses.
- Again, I am making a distinction between the will of God and the desire of God, a distinction which is needed if we are to understand how God can be in control of things even when he does not desire them.
- Saying that "God is in control of everything" is completely different than saying that "God is CONTROLLING everything." If God is not in control all the time, that is completely changing the very nature of the witness that Scripture gives to how we even begin to understand God.
- By removing God's oversight from anything that we see as bad, then we are making God simply a janitor, constantly cleaning up our messes. There is a difference in God's power working through our mistakes and working in spite of our mistakes. The passion clearly shows God working through the human mistakes and failings, not simply navigating around them. The mystery of God is that there is good that is wrought from all things, even death and suffering. God is using ALL things for good. Not simply erasing bad things to make way for good things.
- The broken nature of this world entails that their will be suffering, pain, and death. Jesus calls us to work in the midst of that, promising suffering, pain, and death to his followers, but that all these bad things will work toward absolute Good.
- Read Job 38-41 (not simply one or two verses, but the whole thing). If it doesn't make sense, find another translation, and read it again. The Message provides a rather accessible translation, and you can read it at BibleGateway.com
Even in the midst of suffering, God is still in control, working all things for good. Not simply replacing bad things with good things, but working through even the bad to make it good.
- Finally, in the view that you are putting forth, the onus is nearly entirely on us to come to God. God is passive. This faith seems to be more tied to the need for "free will" as you define it, rather than on the sovereignty of God. Ultimately, that is putting faith in humans, ahead of faith in God, that it is up to us to save ourselves by accepting God's grace, which he puts out there passively, waiting quietly for us to accept it. In this view, it is humans who are the actors. God is merely the benefactor.
I simply do not agree with that.