Theme series 2 Is God in control

 

 

Now the question of Gods control over our lives, the universe and our salvation is a bit of a biggie and one that has dogged the modern church since at least the teachings of a man called Calvin who proposed amongst other things the idea of Gods predestining of all things including Mans individual salvation.

In simplest terms the issues are Gods control verses mans free will, Omnipotence against impotence, chance as opposed to complete divine intervention in all things.

The two opposing positions put most basically state this;

On the one side (The view of Basic Calvinism) everything that happens is dictated by God because he is all powerful and all controlling.   

On the other side, life is a random collection of chance events and we as Christians and non Christians alike live to some extent at the mercy of what life brings us. Sounds a simple choice doesn’t it but of course it isn’t and why? Well, because each idea brings with it huge definitions about how we understand the nature of God himself (in the end you see we simply can’t separate ‘who God is’ from that which we perceive him to do or allow, or not do) and there is no easy answer to the problem.

The starting place for this discussion comes from two separate positions firstly from the nature of Gods Kingdom in Christ as revealed in the New Testament and secondly from the nature of the world around us.

This isn’t by the way a discussion of what God will do at the end of time or to suggest that the eventual destiny of all things will not be subject to his design, in the end, I believe that God will redeem the universe and triumph.

What I would like us to think about here relates to the everyday situations within both our lives and within human history and in regard to the salvation of our souls.

And this proposition of mine doesn’t either claim to answer all the questions; The fact is that none of the arguments work completely, mine simply makes more sense to me.

Christians who believe that God is in control hold a variety of variations on the theme; for example one Priest I know believes in a theology of double predestination, that Gods control over life is so complete that he even chooses not only those who will come to salvation in Christ but also actively chooses those who won’t!

The problems with this view are of course obvious; man is left with no free will in the matter and God becomes the one who selects (on some unknown basis) who will be condemned for all eternity! God then it seems to me in this view becomes the destroyer of men! The torturer (and for eternity, for most Calvinists in my experience also believe in an eternal hell) of millions of human souls.

So those who you and I might have the capacity to love as a mere flawed human beings (if this person is not chosen to be saved) is to be unloved for eternity by the God who apparently is Love!

The contradictions are too much for me this must be nothing less than absolute twaddle.

Other Christians hold the view that although people can choose whether or not to be saved everything else is pre-ordained, how long we live, whom we marry etc, etc. And in particular, a particular emphasis seems to be placed, by such people, on all the things that go wrong for us. I have always found this frankly a bit odd.

So many Christians that I have met are really ‘happy’ to attribute all their tragedies and traumas to Gods divine will but on the other hand take the good things in their lives as some- how less than God’s blessing. It isn’t that they don’t see the good things as from God as well, but the emphasis seems some- how less. Perhaps because the traumas are so much more intense, they intensify their belief in Gods control in order to put their suffering into a more cope able frame of reference. 

There is only one God whose divine will must therefore governs all things; but does it?

Is God the author of our sufferings? Does he bring them into our lives for some unknown divine reason? To teach us lessons, to refine our faith?

Personally as I suggested last week, I don’t see this, after all why would he, if he wanted to teach us these lessons, do so in the cruellest of ways? And where does it stop? At personal tragedy, national tragedy, are suffering and pain actually Gods will at times for our lives?

We have all seen, either personally or through the reporting of the media countless acts of evil perpetuated on people by other people, are these victims supposed to see God as in some way the motivator behind these events?

In my view this makes no sense at all and because of this I see life as a mixture of the random events from which we all suffer at times, of what we make it and of the consequences of evil.

My position is that we live in a world that since the fall exists in a state of ‘Chaos’, in a state of decay.

The universe is dying, it is corrupted, falling apart if you like, spiralling downwards, all is not set or part of some carefully worked out plan or working as it should be and this biblically speaking is the effect of a disease called sin, the result being firstly, all that is bad in the world and secondly the evil and selfishness that exists within the hearts of both men and women.

In the New Testament this current situation is illustrated perhaps most strikingly in the Apostle Pauls concepts of the ’New verses the Old order.’ In our Romans 5 reading Paul talks of the corruption and consequences of Adams Sin in these terms and then of the new situation brought about in Christ. In a variety of different ways Paul talks of a tension between what God is doing through the new ministry of the kingdom in Christ and the ‘old order/situation/world’ in which the whole universe exists.

In the new kingdom (the places where Gods influence is now active) God is working to bring redemption, that is, he is present and active and working to bring peace. God then, provides us with a foretaste of what is to come when he will one day act to re-create all things.

God is not then in  control at least not yet, but he is here and his presence brings into our lives the influence of his love by the power of his Holy Spirit and in Christian terms anyway the place where this influence is most active and obvious is called his Church.

In his Church universal, in its people, in their lives and through its ministry to the wider world God exerts his influence and seeks to deliver to everyone a foretaste of his love.

His role then, if you like, rather than being to control (for the world is lost to him by its own choice) is to redeem, to make good from that which is in fact chaos, to bring some order and love to that which is in fact in decay, to quote Paul from our other reading today from Romans 8.

 “God works IN ALL THINGS for good for those who love him”

note here Paul does not say that God “does all things for good for those who love him” even though this is how many have read the text but that he is present in all things and influencing all things in a redemptive way; this is my view.

In practical terms then when tragedy and suffering come it is neither God who brings it or who orders it, it is a direct consequence of the fact that life and existence itself, is in chaos.

They are a result of Sin, of the decisions of evil people.

And tragedy and suffering is also I believe at times the direct product of evil, an independent force which exists in opposition to God the author which the bibles calls the Devil or Satan.

Gods role within this universal tragedy is then, as I have said, to redeem the universe both spiritually and one day physically at the end of days. To work for Good within our lives so that if we let him, he will come along side us, love us, deliver us, reassure us and give us hope even within our darkest moments.  

In conclusion then to say that God is in control again denies his nature for He IS LOVE.

It also denies the fact of mans free will and flies completely in the face of reality itself, there is simply too much badness, sadness, and evil in the world for it to be true.

Doesn’t this make God powerless? Well Not at all, for he is redeeming all things.

Why doesn’t God step in and change things?  He has and he is in Christ.

Why did God let all this chaos exist in the first place, why did he let man fall into sin and let sin corrupt the world, why didn’t he create without the possibility of corruption? 

Because free will is an essential aspect of creation.

To create without the possibility of that creation failing, without giving it the ability to be creative itself (with all the dangers that brings) would perhaps make creation itself pointless? 

And Surely the Good news is that despite the fact that we like the prodigal sons have all walked away and squandered our inheritance, God has followed us since the beginning of the Fall and has been loving us back to himself redeeming us and his world ever since.