Theological Journal – May 13 Why God is Not in Control – And It’s a Good Thing Too!

To try and pull together the threads of this meandering series of thoughts about God’s relation to us:

-God is not in control - if we mean God has pre-scripted everything that happens to us and therefore our lives are not truly our own. This misconstrues the nature of God’s relation to the world and leaves him open to charges of mismanagement of his world and failure to properly control things in it – and it’s a good thing too!

-God is not in control - if we mean by control precisely the same thing we mean when we say we or anyone else is in control of someone or something. Our language about God does not mean exactly what it means when we apply it to others humans. When we do this we run into the same problems noted above – and it’s a good thing too!

-Practically speaking, then, thus means we should not tell someone to whom something bad has happened that “it is all part of the plan.” That’s about the worst thing, pastorally speaking, one can say it that kind of situation. Nor should we think it about our own lives that way either. How can one love or trust a deity who plans and implements horrible happenings on his people and his world? Even Job, perhaps the most put-upon figure we know about, encouraged by his so-called friends to think this way and seemingly doing so, is corrected in dramatic fashion by God himself that such a way of thinking about life is radically distorted and fundamentally demeaning to God. This liberates Job to trust God without him presuming to know God’s ways and plans such that he subtly substitutes his way and wisdom for God’s and then blames God that it doesn’t work out well for him.

-God is in control – if we mean by that we trust his good purposes for us and our world will come to be un spite of our incomprehension and perplexity and recognize that his way in our fallen world is a way of suffering servanthood – and that is good news indeed!

-God is in control – if we look steadily at Jesus through whom God has already and forever proved his faithfulness and goodness by raising him from the dead and installing him as world ruler and the first truly human person who exercises the dominion and control God always intended human beings to practice (Heb.2:5-10). May Kierkegaard’s wonderful prayer be true for us:

Lord! Give us weak eyes
for things which are of no account
and clear eyes
for all thy truth.