Wednesday, July 30, 2014

God is not in control


Step into my disorderly mind for a minute.  In which you bounce back and forth between all sorts of problems.   

Israel and Palestine.  Landslide in India.  Kidnapped Nigerian girls.  North Korean generational prisons.  Systematic racial discrimination in the US.  Latin American children fleeing gang violence.  Ebola in West Africa.

My reality - the one I SEE on a daily basis - is nothing like any of this.  I see mainly orderly automobile traffic with the occasional jerk.  I see people peacefully walking the streets, going about their daily lives.  I see friendly smiles, and small kind gestures.

This creates a constant tension inside of me - the reality I experience is so different from the reality other people experience.  Things that must seem like the End of the World to people where and when they live, but that the rest of us are just basically ignoring. What then is common or fundamental to humanity?

We all still think and talk quite a fair amount about WWII.  People like to exaggerate by comparing things to the Holocaust and Hitler.  It seems like this particular conflict, the lessons learned from it, the ongoing questions it raises for everyone to consider, will just always remain a part of the human memory now.  But there were things that were that major to other people, in various places, hundreds and even thousands of years ago, that we have forgotten all about.  So maybe the things we think so much about will rather vanish from the collective consciousness also.

If I were a doctor treating the Ebola virus, I would feel pretty helpless.  Frustrated over my lack of ability to cure the disease.  Wishing I had more CONTROL.

I am me, and I still wish I had more control.  I wish I could stop my migraines.  I wish I could be certain of eliminating all ringworm spores from the house.

God... could.  He COULD have created a world in which none of these things existed, but in which we were not the free beings that we are.  As a risk-averse person, who is extremely bothered by all forms of suffering, it's hard for me to see how he found that trade-off worth it.

But what struck me today was that when we are faced with problems too big for us, and we have that frustration, it's because we JUST CAN'T control things.  Well, God COULD have controlled EVERYTHING, but he doesn't.  He chose not to.  He chose to put limits on what he would do with his power, just in order to give us that freedom.  But like, don't you think if we feel frustrated with our powerlessness, he must feel something sort of like that in the face of his own choice?  Imagine how much self-restraint it would take to see all of this and NOT INTERVENE, even though you COULD.  It must be awful.  Not only do people suffer because of the fact that we are free beings who chose badly, but, so does He.  I mean, besides the other ways we knew about already, like the cross.  I'm pretty sure I don't know any human being who would have that much SELF-CONTROL, to NOT control what else they could. 

I still don't get it, why he thinks this is worth all that.  But apparently he does.  He's willing to not be in control so that we can freely choose love.  This is something I can't quite get my mind around.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

As Roger Olson says, "God is in charge, but not in control."