Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Have started reading purpose driven life. First day I quite enjoy – especially the first line – it’s not about you. Good message.
I must admit though, that the second day annoys me immeasurably. When it talks of each individual being created exactly as God wants them, I can’t help but feel sad and disagree strongly. I wonder how that message is experienced by ugly, disabled, depressed and abused people? Given that the laws of biology obviously play such a massive role in how people look, why do we need to state that God has intervened and made them exactly as they are? When rebelling against God’s will has caused massive problems in someone’s life, (like assault, rape, adultery) why should we say that it is God’s will that it happened? Does the world situation now, or at any point in history, actually bear the marks of a benevolent God who decides every single issue and plans things to be exactly as they are? It is a strange plan indeed if things now are just as God wants them.
Standard theory is that we are too dumb to understand how everything works in together for God’s master plan, but once you are dead and condemned to a Christless eternity, then God’s master plan doesn’t seem to flash, especially if he has pre-destined you to it! If God has engineered all of history, how do we explain areas where the gospel took root but then withered away, countless nations where the gospel was not shared, billions of people dying without faith and immeasurable suffering in lands where noone came to know God. It might be argued that God allows something terrible to happen for the greater good, but it is difficult to see how Sep 11, the Tsunami, holocaust, wars in Sudan and starving world-side can help towards any master plan, especially when they often turn people away from God. History shows that the era after the holocaust and WW2 saw people leave the Church in massive droves as they couldn’t stomach a loving God causing such misery.
I wish Christians just wouldn’t say such things that God causes pain and suffering, unless God tells them directly! Certainly there were examples of God causing pain in the Old Testament, but there were normally clearly defined reasons. The larger problems Biblically are interpreting the Scriptures to make it look like God controls every event today.
I feel there are several main causes of this. Firstly, people see something that happened in the past and was special enough to be included in the Scriptures, and assume that the same thing should be repeated throughout all time. They take a single event and make it a rule of life.
Secondly, they take promises that are intended for a community and apply them to specific individuals. I’d see the OT promises of prosperity for following God falling into this category. If Israel as a whole followed God, they did prosper undoubtedly. Yet within that prosperous nation I suspect there were individuals who did not prosper as others did, and their own righteousness may not have been the key issue. Jer 29:11, where God promises a plan, future and hope for the suffering Jews in exile is another classic example. Every second Christian applies that to themselves, despite the fact that many of the people God made the promise to died before they got home! The promise was to the nation, not to individuals. Perhaps we can apply the promise to ourselves today, but only as a promise to the collective of Christians, that God does have a plan and future and hope for all who follow Him. But I can’t see from this passage that God offers us all bright futures! The New Testament teaching seems clear that suffering is to be the lot of followers of Jesus, not prosperity.
A third issue is that people assume that God’s advance knowledge of every situation automatically means that he determined those events. Yes, God knew every detail of David’s body and life before he was born, but that does not mean that it was all determined by God in advance. In fact, the only time the Bible comes close to defining the concept of predestination (Rom 8:29) it says that those God knew in advance he predestined. So God knows in advance who will endure to the end, and they are the ones who are predestined.
Actually, I don’t have much of a problem with much of David’s life being pre-determined by God, because he is clearly shown Biblically to be part of God’s master plan for Jesus to come down to earth. But just because God has specific plans in some areas doesn’t mean every facet of every life is planned by Him.
While I’m mentioning David, just because he says something, does it have to be true? David’s psalms are never said to have come from God. Instead, they are said to be prayers and songs addressed to God, and reflect his beliefs and attitudes. When David expresses doubts, anger, jealousy and depression, we don’t accept his words as being normative for us today, but when he makes claims about God choosing everything, then somehow his words are commands for us!
I also wonder how people handle the multiple passages in the NT that talk of the need to persevere in the faith, especially the warnings for falling away! The entire book of Hebrews is a good example. It would be hard to fall away from your faith if God has chosen you to be a Christian forever, and no amount of warning could make you stick at your faith if you weren’t.
Throw in the habit of ignoring Biblical metaphors, figures of speech and Hebrew thinking, and it is easy to make God look like a tyrant who chooses every act of evil to occur. It’s great fodder for atheists to attack our faith when we give them such an easy target.
I do believe that God is all-powerful and can intervene whenever he wants, and that He often will in answer to prayer, but to say that God chooses every person and every event seems too much of a stretch.
(0) comments
I must admit though, that the second day annoys me immeasurably. When it talks of each individual being created exactly as God wants them, I can’t help but feel sad and disagree strongly. I wonder how that message is experienced by ugly, disabled, depressed and abused people? Given that the laws of biology obviously play such a massive role in how people look, why do we need to state that God has intervened and made them exactly as they are? When rebelling against God’s will has caused massive problems in someone’s life, (like assault, rape, adultery) why should we say that it is God’s will that it happened? Does the world situation now, or at any point in history, actually bear the marks of a benevolent God who decides every single issue and plans things to be exactly as they are? It is a strange plan indeed if things now are just as God wants them.
Standard theory is that we are too dumb to understand how everything works in together for God’s master plan, but once you are dead and condemned to a Christless eternity, then God’s master plan doesn’t seem to flash, especially if he has pre-destined you to it! If God has engineered all of history, how do we explain areas where the gospel took root but then withered away, countless nations where the gospel was not shared, billions of people dying without faith and immeasurable suffering in lands where noone came to know God. It might be argued that God allows something terrible to happen for the greater good, but it is difficult to see how Sep 11, the Tsunami, holocaust, wars in Sudan and starving world-side can help towards any master plan, especially when they often turn people away from God. History shows that the era after the holocaust and WW2 saw people leave the Church in massive droves as they couldn’t stomach a loving God causing such misery.
I wish Christians just wouldn’t say such things that God causes pain and suffering, unless God tells them directly! Certainly there were examples of God causing pain in the Old Testament, but there were normally clearly defined reasons. The larger problems Biblically are interpreting the Scriptures to make it look like God controls every event today.
I feel there are several main causes of this. Firstly, people see something that happened in the past and was special enough to be included in the Scriptures, and assume that the same thing should be repeated throughout all time. They take a single event and make it a rule of life.
Secondly, they take promises that are intended for a community and apply them to specific individuals. I’d see the OT promises of prosperity for following God falling into this category. If Israel as a whole followed God, they did prosper undoubtedly. Yet within that prosperous nation I suspect there were individuals who did not prosper as others did, and their own righteousness may not have been the key issue. Jer 29:11, where God promises a plan, future and hope for the suffering Jews in exile is another classic example. Every second Christian applies that to themselves, despite the fact that many of the people God made the promise to died before they got home! The promise was to the nation, not to individuals. Perhaps we can apply the promise to ourselves today, but only as a promise to the collective of Christians, that God does have a plan and future and hope for all who follow Him. But I can’t see from this passage that God offers us all bright futures! The New Testament teaching seems clear that suffering is to be the lot of followers of Jesus, not prosperity.
A third issue is that people assume that God’s advance knowledge of every situation automatically means that he determined those events. Yes, God knew every detail of David’s body and life before he was born, but that does not mean that it was all determined by God in advance. In fact, the only time the Bible comes close to defining the concept of predestination (Rom 8:29) it says that those God knew in advance he predestined. So God knows in advance who will endure to the end, and they are the ones who are predestined.
Actually, I don’t have much of a problem with much of David’s life being pre-determined by God, because he is clearly shown Biblically to be part of God’s master plan for Jesus to come down to earth. But just because God has specific plans in some areas doesn’t mean every facet of every life is planned by Him.
While I’m mentioning David, just because he says something, does it have to be true? David’s psalms are never said to have come from God. Instead, they are said to be prayers and songs addressed to God, and reflect his beliefs and attitudes. When David expresses doubts, anger, jealousy and depression, we don’t accept his words as being normative for us today, but when he makes claims about God choosing everything, then somehow his words are commands for us!
I also wonder how people handle the multiple passages in the NT that talk of the need to persevere in the faith, especially the warnings for falling away! The entire book of Hebrews is a good example. It would be hard to fall away from your faith if God has chosen you to be a Christian forever, and no amount of warning could make you stick at your faith if you weren’t.
Throw in the habit of ignoring Biblical metaphors, figures of speech and Hebrew thinking, and it is easy to make God look like a tyrant who chooses every act of evil to occur. It’s great fodder for atheists to attack our faith when we give them such an easy target.
I do believe that God is all-powerful and can intervene whenever he wants, and that He often will in answer to prayer, but to say that God chooses every person and every event seems too much of a stretch.
