I recently received a message from somebody I went to high school with who is also a pastor. He was wrestling with God's sovereignty and how to respond to people who were posing questions about God's involvement in their lives and in the world. I basically addressed the primary questions in his message and this is what I wrote. I welcome further conversation/questions/critiques from anyone reading. I wrote this in an afternoon, so it's not exhaustively researched or anything, just something of a theological "freestyle"...
First of all, I need to explain where I'm coming from theologically. As a United Methodist, I am an Arminian. This means that I don't believe in personal predestination (which is the Calvinist/Reformed position, though there's a wide range of how they view predestination). I believe that God created humanity with the freedom to choose whether or not to love God and be in relationship with God as their Creator. As a Christian, I believe that this relationship is made possible by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and is actually 'enacted' through the presence of the Holy Spirit in our hearts/minds/souls, in our lives/relationships, and in the communion of the Church (though the Spirit is not limited to any particular human sphere). So I don't believe that God micro-manages every detail of our lives or everything thing that happens in the world.
What do we mean when we say that God is sovereign?
In the Old Testament, God is clearly presented as the sovereign Creator. From the beginning, God's sovereignty is established because of the simple fact the He created everything that exists. We see God's power over nature most clearly in parts of Isaiah and Job, along with passages from the Psalms. While these are prominent, God as Sovereign Creator is all over the place in the Old Testament. However, the primary narrative for the Hebrews was the exodus from Egypt. This is an even greater emphasis in the Old Testament than the creation narrative. This shows up all over the Old Testament: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt" is the common refrain. The point here is that not only is God in control over the world that He created, but He is also in control of human history. Here's the rub - what do we mean by "in control"? Here are our options:
- God is in complete control and dictates everything that happens in His world. There are some Christians that believe this, but I find this to be pretty off base, once you draw out the conclusions theologically. First of all, this doesn't square with the image of God we get in the person of Jesus (remember Colossians 1:19 - "…in him (Jesus) all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell…") As you say, this position means that God is responsible for everything, good and bad, including the horrific. This does not square with Scripture. What this also means (and here's the logical theological conclusion) is that God is therefore responsible for our sins and for the brokenness of our world. If our decisions and actions are dictated by God, then we bear no responsibility for the sins we commit, we are merely puppets with this "super-sovereign God" pulling the strings.
- The other option is that God is not in control at all, either through God's abdication and absence (the deist position) or through His inability (which makes God not God at all, but an idol). As a Christian, I believe that the Incarnation is the answer to deism - God is not distant nor did God create the world and then turn His back on creation. God has come near to us in the person of Jesus Christ and is with us always through the Holy Spirit. In terms of inability, I simply stand upon the promise of Scripture that all things are possible with God (Matthew 19:26).
What I believe is between these two extremes. Regarding the "super-sovereign position", Scripture is pretty clear: Joshua 24:15 "…choose this day whom you will serve" and Deuteronomy 30:19-20 "I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants my live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him…" That command for people to choose whom they will serve and to choose between life and death means that God has given some measure of control to people in regards to how they will order their lives. Here we have a limit to God's sovereignty. I believe that this limit is self-imposed by God so that people can have the freedom to truly choose and thereby have the freedom to truly love Him and be in relationship with Him. There are so many imperatives in the New Testament ("Repent and be baptized!" being the main one) that I'm not going to list them. Imploring someone to repent and be baptized indicates that the person to whom you are preaching has some ability to respond out of their own free will, again indicating some limits to God's sovereignty.
So when we say that God is sovereign over His creation and over our lives, what we can say (I believe) is this: God is in control of the ultimate fate of His creation. The fate of creation is not death and decay, but life and restoration, because that is God's will. God's sovereignty does not mean complete control because as I've said, God has created us not as puppets or robots, but as persons invited to be in loving relationship with Him, therefore inviting the possibility of disobedience. Echoing Paul, the sinfulness of disobedience has had cosmic consequences, impacting all of creation, not simply humans. So, we get the "laws" of nature that result in death and destruction. Here we might ask in the wake of unspeakable tragedy: "Why didn't God prevent this?" I believe that is the case because then God would have to stop all floods, all earthquakes, all disease (by virtue of God being just and consistent). The world in which we live is broken. God has inaugurated the reconciliation and restoration of His creation through Jesus Christ. We are part of that work, but we still live in a broken world.
What is the extent of God's sovereignty into the lives of individuals and the events of the world?
If you want to hear some bad theology, listen to what some people say to grieving families. If you listen in funeral homes, you are almost guaranteed to here something along the lines of: "This was just God's will." I disagree with that sentiment, even if it comes from a genuine place. Most people say that because they don't know what else to say. It's also unfair to demand a pristine level of theological sophistication from people who are simply trying to express their sorrow and sympathy. Anyways, my firm belief is this: just because something happens, does not mean that it is God's will. If that were true, there would actually be nothing that we could consider to be a "sin" and we could actually do nothing outside the will of God. This would mean that whatever I do, it's the will of God. Why work? Why preach? Why do anything difficult or painful or risky? Why be a disciple?
God's sovereignty extends in our own lives as far as we allow God to be at work in our lives. If we resist God, God will not force us to be obedient (again, this would not be love). God's sovereignty over nature is more complicated - here's where eschatology comes into play. The way I understand it is that God knows where this whole thing will end up (He is not bound by time or space, being sovereign over or "outside of" both) - it is a matter of God working in this world and in our lives to bring about what He desires, namely the restoration and reconciliation of His world. There are things/people/ideas/events that work against this and those things/people/ideas/events that work for God's reconciliation (II Corinthians 5:18-20). When we talk about being "in the will of God", what we should mean is that we are working for this reconciliation. When something happens like the death of a child, I believe this is contrary to the will of God. Of course, all things are possible with God, and to echo Joseph in Genesis 50:20, what is often intended for evil, God intends for good. So there are good things that may even come out of horrible situations or events. This does not, in this life at least, completely mitigate those terrible things - for example, if a family was brought closer together and their faith deepened because of the events of 9/11, this does not somehow redeem that terrible event. In fact, I'm not sure we'll ever arrive at understanding the purpose for most tragedies that befall us. We don't have the vision of God nor do we possess the scope of His knowledge (kind of like Job). As Paul says in I Corinthians 13:12, we see "through a glass darkly".
What is the relationship between God's sovereignty and evil (sin and Satan, specifically)?
First, regarding Satan, I typically give Satan no thought at all. "He" is a defeated enemy. In Scripture, Satan is actually presented more as a "force" or attitude that is occasionally personified (see Jesus' temptation in the wilderness for example). The best Scripture for getting a grip on this is Jesus' shocking statement to Peter in Mark 8:33 when Peter rebukes Jesus about Jesus' foretelling his death and resurrection. Jesus says "Get behind me, Satan!" You cannot fully understand what Jesus means unless you understand what "Satan" means. It comes from the Hebrew "ha-satan", which literally means "the accuser". Satan's role is therefore to accuse (which "He" does in the temptation stories: "are you really God's Son?") Here's what the situation in Mark 8:33 tells us: Peter was standing in the way of Jesus' journey to the cross. In doing so, Peter became "satanic" in the sense that he was acting as an obstacle to God's will. Scripture does not tell us that Peter was possessed by Satan or that Peter actually became the devil, but rather that Peter (intentionally or not) became "Satan" (the accuser) when he thought that his expectations, his will, trumped what Jesus was telling him. When we impede or obstruct God's will, we too become "satanic". In the death and resurrection of Jesus and in the giving of the Holy Spirit, we have no good reason for standing in God's way. "Satan" is a defeated enemy. When we repent ("metanoio" - meaning to literally to go beyond [meta] our mind [noio]) we open ourselves up to the moving of the Spirit and our will becomes subjugated to the will of God, through our own choosing. God transforms us (as Peter was transformed on the day of Pentecost) and our accusation/resistance is blown away by the life-giving holy wind of the Spirit. Satan is defeated and only has the control that we are willing to give "him". I am willing to give no control - I resist as James says. "He" flees accordingly.
Sin is a deeper thing and, at least for Paul, is a more serious and pressing problem. The true enemy of God in Scripture is not Satan - and "he" is never presented as such. The true enemies of God in Scripture (especially for Paul - whom I'm most familiar with) are sin and death. In the Old Testament, this manifested through Israel's repeated insistence on idolatry. In the New Testament, it's sin and death, mainly manifested in the rejection of Jesus as the Messiah and the oppression of the poor/lowly. What typically has control over most people in our culture is the sin of self-absorption, which is the raising of the self to an idol. For most people in America, the sovereign power in their lives is self-interest. The Gospel of Jesus is a radical antidote for this poison. Mark 8:34-37 gets right to the heart of this. When we become Spirit-filled Christians, we step down from the throne and give sovereignty in our lives to God and trust in His ongoing work of reconciliation and restoration. This means that nothing - even tragic death and loss, even our limited vision and understanding, even our questions and doubts, even the evil things that people do to us and we do to them - NOTHING can separate us from the love of Jesus.
I'll finish with a story about Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Bishop Tutu was serving in South Africa during the height of apartheid, when the white Afrikaners were brutally oppressing the blacks in that country. Guards, armed with semi-automatic weapons, were stationed right outside of the church where Tutu was serving. People were suffering, going hungry, being beaten and imprisoned, dying. Tutu walked around Johannesburg with a smile on his face, all the time. (I've met him once - the man radiates pure joy.) Someone asked him one day, "Bishop, our people are dying, we are being crushed. There are men with machine guns at the doors of your church. How can you smile?" Bishop Tutu responded: "I know the end of the story. God wins!" That pretty much sums it up for me.
