God's Plan Revised

In his recent interview with FOX News’s Sean Hannity (07/19/12), George Zimmerman, shooter of Trayvon Martin, suggested that "it was God's plan" that the unarmed 17 year old die that night in Florida.  People were saying similar things on Christian talk-radio shows following the recent Colorado mass gunman killings, "...it must be God's plan or things wouldn't happen like this...” 

Such notions are not new.

Augustine of Hippo’s (354-430) vision of God has framed both Roman Catholic and Protestant understanding of divine sovereignty.  This God is in control of all events, causing or allowing tragedy for some greater purpose we may never understand, or will only learn about at the End of Time.  There is an ironic comfort in such notions.  The surviving victims of tragedy can take heart that God will use the evil forced upon their loved ones for some greater good.  Believers are called to have faith in that greater, unknown good even in the face of terrible circumstances.  Although God could end evil and suffering in his sovereignty, God allows and even uses our evil for a greater good because God loves us.

This was the theology preached by missionary priests in the conversion of the Bolivian indigenous people to justify their enslavement by the Spanish conquistadors during the 18th century in order to plunder the silver mines and future of that nation. 

It was the same Christianity used by white churches in the United States to resist the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, "people of color should not complain or agitate about the conditions of their living.  Whatever life throws your way, grin and bear it because God will use it for a greater good ‘in the sweet bye and bye’."

You can understand the dilemma.  If God is both “good” and “powerful” the only rational conclusion in the face of the atrocities of history can be deferred justification.  Augustine argued that ultimately there is no such thing as “evil”, for what we experience as such will be used by God for that mysterious greater good.  Augustine would have us trust our lives to a God with the power to stop evil but who chooses not to do so out of love.

 

Most people yearn for a sense of “divinity in control”.  We use that sense to justify the capricious suffering in our lives and in the world.  For example, when we survive the car accident we say “Thank God!” as if God saved us from harm.  But in doing so are we assuming that the person(s) that died in the accident or went to the hospital were not so blessed by the same God?  Did God want, will or allow them to suffer for a greater purpose while sparing us the same?

If God is “good”, “ultimately in control” and choosing to allow the atrocities of history to happen out of “love”, what can “love” possibly mean?

To those who question such logic in the murder of an unarmed teenager, or the slaughter of movie goers or in the preventable deaths of the thousands of children each day of hunger and malnutrition related disease (UN/WFP), evil is no illusion and cannot be rationalized away by “pie-in-the-sky” theologies.

This commonly held definition of God as “all powerful” has direct Christological implications.  Does Jesus’ death on the cross buy our way into heaven?  The doctrine of substitutionary atonement makes this rationalization for a God who plans, allows and implements the death of “his only begotten son” for the ultimate greater good.  Scriptural references in both Old and New Testaments support such conclusions but not without other ways to understand who Jesus is as well.

In the gospel of John, Jesus is considered the incarnation of the God of Creation (John 1:1-18).  A good God with all-controlling power that can only be understood by believers at the End of the World would not proclaim “the Kingdom of God is at hand!” in the present tense (Mark 1:15) or suggest that the promise of God’s eschatological future has been fulfilled in his reading of the prophet Isaiah (Luke 4:16-21).  Nor would the incarnation of a God who says evil is only a tool of his benevolent deity teach “…for God makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45).

Jesus takes the hand of the dead daughter of Jairus and gives life (Mark 5:21-43).  Jesus raises a widow’s only son from death (Luke 7:11-17).  Jesus weeps at the funeral of his best friend Lazarus and then raises him from the dead (John 11:38-44).  How could this Jesus be the incarnation of a God who could look the parent of a murder victim in the eye, admitting divine authority to stop the slaughter but choosing not to do so, and say “just trust me…I love you…”?!

Maybe our definition of power is misdirected.  God doesn’t cause or allow the evil in our lives.  What if God’s “power” is not the ability to control and determine?  What if God’s power is that which lures us in each and every moment to the best possibility but does not control the results?  What if the future is open-ended rather than determined?  What if God’s love is in the power of inspiration, creativity, relationship and forgiveness…all powerful forces indeed?

Like a loving parent teaching the child not to touch the hot stove, God doesn’t make the child touch the stove but in teaching the child not to do so out of love gives the child the freedom to choose and face the consequences for good or ill.

Then the freedom into which we are created is really free.  And the evil of the world is really evil.  And the God of love that dies incarnate on the cross shares our lot in life (I John 4:8).  Then the God of creation is real love, and not the charade of some promised future to which believers must adhere in order to belong.