We’ve been looking at the problem of divine intervention…the idea that God is directly and tangibly involved in what happens in this world…that God actively intervenes in human affairs to bring about specific outcomes, fulfill God’s purposes, answer our prayers, and respond to the needs of God’s people. We have inherited centuries of Christian teaching that says God can do whatever God chooses to do…even redirecting a bullet away from its intended target. Historically, this belief has been grounded in the Christian understanding of God as omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnibeneveolent. These qualities are the Christian way of affirming God’s unlimited power, knowledge, presence, and love throughout time and space.
Here’s the problem with that: the bullet that misses one man, kills another; storms destroy homes in one part of town but not another; one person is healed while another dies. If God is all these things we attribute to God, why doesn’t God intervene in all of humanity’s suffering and pain? And what about those moments when it seems like God does intervene…like seemingly moving a bullet so it doesn’t hit its intended target? Some Christians call what happened at the Trump rally in Pennsylvania a miracle…God intervening to save the former president’s life and in doing so, indicating that God has set him aside for a divine purpose.
This is dangerous theology. For every miracle you show me, I can show you hundreds…maybe thousands…of instances where it seems like God could have intervened and didn’t. Couldn’t God have moved that bullet just a little further, so it missed everyone? If God has the power to do whatever God wants to do, why doesn’t God always exercise that power? And if God intervenes sometimes and not others, if God saves some people but not others, what does that say about the divine-human relationship? If God is all good, why does evil exist in our world…and how does God interact with the evil of this world?
The Bible tells us the Jewish people are God’s chosen people. If that’s true, why did God allow 6 million of them to die in the Holocaust? Couldn’t…shouldn’t…God have intervened on behalf of his chosen people? He did multiple times in the Hebrew scriptures…why not in the midst of such pain and suffering? And if God is all-good and all-powerful…if God is love as the Bible says…doesn’t the Holocaust seem to contradict that?
For many people today, this contradiction is why faith and church are so hard to accept and it leaves the church in a difficult position. In a post-modern world, if we cling to the belief that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and all those other omnis, it leads many to conclude that either God created the world and abandoned it, that God is still here and just doesn’t care about what happens to us, or that maybe God isn’t actually all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing. In the midst of such thinking, I believe we have to imagine another way…a better way…of understanding why things happen the way they do and reinvent how we look at God’s will and human will.
The Christian life is a constant battle between our will and God’s will…between our human capacity to make decisions and God’s divine ability to influence those decisions. If we believe we have the free will to do whatever we want, we end up making God impotent and leaving God with little to no power over the world. If we believe God is fully in charge, totally in control of the universe, we become puppets dancing on the strings of some divine puppet master. So, we’ve been taught to look at it like a 50/50 relationship. We have the free will to make our own choices while God has room to intervene in our lives and in the world when necessary. If that’s true, who is responsible for what we do and what happens in our lives?
If I get drunk, drive my car, and kill a pedestrian, was that my free will or God’s will? Most of us would say God had nothing to do with it since it was my choice to drink and drive. But what if the person I hit was a serial rapist or an up-and-coming Adolph Hitler? Some people might be tempted to give God the credit for that…like it’s all part of God’s divine plan.
But what if we assume our free will and God’s will don’t exist in tension with one another, but make up a unified whole? God allows us to make our own choices and, whether that choice is right or wrong, God will not interfere with it. God allows you to drink and drive, which results in a pedestrian’s death. That doesn’t mean God wants you to drink and drive. God doesn’t want that pedestrian to die, but God will not interfere with human free will. God doesn’t want human beings to cause pain and suffering, but God allows human beings to do good or harm because God’s will is for us to make our own decisions.
This understanding of God is hard for us to reconcile with what we’ve been taught…that God is all-powerful and all-good…and instead says that while God doesn’t cause good things or bad things to happen, God is present in everything that happens. God willingly bears the ultimate responsibility for both the good and the evil of this world. I will tell you, I 100% affirm this belief. I believe the Christian faith actually revolves around the idea that God takes full responsibility for the evil of this world. And if you want to know what that means, you’ll have to read the last installment of The Problem with Divine Intervention, which will come out tomorrow.