“Your power and will had decided beforehand”—does this square with the objections raised several pages ago?
“A God who actually decrees…murder…is not the God I worship!”
“When [tragedies] hit, he didn’t send them.”
No, it doesn’t square. God sent this tragedy. He decreed this murder. The above-quoted Scriptures won’t allow us to say, “A loving God could never decree horrible acts of sin and violence.” Nor will they allow the “robot argument”—that is, the objection that a decree by God would make Paul Ruffner’s wife or the drunken driver mere puppets—unless we’re prepared to say that the murderers of Jesus were mere puppets. But see Pilate nervously wash his hands after pronouncing the verdict! Hear the crowds scream, “Let his blood be on us and on our children!” Clearly, the guilty parties sensed that they were acting freely (Matthew 27:25). Yet God had planned it all.
Ah, says someone, this is a set-up. Jesus’ crucifixion was something unique—the salvation of mankind rested on it. God may override the world’s AUTOMATIC PILOT and switch to MANUAL whenever something monumental is at stake—the salvation of humanity, the fate of entire nations, or other rare and special occasions. But that doesn’t mean his hand is behind absolutely everything large and small.
Let’s make a biblical checklist of what his hand is behind. Since most Christians have little trouble crediting God with life’s sunny days, we’ll limit ourselves to life’s hail storms and to a few things unexpected. We’ll start with Leviticus. There God gave instructions to Israel for dealing with mildew—a nuisance, but hardly something affecting the fate of entire nations. “When you enter the land of Canaan, which I am giving you as your possession, and I put a spreading mildew in a house in that land, the owner of the house must go and tell the priest” (Leviticus 14:34-35).2
When they see a spreading mildew placed by God, Old-Testament homeowners must call for a priest. The priest will then follow certain procedures. But the passage poses a difficulty. How do folks distinguish God-sent mildew from the kind that just oozes onto the wall without divine assistance? The text doesn’t say. Wonder why?
Next, we go to Exodus. There Moses is protesting to God that he’s not eloquent enough to give Pharaoh the “Let My People Go” message. We tend to smile at this—the future author of Genesis and other best-sellers not eloquent? Perhaps he wrote better than he spoke. Some think he had a mild speech impediment. Possibly he was simply making excuses. In any case, “The LORD said to him, ‘Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD?’” (Exodus 4:11).
God makes people deaf, speechless, and blind? Genesis says so. However, since the writing of this verse, medical researchers have learned that blindness comes from chemical splashing-accidents and from genetic twists—and deafness (which affects speech) from prolonged fevers, bacterial meningitis, and loud noises happening too close.
Next, in Proverbs we meet a verse rarely posted in the coat-check rooms of Las Vegas hotels: “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD” (Proverbs 16:33). Casting lots makes decisions fair by letting chance settle things. Football teams flip quarters to see who kicks first. Hunting-lodge buddies draw straws to see who gets the hard bed. Ancient people drew different-color stones from the fold or “lap” of their cloaks for similar reasons. God picks the winner every time, says Proverbs. Every time? Well, he is sometimes frustrated in Nevada where we suspect that the Mafia occasionally loads the dice.
Next comes a passage in Amos: “When disaster comes to a city, has not the LORD caused it?” (Amos 3:6). Caused it? C’mon. Think of all the urban disasters you’ve seen covered on CNN: earthquakes, floods, street riots, AIDS epidemics, freeway pile-ups, leap-frogging apartment fires, bombing raids over Baghdad, terrorist explosions in major world cities—not to mention the fourteenth-century bubonic plague. Could the God we know and love possibly decree such horrors? Perhaps Amos misunderstood. After all, in 7:14 he admitted that, before God called him into the ministry, “I was neither a prophet nor a prophet’s son.”
By now we know that the Bible links the following to God’s decrees: the crucifixion of Jesus, the fungus in your shower, sightless eyes, unhearing ears, crap game results, and urban (no mention of rural) calamities. Can we be reading this right? It sounds so callous. No doubt if we could read the above passages in the original Greek and Hebrew they would come across quite differently and be less troubling.
Speaking of troubling passages, here’s another from Proverbs: “The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases” (Proverbs 21:1). Kings have ordered some rather cruel things over the centuries—undeserved hangings, oppressive taxations, the summoning of young women to the palace—the kinds of things Robin Hood got upset about. But this verse probably doesn’t apply to us today seeing that democracy is in such vogue since the fall of the Soviet Union, and real kings are hard to find. Still, Lamentations does broaden the idea a bit: “Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it?” (Lamentations 3:37). Whew, this is a bit more sweeping. The verse embraces everyone—car salesmen making pitches, senators promising legislation, cops yelling traffic directions, and quarterbacks calling plays. It covers street people begging change, diplomats negotiating treaties, librarians going “Shhh!” and that nervous young man proposing marriage in the restaurant. It includes the Pentagon announcing new policies, and the baby-sitter announcing bedtime—every dictator ordering an execution, every teenager ordering a pizza. According to this verse, not even the guy telling his dog to get his slippers can have it happen if God doesn’t will it. But ah! The verse reads, “Who can speak and have it happen…?” Perhaps if all these people put their requests in writing.
Let’s drop the irony. Unless the Bible is wrong, nothing happens outside of God’s decree. Nothing good, nothing bad, nothing pleasant, nothing tragic. Not in Paul Ruffner’s life, not in yours. We may not fathom God’s reasons, we may not agree with his thinking, we may love him for it, we may hate him for it. But in simple language, God runs the world. “The LORD works out everything for his own ends—even the wicked…” “Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him” (Proverbs 16:4; Psalm 115:3).
But I still can’t shake this robotish feeling—this image of God up in heaven pressing buttons on his remote. Why would a Christian ever study medicine, physics, or any other science if God just makes everything happen? How can people be human if God overrules what they think and do? Aren’t you implying that at bottom no one really ever does anything but God? Regarding our trials, where does the Devil come in? Where do nasty, evil people fit in? Where do killer hurricanes and collapsing bridges—things science can explain—fit in? What you’re saying seems to leave no room for anyone or anything else but God. God plans, God decrees, God acts, God, God, God.
Weighty questions. We’re going to need another chapter.
Six
HEAVEN’S DIRTY LAUNDRY?
Is everything only God, God, God? Is the Great Provider really just the Grand Manipulator? If we’re reading the Bible correctly, if he always gets his way eventually, what does that say about him? His favorite planet has seen a lot of injustice over the years—this doesn’t look good on his résumé. Where’s all that compassion we saw only a few chapters ago? Was the gentleness of Jesus just a cover for a surly heavenly Father? If God’s the boss, is Satan his employee? Does the Devil draw his salary from heaven? Is “the good Lord” really just a scary, evil dictator?
We’d better talk to someone a little more experienced on this than any of us. We’d better talk to Job.
DO GOD AND SATAN WORK ALTERNATE SHIFTS?
You remember righteous Job. He had it all—money, land, status, family. One day in God’s throne room, Satan broached his disgust over Job’s pious reputation. “The man loves you because you bribe him,” he argued. “But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he
will surely curse you to your face.”
“He’s yours,” God answered, “only don’t lay a finger on his person.”
Soon came Job’s blackest day. A servant ran up with bad news: Sabean brigands had plundered the donkeys and oxen and massacred the servants. The words were scarcely from his mouth when a second runner burst in. “The fire of God”—a Hebrew idiom for lightning—had killed all the sheep and shepherds (possibly by igniting brush fires). More footsteps, another messenger, breathless: Chaldean raiding parties…camels taken…herdsmen slaughtered. But the worst was still to come, and the courier who brought word no doubt hesitated. “It’s about your children.” The details were almost secondary. All ten, said the courier, were to dinner at the eldest brother’s when “a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on them, and they are dead.”
Job’s reaction is moving—he tore his robe, shaved his head in sorrow, fell to his face, and worshiped. But Job’s piety isn’t our focus. We’re asking about God—how does he relate to Satan when it comes to our trials? How does his role differ from that of evil people and of life’s sad accidents that seem to happen naturally? What does Job’s saga teach?
It teaches in a nutshell almost everything we need to know.
Ask yourself: who or what caused Job’s trials?
At the most basic level, natural forces did. Desert winds blew and lightning struck. These phenomena weren’t directly miraculous or surreal, as if God hurled thunderbolts straight from heaven or Satan puffed tempests right out of hell. Nature’s laws weren’t suspended—lightning and strong winds aren’t unheard-of in that area of the world. In the hours preceding the tragedies meteorologists from Channel 6 News could have studied atmospheric conditions, predicted the storms, and explained them in scientific terms. According to the Bible, bad weather killed these people.
On this same basic level, evil people caused Job’s trials. Greedy men willing to murder hatched a plan and carried it out. In a court of law, prosecuting attorneys would eat those Sabeans and Chaldeans for lunch. The defendants had motive: loot and plunder. They had opportunity: a deserted place. Nobody was coerced—this was greed pure and simple, perhaps with a dose of thrill-seeking thrown in. The verdict would be clear: guilty as sin. These desert-dwellers will one day answer to God for their crimes. According to the Bible, evil people slew Job’s herdsmen.
Who or what caused Job’s trials? At a deeper level, Satan caused them. “Everything he has is in your hands,” God told him. Satan turns around, leaves God’s presence, we scarcely blink, and carnage is everywhere. If ever the Devil’s cauldron overflowed visibly into someone’s world, it overflowed into Job’s. Scripture doesn’t say if Satan routinely has his finger on nature’s trigger, but clearly he sponsored these storms. Scripture does say that all unbelievers are in Satan’s hip pocket—“the whole world is under the control of the evil one” (1 John 5:19, see also 2 Corinthians 4:4 and 2 Timothy 2:26)—and clearly Satan prompted these roaming cutthroats. Although the storms were natural phenomena, and the pillagers acted in a way natural to violent men—yet according to the Bible, Satan engineered it all: the fire, the wind, the sword. He will pay for this in hell.
Who or what caused Job’s trials? On the deepest level, the decree of God did. Satan asked permission to stir things up, but God signed the authorization papers. Job recognized this when he cried, “The LORD has taken away” and “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” The book ends with the famous sufferer receiving comfort after “all the trouble the LORD had brought upon him” (Job 1:21; 2:10; 42:11)—this is not merely Job speaking; this is the biblical narrator. For his own good reasons, none of which God explains in the book, God decreed Job’s trials. He was ultimately behind the suffering.
From one angle then, everything in Job’s story was God, God, God. Nothing happened that God didn’t decree. But see how this played out. Satan acted freely; no one forced his hand. His motive was raw mischief—he wanted to wreck Job’s life and humiliate God. God’s reaction to the devil was merely to lengthen his leash. If Hollywood were to do the movie version, it would have God replying to Satan: “Do what you’ve gotta do.” The tone would be inaccurate and disrespectful, but not the basic idea that Satan contrived the scheme of his own accord, from the sewage in his own heart. It was similar with the Sabeans and Chaldeans. They didn’t start their day with private devotions, seeking God’s guidance, learning that he wanted Job’s herds stolen and servants butchered, and riding off on a holy crusade. They were just a bunch of good ol’ boys enjoying a drunken looting spree, savoring life’s simple pleasures. No divine arm-twisting there. As for nature, it got up on the wrong side of the bed as it often does, helped along by Satan in a manner we aren’t privy to. It got to howling and blustering—tossing some fire crackers, crumbling some buildings, flying man and beast. It didn’t know the difference. As far as science is concerned, nature didn’t color outside the lines that day. Following the laws of high-and-low pressure systems, electrical charges, and other scientific principles that nature itself didn’t understand, nature just…shall we say it?…acted naturally.
So let’s get our finger out of God’s face. His decree made room for it, but he didn’t do it. He became a stowaway on Satan’s bus, erecting invisible fences around Satan’s fury and bringing ultimate good out of Lucifer’s very wickedness. He exploited the deliberate evil of some very bad characters and the impersonal evil of some very bad storms without smothering anyone or anything. He forced no one’s hand, bypassed no one’s will, and (to our knowledge) suspended no natural laws.
These are deep waters: God decreeing but not necessarily doing, God exploiting but not smothering. What gives? How does he pull it off? To understand his methods will help us understand his heart. Let’s comb the Bible for clues.
PERMISSION SLIPS
What’s clear immediately is that God permits all sorts of things he doesn’t approve of. He allows others to do what he would never do. He didn’t steal Job’s camels. He didn’t guzzle vodka and crash into Paul Ruffner. He doesn’t nod appreciatively at the peddling of heroin to ninth-graders. He didn’t fire the ovens of Auschwitz. God is truly grieved at how we’ve ruined the world and abused each other. This grief is partly why he gave the Ten Commandments: Don’t murder, he says—I hate unjust killing. Don’t commit adultery—I despise seeing families ripped apart. Don’t steal—society will crumble if you do. Habakkuk spoke accurately of God when saying, “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong” (Habakkuk 1:13).
This is movingly pictured in Judges 10:16 where God has been watching the Ammonite people oppress Israel. He’s watching instead of helping because his people have sinned. The Jews wake up and realize this. They cry out in prayer and toss out their idols. Finally—here is the line—God “could bear Israel’s misery no longer.” This wasn’t the first time his tenderness was roused by human anguish. Years earlier he told Moses: “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering” (Exodus 3:7).
Doesn’t sound much like a divine dungeon-master twisting thumb screws, does it? God permitted these things, but he didn’t like them.
“Oh,” someone says with relief, “so you’re not turning God into a monster—people do the sinning while God merely allows them. Sinners are bad, God is good. We can all go home now. We all feel better.”
But don’t get too comfortable. Think what we’re agreeing to. God allowed village massacres in Bosnia. He stood back during hate-lynchings in Mississippi. He permits war. He tolerates leukemia. How is this justifiable?
Suppose you were walking a city street at night and heard a woman’s muffled screams down a dark alley. What should you do? Call the cops? But suppose you were a cop—off-duty but carrying your weapon. You slip down the alley. From the shadows you spy two street punks tearing at a woman’s blouse, a knife to her throa
t. You’ve been trained for such situations. Now suppose you quietly back away, for whatever reason: fear, laziness, high blood pressure, lateness for an appointment. How would you sleep that night? What would anyone think who found out?
God comes across such situations and worse every hour, all around the world. We might say that he’s been trained for them, that he’s carrying his weapon. Yet he backs away. He allows them to happen. What do we make of that?
Some people make of it that there’s nothing he can do. In their minds, he’s not carrying a weapon—or he’s given himself orders not to interfere in other people’s business, at least until Judgment Day. This is the position of the best-selling When Bad Things Happen to Good People:
God wants the righteous to live peaceful, happy lives, but sometimes even He can’t bring that about. It is too difficult even for God to keep cruelty and chaos from claiming their innocent victims…God has set Himself the limit that He will not intervene to take away our freedom, including our freedom to hurt ourselves and others around us.1
But this does no justice to the God of the Bible, the omnipotent One, of whom we read:
The LORD foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples. But the plans of the LORD stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations…(Psalm 33:10-11)
He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand…(Daniel 4:35)
The permitting, the allowing that God does in the Bible sounds far more deliberate than what people usually mean by those words. God gives the green light—not because he’s helpless or has set himself restrictions against meddling with his creation—but because he’s decisive. This is obvious in a passage like Ezekiel 20. There Jehovah is recounting Israel’s sorry history of idol-worship that degenerated into human sacrifice. He says in verse 26: “I let them become defiled through their gifts—the sacrifice of every firstborn—that I might fill them with horror so they would know that I am the LORD.”
When God Weeps Page 8
