“I let them.” Centuries earlier God saw what was coming. He knew that Jewish infants would be slain in homage to the idol, Molech. He told Moses, “I know what they are disposed to do, even before I bring them into the land I promised them on oath” (Deuteronomy 31:21). Why did he permit it? He tells us: to expose the vileness closeted in their souls. He resolved to make them stare at their own heinousness and vomit. God loathes the murder of children—yet he left his weapon holstered. This is hard for us to grasp, but exposing sin was more important to God than relieving human suffering, even unthinkable suffering. So God decreed to allow it.
Other passages also make clear that when God allows something, he is acting deliberately—he is decreeing that event. For instance, in Numbers 35 he instructs Israelite courts how to treat anyone who “has killed someone accidentally.” The person responsible must have a place to flee for sanctuary until passions cool and a trial can be held. Any number of mishaps would require this: a stone mason trips on his scaffolding and his brick falls and cracks a head below; someone is chopping wood and the axehead flies off in a fatal direction—cases where the killer “did not intend” to harm anyone. Yet in Exodus 21:13,a parallel passage describing the same situation, God uses these words: “If he does not do it intentionally, but God lets it happen, he is to flee to a place I will designate.” God doesn’t just watch it happen—he lets it happen. What is accidental from our perspective was specifically allowed by God. He who holds all things together must sustain the very molecules of the brick and axehead as they fly toward their mark (Colossians 1:17). His allowing is not something offhanded or casual.
We all hesitate here. “This is fine for hypothetical ancient construction workers who knew the job risks. But what about my little girl who was run over by a trash truck?” Yes, and what about a Paul Ruffner? Here’s where the Bible becomes practical. Are we tempted to reject its teaching on this subject? Do we find repulsive a God who gives the nod to our tragedies?
Think about the alternative.
Imagine a God who didn’t deliberately permit the smallest details of your particular sorrows. What if your trials weren’t screened by any divine plan? What if God insisted on a hands-off policy toward the tragedies swimming your way? Think what this would mean.
First, the world would be worse, much worse, absolutely intolerable—for everyone—every second. Try to conceive of Lucifer unrestrained. Left to his own, the Devil would make Jobs of us all. The Third Reich would have lasted forever. Your head would be mounted on Satan’s wall above his fireplace. Human sacrifice would entertain basketball crowds at half-time. “Child Molesting Techniques” would be taught at community colleges. The only reason things aren’t worse is that God curbs evil. “Satan has asked to sift you like wheat,” Jesus told Peter—we can be certain the old snake didn’t check in with God out of politeness (Luke 22:31). He had to get permission, which means that he operates under constraints. Evil can only raise its head where God deliberately backs away—always for reasons that are specific, wise, and good, but often hidden during this present life.
Second, if God’s decrees did not deliberately allow your specific trials, what does this say about God? What does it say about the boat you find yourself in? It says that God is a poor protector of his people.
“Some protection his decrees have given!” groans a widow, a stroke victim, a diabetic who has just lost a foot.
But consider—it’s one thing for God deliberately to let something happen, even something terrible, for reasons we may not understand. It would be another for the God who weeps over suffering to wish he could help but have one hand tied behind his back. Either God rules, or Satan sets the world’s agenda and God is limited to reacting. In which case, the Almighty would become Satan’s clean-up boy, sweeping up after the devil has trampled through and done his worst, finding a way to wring good out of the situation somehow. But it wasn’t his best for you, wasn’t Plan A, wasn’t exactly what he had in mind. In other words, although God would manage to patch things up, your suffering itself would be meaningless. One Christian writer who believes that God has little to do with the specific circumstances that come your way expressed it like this:
In 1982 someone laced capsules of the pain reliever Tylenol with cyanide and then put them back on store shelves in Chicago. Seven people died after swallowing poisoned pills. The families of those seven people no doubt agonized trying to find some shred of meaning in why God or fate or luck had picked on their loved ones, of all the people in Chicago. We can concoct some answer and perhaps take some small comfort in it, but sadly, there was no meaning in those deaths. Each was a bizarre, horrible coincidence, nothing wore. Therein lies the tragedy.2
No, the real tragedy is that any Christian would settle for such darkness with the fight of the Bible shining so clearly. If God didn’t control evil, the result would be evil uncontrolled.
God permits what he hates to achieve what he loves.
A GARDENER PLANTING THOUGHTS
We’ve been combing the Bible for how God can decree without doing, exploit without smothering, send trials without sinning. Answer number 1 was that he doesn’t originate everything he permits. Answer number 2 is more intriguing—he plants thoughts into people’s minds without violating their wills.
“He invades our mental privacy?” someone is sure to gasp. The very suggestion gives some people the willies. It sits especially poorly with Americans—we’re fanatics about our constitutional right to privacy. But think about Satan. He taps into people’s brains all the time. He’s a regular soul hacker—like the techno-geeks on their modems at home, breaking security codes and logging onto sensitive government computer systems. Scripture calls him “the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.” It describes his access to the human soul: “When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart” (Matthew 13:19).
People joke about this. “The devil made me do it,” they laugh. They don’t really mean it because they don’t think he exists. If there is a devil, he’s their ex-spouse. Meanwhile their minds are as soaked with his suggestions as a pickle in vinegar. They don’t see him—he’s a spirit. They don’t hear him—he has tiptoed in sock-footed. If they do catch some small noise at their mind’s door, they assume it’s just opportunity knocking. But Christians know better; they understand the power of the invisible tempter.
If Satan can be stealthful for evil’s sake, why not God for good?
In Ezekiel 38 God tiptoes into the mind of a most unlikely person—the mysterious Gog. Biblical scholars disagree on the exact meaning of the prophecy—who Gog is, where he comes from, and exactly what he does. But all agree that he’ll in some way fight God’s people shortly before the end of the world.”I will bring you against my land,” says Jehovah. Why? So I can defeat him in battle and “show my greatness and my holiness.”
What’s fascinating is how God will bring him. “This is what the Sovereign LORD says: On that day thoughts will come into your mind and you will devise an evil scheme. You will say, ‘I will invade a land of unwalled villages; I will attack a peaceful and unsuspecting people…I will plunder and loot…’” (Ezekiel 38:10).
“But you’re accusing God of planting evil thoughts into people’s minds.”
No, no. James says that God never tempts anybody (James 1:13). To suggest otherwise is blasphemous. Rather, God sees the evil already there and steers it to serve his good purposes and not merely Satan’s viperous ones. It’s as if he says, “So you want to sin? Go ahead—but I’ll make sure you sin in a way that ultimately furthers my ends even while you’re shaking your fist in my face.” This is why we can accept troubles as ultimately from God even when the most dreadful people deliver them.
“But can God do this without violating people’s wills?”
Absolutely. He does it on the Bible’s every third or fourth page. Here’s a brief sampling.
Samson
was a he-man with a she-weakness.3 In Judges 14 he’s stonestruck in love with a certain Philistine woman. Israelites aren’t supposed to marry idol-worshipers, but the shape of her soul isn’t Samson’s primary interest. “Get her for me as a wife,” he tells his parents. They protest, saying in essence, “What’s a nice Jewish boy like you…?” But the Bible takes us backstage: “His parents did not know that this was from the Lord, who was seeking an occasion to confront the Philistines.”
“From the Lord”? The same Lord who commanded the Jews not to marry foreigners?4 Yes. Not that Samson is doing right. Not that he won’t answer for this. But if Samson wants to sin, God has determined to steer his attention to Phyllis Philistine instead of to Carla Canaanite because God wants to punish the Philistines. Punish them how? Through a very ticked-off Samson. In the days leading to the wedding Samson kills time by gambling at a riddle game with the groomsmen. They cheat, he loses. He must cough up thirty pairs of Levis jeans with matching denim jackets—that’s how it reads in The Living Bible. Actually, he must cough up the ancient equivalent. Now where’s a strapping, young, impoverished Israelite going to get thirty sets of clothes? Off the backs of thirty strapping, young, dead Philistines.
How did God arrange for Phyllis and not some attractive Jewish or Canaanite girl to catch Samson’s eye? We don’t know. Somehow he called attention to her, maybe by painting the perfect sunset on the first evening Samson met her. But Phyllis’s charm and the evening’s ambiance had to score within Samson. Somehow, God shot cupid’s arrow—shot it such that Samson’s already-present sinful weakness would yield in one particular direction.
Can God plant thoughts and leave human decisions intact? Wicked King Ahab of Israel is mustering his troops for war. Will he win or lose? A courageous prophet tells him what he doesn’t want to hear: “The Lord has decreed disaster for you.” Decreed, mind you—Ahab’s death in battle is not a suggestion-box item that God is merely considering. The prophet vividly paints the heavenly council in which Jehovah plots Ahab’s demise. The king is nervous. As a precaution, he forces an allied king to take the field decked in royal attire, while he himself dresses like a common soldier. But the ploy fails. How does Ahab die? “But someone drew his bow at random and hit the king of Israel between the sections of his armor…Then at sunset he died” (2 Chronicles 18:33-34).
An enemy archer shot “at random.” What could be less coerced? The Hebrew reads that he shot “in his innocence.” Dozens, maybe scores of Jewish troops are within the marksman’s range. He quickly takes his pick—eeny, meeny, miney, moe. Twang! What luck—he has just killed his nation’s foremost enemy, achieved his army’s top priority, yet doesn’t even know it. But if ever an arrow had someone’s name on it, this arrow did.
How did God attract the archer’s bow in the king’s direction? We don’t know. Perhaps the man had been aiming twenty feet off when a sudden motion by Ahab caught his eye. Maybe he thought, “Now there’s an ugly somebody I’d like to put down.” What we do know is that this was no accident. God somehow planted a thought—somehow tapped the man’s shoulder. The arrow did the rest.
Can God plant thoughts without violating people’s wills? Take the Canaanites whose land the Hebrews invaded a few centuries earlier:
Except for the Hivites living in Gibeon, not one city made a treaty of peace with the Israelites, who took them all in battle. For it was the LORD himself who hardened their hearts to wage war against Israel, so that he might destroy them totally, exterminating them without mercy.” (Joshua 11:19–20)
God hardens hearts? How? Who knows. Maybe he had citizens of the land-of-milk-and-honey dream at night of how good it tasted on their breakfast cereal—“Lose it to those Israelites? No way!” Maybe he sent a bumper crop to make life on the homestead seem doubly sweet. But in some way, God influenced their thinking without making them zombies.
Or consider Prince Absalom, son of King David, now turned traitor and leading an army against the throne. (The full story is in chapters 15–17 of 2 Samuel.) As David and his men flee the capital city, Absalom enters it and considers his military options. He consults renowned counselor Ahithophel—a former favorite of David’s but now a turncoat. Everyone always takes Ahithophel’s advice as practically from God. The counselor lays out a wise plan that will crush David before you can say “Goliath is a thumb-sucker.” But another advisor, secretly sympathetic to David, waxes eloquent proposing a hair-brained scheme that will give David time to escape. David is praying, God is answering. As young Absalom listens to the dueling advisors, the venerable Ahithophel starts sounding to him like an old geezer who is losing his marbles and should be set out to pasture. Absalom swallows the bad advice bones and all. David gets away, and within days Absalom’s decision costs the rebel his life. God took away the prince’s good sense, yet left the man’s will intact.
So Absalom is killed for thinking as God wanted. Canaanites lose their country for serving God’s purposes. Samson is later captured and blinded for being God’s womanizer. Is this fair? Absolutely. It’s fair because their motives were as warped and selfish as God’s were holy. Two parties were behind all those scenes—God pursuing holy ends, people chasing sinful ones. As Joseph said to his brothers who sold him into slavery, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good…” (Genesis 50:20). Thus, God routinely—and rightfully—punishes wicked people who fulfill his decrees. He says of Judas: “The Son of Man will go as it has been decreed, but woe to that man who betrays him” (Luke 22:22).5
Have cruel or careless people broken your heart or stolen your dreams? By the time their sin splashed onto your life, it was the will of God for you—the God who loves you intensely and who will call them to account.
TIMING IS EVERYTHING
We’re looking into how God runs the world. Answer number 3 is that he arranges for natural events to occur at specific times to further his ends. In other words, he plans coincidences.
In Athens, the apostle Paul “reasoned…in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there” (Acts 17:17).6 Some of those window-shoppers became believers. Yet the coincidence of their strolling the marketplace that week was no coincidence, for believers have been chosen “before the creation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4).
Five centuries earlier King Xerxes, an emperor of Persia, calls it a day and goes to bed. Did ever a man have such means to fall asleep when he wanted? There are servants to fan away the heat, musicians to strum away the boredom, a harem full of bed companions, endless wine to drink himself into oblivion. Why does he toss and turn on the pillow? Who knows? Hard day at the office? A tad extra spice in the dinner soup? Ingrown toenail? Athlete’s foot? Yet, “that night the king could not sleep” (Esther 6:1). Instead of calling for his pipe, bowl, and fiddlers three he calls for some reading—the chronicles of his reign—guaranteed to make anyone nod off. As the reader drones on, an obscure passage sets Xerxes’ mind to thinking in a certain direction. It precisely prepares him for an empire-altering request his wife Esther will make of him the next day. It tips his mental scales—he will grant the request. His granting it will end up saving the Jewish race from annihilation. A great people will be spared. Centuries later this people will produce a young boy who will grow up to die for the sins of the world. All because the king could not sleep.
Your life is no exception to God’s delight in arranging coincidences. Consider your big Fourth-of-July picnic. You live near Philadelphia, so it’s only right to eat a burger in Ben Franklin’s honor. The sun is warm, the grill’s working, the grass is mowed for softball, and everyone’s bringing a Jell-O salad. But unknown to you, God wants it to rain. He wants your friends to go home. He wants your brother-in-law Ed to help you hurry the grill into the garage where you two will stand leaning against the car, listening to the downpour. There you’ll get into a long conversation leading into spiritual things that will eventually lead to your brother-in-law’s conversion. Your brother-in-law’s been thinking about God lately but he’
s a private man, hesitant to broach personal subjects, and needs an ideal time and setting.
How does God pull this off? Miracle rain out of nowhere? Something that baffles AccuWeather and brings the X-File team in to investigate?
No. While it’s still warm in your backyard, five miles above the air is starting to cool. A miracle? No, a polar jet stream—bringing colder air from the northwest. Dry and heavy, this air will drop, shoving the steamy air in your back yard upward. Rising, it will cool, and its water vapor become clouds. About three miles up, those clouds will make ice crystals. Watch out. Ice crystals get bloated from eating up nearby water molecules—too fat to keep floating. They start falling as snow, but it’s summertime, and by the time they hit your infield it’s raining.
“Bye, Smiths! Bye, Wilsons! It was fun while it lasted. Sure, Ed, I could use some help carrying this thing.”
Yet not long ago the jet stream was two-hundred miles north. What shot it your way this particular weekend? Something that happened three days ago—a jet-stream disturbance over the Canadian Rockies—a disturbance just right to send things Philadelphia-ward. And to get this disturbance “just right”? A precise path of that jet stream over the mountains. And to achieve that precise path? A complicated sequence of atmospheric twists from the earth’s rotation and the proper Pacific Ocean water-temperature a day earlier. Yet that temperature was being affected back in April—when the right amount of cloud-cover was letting in the right amount of sunlight. Six thousand miles away and four years earlier, a volcano spewed ashes into the atmosphere that affected last April’s cloud-cover. And eleven years before that the sun was gearing up for its next sunspot cycle that eventually affected last April’s Pacific temperature.
When God Weeps Page 9
