God’s sovereignty
For centuries philosophers and theologians with more
training and intellect than I possess have debated a variety of issues related
to God’s sovereignty, including the ultimate question: why does God allow suffering in the first
place? Many a human chooses to not
believe in God because they cannot find an adequate answer to this basic question
that both satisfies their minds and brings peace to their souls.
As a father who lost a child, I too cannot resist thinking
about this question and discussing it whenever the opportunity presents
itself. Yesterday over lunch, my good
buddy Steve patiently listened to my meandering monologue on the subject and
contributed his thoughts when I finally ran out of steam. This conversation is actually simply another
episode in what is now a 14 month old discussion that began, as Steve reminded
me, over breakfast in the Missoula
I believed then and am even more convinced now that much of
our thinking about God’s sovereignty is framed poorly. My lay person, street level, perhaps naïve
and even superficial understanding of sovereignty goes something like
this: God somehow knows what is going to
happen, and is therefore somehow in control of what is going to happen, and so
nothing happens that God either did not cause to happen or at least has allowed
to happen. The whole doctrine is stuck
in our finite, linear time, cause-and-effect world that our astute rational
minds have worked so hard to understand and explain throughout human history. So, we try and explain God, and in this case
the notion of sovereignty, as best we can using our rational minds and
observations skills.
With these definitions of sovereignty, we struggle mightily
to “make sense” of massive “senseless” acts of human suffering – the Holocaust
and other genocides, and the abject poverty, starvation, and human suffering
that we observe throughout much of the world and throughout most of human
history. How and why does God “cause” or
at least “allow” these horrendous things to happen?
With those enormous philosophical and theological hurdles to
somehow overcome, the seemingly simpler questions in my mind – why did my son
die/have to die/was allowed to die? – at one level all seem very trite and
self-absorbed, but on another level seem to be elevated to into the same league
as the more cosmic questions of sovereignty and senseless suffering listed
above.
So, today as Steve and I chatted about my situation once again, I was
reminded of how big these questions are and how I do not believe there are any
clear answers to any of them available to us on this earth.
As St. Paul wrote, “we see through the glass dimly.”
My best hunch is that God can know what is going to happen
not because he causes everything to happen or moves us around a cosmic game
board like a bunch of pawns, but rather because he is somehow outside of the
time and space continuum that we inhabit and mysteriously knows what we will
choose to do well before we come to a fork in our road and choose the
direction.
Evil happens, or as the bumper sticker a few years ago put
it – shit happens. I think that evil and
shit even happen in chaotic, random ways.
A deer jumping out of the woods and causing the accident that ultimately
resulted in my son’s death can simply be random shit – chaotic evil in a fallen
world where accidents happen everyday to people who do nothing that makes them
deserve to suffer.
I believe the most significant question therefore is not why
did it happen, but rather what does it mean in my life since it did
happen? What happens now as a result of
Daniel’s death – in my life, in my family, in our future?
God can make “everything work together for good” without God
making everything happen the way it happens.
Things work together for good perhaps only when we give up trying to
control them, or control understanding them and simply get on with the task of
finding new meaning in our lives after bad things happen.
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