She said:
"God is like a school teacher on playground duty. He doesn't let things get completely out of control, but He watches the bad stuff that we do to one another, but isn't really in control of it all."
I can understand that this statement comes from her looking at bad stuff that happens and what role God plays in all of that.
Is God like a school teacher on playground duty? Is God really in control? What does it mean if we are to say that God isn't in control?
Open Theism is a danger for the church. It undermines our very confidence in God. My friend feels the tension that lay between God's goodness which she knows, but also that evil happens. Open Theism is attractive to people who struggle with working out why evil happens.
A reformed approach says that God knows in advance everything that will happen, every exact and precise detail. God knows the suffering and evil that will occur. This does not in any way mean that God is responsible for sin. God uses suffering for his good purposes (Rom 5:1-5).
Open Theists argue that if God cannot know about the evil and suffering that will occur. They want to absolve God from any moral responsibility of creating or being involved in sin and suffering. They say that their God is one who wishes that suffering and pain does not occur, and when we foolish humans do things that cause suffering, then God is there to provide us with the strength and endurance to get through it.
This is why it is persuasive. And dangerous.
So why do bad things happen to good people? Can God really be in control? If God knows exactly what bad stuff is going to happen to us, then surely he must bare the responsibility for setting it in place, and as such cannot be a loving God? Surely it is not for our good?
The following is a list of what open theists say about pain and suffering:
- God does not know in advance the future free actions of his moral creatures
- God cannot control the future free actions of his moral creatures
- Tragic events occur over which God has no control
- When tragedies occur, God should not be blamed, becuase he was not able to prevent them from occuring, and he certainly did not will or cause them to occur
- Suffering is gratuitous and pointless, ie suffering has no positive or redeeming quality to it all, so that God should never be seen as intending suffering in order to bring some good from it
Bruce Ware, Their God is too small: Open Theism and the Undermining of Confidence in God (Crossway: Illinois, 2003) 67-8
You see, I can understand and feel weight of this arguement. But as I said to my friend, once you start saying that God is not in control, there are some pretty serious implications.If God is not in control, then who is? satan? no one or nothing?
Is God omniscient or omnipotent?
I believe this arguement for God stems from a misunderstanding of God's goodness.
BY NO MEANS is suffering good in and of itself. The very fabric of this creation is torn and groaning for a release from its suffering (Rom 8:18-24). Suffering is not something that is part of the way that God created things, that is why there is the hope of future re-creation, the hope of glory.
Open theists will say that suffering is not designed by God and has no good. But I disagree. I believe that God uses suffering for good. I believe that he ordains suffering to serve a purpose. A good purpose.
And since when has God promised that life as a Christian would not have suffering?
So is God like a school teacher on playground duty? Is your God in control of the good, the bad, the small and the large? If he isn't, who is in control of those things?
--
a few initial thoughts, I'm sure there will be more to come later, but i didn't want too long a post.
Now what do you think?
3 comments:
Nice post Bec!
I don't know the names for ways of thinking like you do so that was interesting for me...
As a school teacher I'm sad that your friend has such a low opinion of the quality of play ground duty out there... it's not all bad! though certainly the teacher can't forsee the evil and suffering that's going to come every recess, I imagine if they did they probably wouldn't turn up most days! :)
For me, all of the good things that I've learnt in the last, gee whiz, whole of my life, have been through suffering.
This is what dear ole Spurgeon says in his "Morning and Evening" devotions:
“After that ye have suffered awhile, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you.”
1 Peter 5:10
You have seen the arch of heaven as it spans the plain: glorious are its colours, and rare its hues. It is beautiful, but, alas, it passes away, and lo, it is not. The fair colours give way to the fleecy clouds, and the sky is no longer brilliant with the tints of heaven. It is not established. How can it be? A glorious show made up of transitory sun-beams and passing rain-drops, how can it abide? The graces of the Christian character must not resemble the rainbow in its transitory beauty, but, on the contrary, must be stablished, settled, abiding. Seek, O believer, that every good thing you have may be an abiding thing. May your character not be a writing upon the sand, but an inscription upon the rock! May your faith be no “baseless fabric of a vision,” but may it be builded of material able to endure that awful fire which shall consume the wood, hay, and stubble of the hypocrite. May you be rooted and grounded in love. May your convictions be deep, your love real, your desires earnest. May your whole life be so settled and established, that all the blasts of hell, and all the storms of earth shall never be able to remove you. But notice how this blessing of being “stablished in the faith” is gained. The apostle’s words point us to suffering as the means employed—“After that ye have suffered awhile.” It is of no use to hope that we shall be well rooted if no rough winds pass over us. Those old gnarlings on the root of the oak tree, and those strange twistings of the branches, all tell of the many storms that have swept over it, and they are also indicators of the depth into which the roots have forced their way. So the Christian is made strong, and firmly rooted by all the trials and storms of life. Shrink not then from the tempestuous winds of trial, but take comfort, believing that by their rough discipline God is fulfilling this benediction to you.
Hey Em,
thanks.
I thought of you (and some of my other friends who are teachers) as I spoke to my friend!
I think my friend must have a low view of school teachers. And a low view of the goodness of God.
Our Father *allows* suffering and can over-ride it. Suffering in this life is temporary, but essential, as people exercise their free will. Suffering is aligned to choices and follows them. Our Father makes use of suffering for his purposes, but does not cause it. No choice and no suffering mean the perfect stillness and lack of freedom of a figure in a stained glass window. we would never move or change and would not reflect the character and mind of our Father, as portrayed in Genesis 1. In freedom, you grow.
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