by jimwalton » Sun Apr 09, 2017 8:51 am
I’m glad you like talking to me. I like talking to you, too, because your questions are honest. You’re not just arguing to argue, or just putting on a false front.
First, let’s talk about God’s control. God’s power doesn’t mean he can do anything. You know that, right? There are lots of things that God can’t do. Mark 6.5 is an obvious example. What we mean when we say God is all-powerful is that he can do whatever is possible, and whatever he sets out to do. He has power over nature, power over the course of history (when he chooses to use it), power to change people (only when they let him), power over death and sin, power of salvation, and power over the spiritual realm. What it means is that God’s will is never frustrated. What he chooses to do, he is able to do. But that doesn’t mean he can do anything and everything, because he can’t.
He can’t do what is contradictory. He can’t make a square circle, a rock he can’t lift, or blue that is red. Those are just silly things, and absurd.
He can’t act contrary to his nature. He can’t lie, be unfaithful, be immoral, whatever. He just can’t.
He’s can’t fail to do what he has promised. What he chooses to do, he is able to do.
He can’t interfere with our free will. Our free will isn’t free if God can just change it on a whim, or even for a purpose.
He can’t change the past. He honors the linear nature of time for us.
And so we come to your question: does God have the power to have made a perfect world? Perfection belongs to God alone, and so anything created falls short of the glory of God, by definition. God is uncreated; everything else is less than that. I would say that after the time of probation (the era we call history), after God has revealed himself through his Word, his prophets, and His Son (in the Bible), after Jesus has come and died for our sins, and after humans have made their free-will choices about salvation, God is now set free to create a different kind of world than the first time around. Just as Jesus, in Mark 6.5, was only able to exercise his power in certain ways when faith was present, now God will be able to create a different kind of world than before (because only the faithful will still be “alive” (the unbelievers will have experienced even the second death).
And what about “God is in control”? Exactly what do you (or people) mean by that? Do you mean that God made Hitler do what he did? That’s not biblical. God doesn’t cause sin, and God doesn’t tempt people to sin(James 1.13). So when people sin, God didn’t do that, and God wasn’t in control of that. That’s not biblical. Those people acted on their own (James 1.14), not under God’s control. There are a lot of things that happen in the world that grieve God and go directly against what He said and wants. It doesn’t make any sense that God contradicts himself (Mark 3.24-25). God can’t oppose himself, and so he can’t possibly be in control of everything that happens. If God does control everything, then God is responsible for sin, God opposes himself, and God does a lot of things that contradict His nature. I can’t go with ANY of those choices, and so I can’t go with the common Christian thought of “God is in control.”
Instead, God is sovereign. He is the Lord of all. He has enemies who work against Him, but they will be conquered, without a doubt. The strongest enemy is death, but death has been conquered. His plan of salvation will come to completion, and nothing will stop it. We may sin (God can’t interfere with our free will, and he is not in control of it), but God is stronger than sin and can provide a way of escape (1 Cor. 10.13). Never doubt the power of God to help you conquer sin, to bring you salvation, to save you from sin and death, and to bring you to heaven. His power is all-sufficient. He can do what He has set out to do.
Second, God’s plan. God’s plan is the plan of salvation, not an individual plan for our lives (a “will” that we have to find and follow). The idea that God has a set plan for our lives that we to find and follow isn’t a biblical idea. God’s plan is a plan of salvation. God does call us to specific tasks sometimes, but other than that we have free will to serve Him as we wish, to make our choices as we wish, to go to the college of our choice, to marry the person of our choice, and to live our lives as we decide, and God will work with us in whatever we choose. Our hearts are more important than our circumstances. We can go to whatever college we choose, as long as we serve the Lord there, live for Him, grow in grace and in the knowledge of Him, and be the kind of person God wants us to be. You can marry the man you choose, but love him with godly love and help him to be the man God called him to be, as you yourself be the woman God called you to be.
You’re not a robot. God doesn’t have every minute of your life planned down to what socks you should wear, what food you should order for lunch, or even what job you should take. You are free (Gal. 5.1, 13). It causes us so much agony to try to find “God’s will” when we just hear silence. It’s because we are free to make our own choices! If God really wants you somewhere (like a certain college or a certain job), He will make sure you get there—no doubt about that one (Jonah)! But God is far more interested in your heart than in which job you take. Make your decisions, and be a faithful child of God. It is for freedom that Christ has set you free.
Jeremiah 29.11. This was a promise given to the nation of Israel. It was not addressed to individuals. It pertains to their return from the exile, not to a guaranteed positive future for anyone in the 21st century who happens to read it. Even Hebrews 11.35-37 lets us know with certainty that not every believer has a wonderful life of prosperity ahead of them. It’s just not true that God plans to prosper all of us. Christians even right now in the Middle East are being martyred. A school of Christian girls in Africa even right now were kidnapped by Boko Haram were kidnapped as sex slaves. Persecution is real, and God doesn’t protect us from all of it. This verse was for ISRAEL. And even though there are times where God prospers us, and there are times when God when God moves us into comfortable places, this is not a promise for us. And remember, even for the Israelites, God’s plans for them included 70 years of exile and oppression.
Why would you continue with this faith? We don’t trust God because he makes our lives prosperous, but because he saves us from sin. We don’t trust him because he protects us from all harm, but because His Word is truth. I believe in God because He’s real, not because He does awesome things for me. It’s not about me, it’s about Him and about truth; it’s about sin and salvation. Even if God never answered a single prayer of mine, He’s still there, and He is God, and the Bible is true, and I need God to take away my sin. I trust God because I want a relationship with Him, not because I expect Him to make my life easy.
I”m sorry you have a knot in your stomach. My aim is to teach the truth about Scripture. It sounds like I’m creating some “adjustments” in your thinking. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe God can use me to guide you into deeper truths than you have been previously exposed to.
Third: Bible study. We learn context by understanding the point of the whole book, the point of the section, and the point of the paragraph. Like the Jeremiah passage. There are books to help with such things, and it does matter. The Bible is a fantastic book. In ways we can just read it and understand it and benefit from it. It’s like a treasure chest where we can pick up the jewels and put them around our necks. On another level I can study it for my whole life and still find there is more to learn. It’s the deepest book of truths you’ll ever find. I can pick the words apart to the nth degree and never exhaust its riches. And by doing that, I’ll discover even more treasure than the “daily devotion” and simple reading methods. So we study. We pick up books. We go to classes. We are life-long learners. It’s a lot of work, but SO beneficial.
“We have to understand what the author meant when he wrote it.” Let’s take the Jeremiah passage as an example. All of Jeremiah is a prophecy about Judah’s demise as a judgment of God for their refusal to repent from their sin. They are headed for national ruin. Jeremiah prophesies that the Babylonians are coming to destroy the city, kill the people, and drag some away into exile. But that exile will only last 70 years (chapter 25), and then a remnant will return. The people don’t believe Jeremiah, and they ridicule and persecute him for his negative message (chapter 26). They would rather listen to prophets who tell them good, nice, and comforting things about God. Jeremiah doesn’t buckle under the pressure, but keeps teaching the truth. That’s when he says the famous lines of Jeremiah 29.10-14. Read them and you’ll get the idea. But then people like this verse because it speaks to them of nice things and a bright future—we like to think we’ll have nice things and a bright future, so we seize on that verse as if it’s a promise from God for us. But it’s not. It’s a promise of God for THEM. That’s not to say God is never nice to us or that He never gives us a bright future. But we’re not to accuse God of being unfaithful when things get rough or our future is less than stellar.
“Taking the Bible literally.” The Bible is a rich collection of literature styles containing music, poetry, metaphor, allegory, archetypes, parable, hyperbole, metonymy, irony, simile, and many other literary forms, as well as genres such as prayer, prophecy, blessing, covenant language, legal language, etc. "Literally" quickly becomes a word with very little meaning or helpfulness. If a poet says the trees of the field will clap their hands and the mountains will jump for joy, is that literal? Of course not, it's poetry. If a man prays, "God, kill all those people," we may all understand that his prayer is inappropriate, and is not blessed by God, but is it literal? Well, how does that word even apply? And how does it apply to archetype, allegory, parable, and all the others? It's a word that should be dropped from the discussion because it doesn't take us anywhere except to the Land of Misunderstanding. It's better to think that the Bible should be taken the way the author intended it to be taken. If he was using hyperbole, we're to take it that way. So also allegorically, historically, parabolic, poetic, etc. Our quest is to understand the intent of the author. In that case we'll take the Bible seriously, but "literally" doesn't take us anywhere.
So I don’t like the word “literally” to use with the Bible. In my opinion, it’s an inadequate word for the intricacies of biblical writing. It’s too weak, generally unhelpful, and at times even misleading.
“Aren’t we supposed to go to the Bible to find answers?” The Bible is a book about God. It’s where He reveals Himself. Those are the answers it gives us. It doesn’t answer our questions about drug abuse, TV watching, technology, or bioethics. It certainly gives us guiding principles about those subjects, but it doesn’t answer our questions. It won’t answer your questions about which college to attend or whom to marry. That’s not what it’s for, and it doesn’t do those things. You can’t open it and point to a verse to get guidance for the day. It’s not a crystal ball. It’s a book where God reveals Himself to us through the covenant, through the prophets, and through His Son. It’s where we learn all that we need to know about God, but even about God it doesn’t answer all our questions.
Fourth: "Why does God heal some people and not others?” We’re never told the rationale (another answer we don’t get). We are told that God is wise, He has his reasons, and we are to trust Him. We are never shown the criteria for how He decides. So we pray for all of them, we are grateful when someone is healed, but it doesn’t cause us to lose our faith when He doesn’t heal others. As I said, in the Bible he hardly healed anyone (except during the 3-year ministry of Jesus). And sickness and injury were much more severe then, before our era of modern medicine and surgery. People didn’t base their faith on whether or not they got healed. Neither should we.