ruminations

18-21 Your life is a journey you must travel with a deep consciousness of God. It cost God plenty to get you out of that dead-end, empty-headed life you grew up in. He paid with Christ’s sacred blood, you know. He died like an unblemished, sacrificial lamb. And this was no afterthought. Even though it has only lately—at the end of the ages—become public knowledge, God always knew he was going to do this for you. It’s because of this sacrificed Messiah, whom God then raised from the dead and glorified, that you trust God, that you know you have a future in God.

22-25 Now that you’ve cleaned up your lives by following the truth, love one another as if your lives depended on it. Your new life is not like your old life. Your old birth came from mortal sperm; your new birth comes from God’s living Word. Just think: a life conceived by God himself! That’s why the prophet said,

The old life is a grass life,
    its beauty as short-lived as wildflowers;
Grass dries up, flowers wilt,
    God’s Word goes on and on forever.

This is the Word that conceived the new life in you.

–The Message

There is a belief among a lot of Christians that we can trust God because God is in control of everything. That God has a specific plan for each one of us. That whatever happens is because God ordained it to happen. 

I do not believe this is an accurate way to understand God.

First, I want to remind everyone that God’s greatest gift to humankind was not the sacrifice of Jesus. God’s greatest gift to us is life. Every time you take a breath, every time a baby is born, God’s greatest gift is given again.

The next greatest gift that God gave humankind is the gift of free will, the ability to make our own choices. Control is in opposition to free will. God created us to be able to choose between good and evil, between following and disobeying God, and because our choices are free and not pre-determined, God cannot know what we will choose.

However, God does have a plan for us. But God's plan is not a rigid set of instructions that we must follow. Rather, it is a framework for our lives, a set of guidelines that we can choose to follow or not. God’s plan is more like a game plan. That is, he gives us the rules of the game, the Ten Commandments, for instance. (Side note here: Although, the Ten Commandments are from the Jewish faith. I could never understand why “Christians” want to post the Ten Commandments everywhere. Christ’s said there are two commandments and then gave us eight beatitudes and an eleventh commandment. As followers of Christ these are what we should be wanting to post.)

Using a football metaphor, we have free will in the sense that we can “call the plays.” But we need to respect the rules of the game. If we run out of bounds or move the ball arbitrarily, we violate the rules and thus will suffer the consequences. And like life, a football game is prone to unexpected events: a player gets injured, the weather changes drastically, etc. Life too has its unexpected events. 

Also, Christians who say that God is in control of everything are accusing God of doing all sorts of horrible things. But, this belief creates distance between God and his children. Seeing God as the author of pain and destruction prevents true intimacy with God. You cannot be truly intimate with someone you expect will likely cause you hurt at any moment.

So, how does God make this game plan work if God has no actual control over everything?

First, I’m going to get a little nerdy on you and tell you about something I saw that really clicked with me. It was in the Avengers movie Infinity War. There is a scene where the heroes are trying to figure out how to beat the big bad villain and they notice that one of them is over by himself acting strange.

[Dr Strange: 14 mil to 1  (start at 1:28)]

This is how I think God can be omniscient and still not be in actual control. God can see every possible consequence of every choice we all make and work with or around those reverberations.

It’s kind of like when our kids were young and sometimes while driving in the car we would play a game of which direction do we go. When we would come to an intersection I would let the kids pick right or left or straight. At some point when we were totally heading in the wrong direction I would only let them pick two of the three directions until we were back on track. It may not have been the most direct plan to get somewhere but we invariably always arrived where we were headed.

God’s grace can work with whatever choices we make. God would prefer us to make the right choice in each instance, the most direct route, but God is the master of plan B or Bs. If we become tired, lazy, or just too self-focused, God will inspire someone else to act or come back to you later on down the road.

So, God who knows everything past, present, and all multiple futures, therefore, knows how the endgame will turn out. 

Then, how can we become part of God’s game plan?

This is where God’s third greatest gift comes into play. God’s gift of love. God gave God’s only Son to show us how to deal with our free will. I John says that God is love and if God is all powerful then love is the greatest power in the universe. This is the real meaning of a lot of Christians’ favorite Bible verse. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” The most important point of John 3:16 is not Jesus’ sacrificial death but His life’s example of love. A Christ-like love, a self-forgetful love. The Greek word is “agape”, sometimes translated as charity.

Henry Carlson writes:

If we want to worship God with truth and love, we will love our neighbor. We will follow the dictates of prudence and make sure our actions do not cause them undue danger or harm. God is more pleased when we do this than when we try to show off our piety through grandiose gestures. 6th chapter of Galatians says:

“Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. For if those who are nothing think they are something, they deceive themselves.”  (vs 2-3 NRSVUE).

We must not ignore the virtue of prudence in our spiritual life. We must not be haughty and assume God will take care of us if we do not take care of ourselves. We must do our part. We must cooperate with grace if we want grace to perfect us. We must cooperate with God and act with prudence if we want God to help us in our time of need. If we assume God will act when we do not do what we can, we will often find we do not receive what we expect from God. And then what will become of us and our faith? Will we lose faith because we did not get what we wanted, thinking we should have done so? 

Love is the “why” of life. The freedom to love each other as Christ loves us (the 11th commandment that I mentioned earlier) is what produces meaning in our lives. And as we hear in the 5th chapter of Galatians:

“For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become enslaved to one another..” (v13 NRSVUE)

The good news is God is not in control of everything! God needs us to be Their partners to accomplish Their purposes on Earth, to spread the gospel of Christ’s example of love and bring about Their Kingdom here, now, today.

That means we can trust God’s character to always want the very best for us. The door for intimacy with God is wide open!

Then we can truly taste and see that the Lord is good. The more we experience God’s goodness, the more we want to experience it. Over time we really can become more intimate with God. This is the real purpose of prayer.

Intimacy is vital because God wants to partner with us to accomplish Their purposes on the Earth by advancing Their Kingdom here, now, today. The world needs more believers who live in that powerful place of intimacy.

God is inviting us to trust Their plan and join Them in bringing Their kingdom to earth.

— Priest Rob Thomas