the fallenness come from? Is God still in control? If so, does being in control mean that God is in charge of and even responsible for all events, even the most evil ones? The Bible is clear about God’s existence, but it’s interpreters have been less agreed on what it teaches about how God chooses to relate to the world’s fallenness. Several best-selling books highlight two contrasting options.
Love Trumps Power
Here’s the first option for understanding how the Bible says God deals with the results of human fallenness, and thus who is responsible for our present suffering. Jerry Bridges keys his thinking off of Isaiah 38:17 where King Hezekiah decides, “surely it was for my benefit that I suffered such anguish.” God’s presence and sovereignty are said to be always present and active and in full control of all events in human history, even when they are turning sharply downward. Presumably, all that happens is for the eventual benefit of God’s chosen people, even when events look quite otherwise. All was planned in advance. God has absolute independence and absolute control over the actions of all creatures.20
Bridges also points to Lamentations 3:37, “Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it?” and to Isaiah 45:7, “I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things.” This is a power position. God has all the power and uses it to accomplish the divine will in this world. All is pre-planned and fully controlled.
Here’s the contrasting option, one I think more biblical when the whole of biblical revelation is considered. When ultimate power is set forth as the primary attribute of God, no answer will be satisfying to the persistent question, why does God not eliminate awful suffering when God can with his power and should with his goodness? The answer is that Bible puts divine power in the context of God’s love relationship with his beloved.
God is said to be love. Love is God’s primary perfection, not power. God’s use of power is disciplined by God’s loving nature. This implies that God tends to withhold acts of divine coercion in favor of the wooing of reaching and redeeming love. God is powerfully present in all events, to be sure, but without the choice of dictating and fully controlling them.
Insists Douglas John Hall in contrast to Jerry Bridges, “There is no sword that can cut away sin without killing the sinner. . . . Freedom is of the very essence of the human creature. . . . Jesus is the Christ.”21 The implication of this final claim is that God works against evil in this world in the way portrayed in the crucifixion of Jesus. Divine wisdom is that of the cross (1 Cor 1—2). Therefore, “the only power that can address suffering humanity is the power of love, and that is a power ‘made perfect in weakness’” (2 Cor 12:9).
Many verses, especially in the Old Testament, can be quoted on the side of Bridges—strict divine control, which seems to imply that God is at fault when evil events are unstopped. But the Christian should follow the Master who said he did not come to destroy but to fulfill his Jewish tradition. In fulfilling it, he often corrected its common teaching traditions, especially by turning law into a love focus. Jesus ended the sacrificing and suffering of animals by placing God on the altar once and for all! The great love of God was willing to suffer. God self-sacrificed on our behalf! That’s the very heart of Christian faith. True and undeserved love redeems our lives and sets us on the jagged journey of loving others.
Admittedly, it’s hard to get away from the focus on divine power. Much Christian theology over the centuries has been formed while the church was existing as a prominent center of power in various worldly empires. It’s been observed that a “prestigious” church, Christianity as the official religion of an empire, can hardly afford to be known as representative of a crucified God! Women theologians have rightly told us recently that for much too long the church has highlighted the power manner of God’s working, reflecting an excessively male reading of the Bible and an unbalanced masculine way of being in the world.
Could it be that, in our day when the church is being reduced to much less prominence in secularized societies, she could rediscover her true self? If so, a power focus would give way to the more biblical love focus. The Bible would stop being read as God coercively marching in triumph over all enemies and conquering all suffering and evil by mighty power, even by pre-planning all events. It would be read as intended, God in Christ reaching in love to make possible the redemption of all the lost, Christ through his Spirit working through suffering in the midst of our suffering to bring good out of evil.
If we read the Bible through the eyes of God’s love, not through a dominance of God’s power and judgment, the TULIP theological metaphor of Calvin yields to the ROSE of Wesley. We then come to better understand why evil manages to happen even in God’s world. We come to see more clearly that those who gain new life in Christ, through the graciousness of the Father’s love, are called to join in the ministry of suffering and self-sacrificing love. When in pain ourselves or seeing a great injustice crippling others, we come to be less inclined to place blame on the victim (“you’re getting what you deserve”) or blame God for allowing it in the first place when the power was available to force justice.
We also should note the celebrated book When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Rabbi Kushner deals with suffering in his family and among the many to whom he had ministered over the years. He comes to some radical conclusions, or are they just so different from how people often think that we judge them radical? He certainly champions the love focus of God, which for him leads to some dramatic conclusions.
“Our being human [by God’s design] leaves us free to hurt each other, and God can’t stop us without taking away the freedom that makes us human.” So, God couldn’t stop Hitler from his monstrous evil. “God wants justice and fairness but can’t always arrange for them.” Is God the source of evil happenings? Absolutely not! “God is as outraged as we are.” “The God I believe in does not send us the problem; He gives us the strength to cope with the problem.” The God who “neither causes nor prevents tragedies helps by inspiring people to help.”22 It’s the way love works.
Again, there are two options before us for reading the workings of God. I choose the ROSE-like one, God the compassionate lover over God the judgmental wielder of power. Why? Because in Christ we have received God’s own self-revelation. God works in the way most consistent with the divine nature and intent, and both are seen hanging on the cross of Jesus.
But, even when this understanding is firmly in place, there may be exceptions, unanswered questions, and occasions when the power option prevails. Rabbi Kushner may be essentially right and yet somewhat wrong when insisting that God “can’t” act forcefully against evil. In fact, the Bible records numerous examples of God doing just that. These examples are real if only the exceptions to God’s preferred way of working.
Pivot Points and Truth Anchors
People commonly see what appears to be the Bible’s mixed messages about the causes of suffering and the related action or inaction of God. Some people can’t tolerate anything mixed coming from the Bible and choose one aspect of the whole to be the final and only biblical answer. This reaction is very human, and yet it also is very unfair to the Bible, which sees
The Bible sees the whole of life, reports the whole, and gives sure anchors to allow safe passage through the maze.
the whole picture, reports the whole, and in the midst of it all gives a few sure anchors to allow safe passage through the maze. Here are the orienting, dependable, and clearly biblical anchors of truth.
Anchor #1. Love, Not Coercion.
What about all the grotesque and dehumanizing suffering we see or at least hear of constantly? The answer isn’t easy for believers in a God who is believed to
