WHY: It all comes down to what questions you ask
Have you ever found yourself thinking, “How could God let the happen?” “WHY?”, “What did I do to deserve this?”, Or, in a raw vulnerable moment thought “If this is God’s will....I am not sure i want to be a part of it”.
Everyone eventually has an encounter that pulls back the curtain and exposes evil. Our instinctual response is WHY? Unfortunately, that question across time, generation, and all the deep thinkers of the world has never held a satisfying answer.
But, being in the career I am in...and having the conversations I have...that is not OK. I can’t sit with the autricities and traumas and unseen raging wars in the hearts of the beloveds of God and be OK with, “I don’t know?”
Whether this has hit close to home or not..as Boyd puts it: “To live thoughtfully with Christlike love we must allow ourselves to be disturbed by the grotesque realities surrounding us and sympathetically enter into the nightmarish suffering of others.” (Boyd, P. 57)
People looking for the answer to WHY come to this place from all different places of spiritual experience. You may have had a healthy environment in which to understand who He is. Or, like many, life has offered you so many impostors carrying a mask to confuse you about who God is that you can’t trust that He is good. No matter your origin and the resulting God template, you can find yourself in a dilemma with the Lord in the context of WHY.
The DNA of WHY:
So goes the age-old irreconcilable juxtaposition: Goodness, Might, and Atrocity.
How do they co-exist?
And why would we want to snuggle up to a God who tolerates all of that?
My answer, my resting place: In carefully selecting the questions I ask, I find ways to string together strength, comfort, and clarity that creates a pathway back to the Lord from the disenfranchised wilderness of questioning his character.
I am not a theologian and it’s not by any means perfect or flawless, so this is just my offering. Truly, no answer is perfect and a worthy, sufficient goal is to use what we DO KNOW for sure to ground enough tent stakes to keep your soul anchored down.
Boyd offers in Is God to Blame the substitution of the question:
“What you can you know and what can you NOT know”?
What CAN we know?
We can know without doubt God’s Character. The whole love-story-drama that is the Life and Presence of Jesus reveals God’s Character. Over and over and in many different idioms we are told by Jesus, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father”.
In the Gospels that hold Jesus’ life, how many stories do you remember of storms that Jesus whipped up to cause calamity and dependence on God? None. I can only think of storms he stilled.
How many children did Jesus decide it would be better off if they didn’t make it past childbirth? None. I can only think of children he healed.
How many men or women did Jesus decide needed a thick dose of infirmity so that they and their loved ones would learn to be dependent on Him and bring Him Glory? NONE. I can only think of people he healed. As far as I can think of, when people came to him, he healed them. Every. Single. One.
Consider the core “military” assignment that the Lord taught us to pray through: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Meaning...things are not as they should be here on earth and God’s desire is for us to partner with Him to make it so.
“Jesus didn’t come to declare that everything already manifests the Father’s will. He came rather to establish the Father’s will, because the world as it is now doesn’t consistently manifest God's will... Because of God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ, we can be confident that our knowledge about God’s character and general purposes in life.” (Boyd , P 61).
What CAN”T we know?
If God’s character is in conflict with suffering in the world, what sense is there to make out of it?
Boyd (2003) proposes: “The arbitrariness of life is a mystery. Yet everything hangs on where we locate this arbitrariness and mystery. Everything hangs on what we can and cannot know….Because of God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ, we can be confident of our knowledge about God’s character and general purposes for our life. What we can hardly begin to fathom, however, is the vast complexity of creation, a creation that includes an untold number of human and spiritual free agents whose decisions affect much that comes to pass” (Boyd P 79)
To grasp the scope of the “unknown” is so hard to live reality in the context of that it is tempting to chalk it up to “everything happens for a reason”. If you have ever shared space with someone that has been ripped through with tragedy or if you find yourself there… you know that phrase is at best annoying if not truly wounding. However, as Boyd put it...we have to rest the unknown somewhere, “locate” it somewhere.
The Butterfly Effect
Science offers parallel vocabulary, in those terms we speak of the chaos theory or the “butterfly effect”. Through algorithms and patterns and other things beyond my paygrade, the dynamic is at work such that infinitesimal, often imperceptible variations in any imaginable context can and will cause dramatic, remarkable, profound effects at a later point in the process.
“The flap of a butterfly wing in one part of the globe can be, under the right conditions, the decisive variable that brings about a hurricane in another part of the globe several months later….because love requires choice...every decision we make affects other agents in some measure...like ripples created by a rock in a pond...
Is it a matter of natural and choice-driven “ripples” interacting and bouncing that bring us from a civil war injury to Coca-cola?
This one is hard to wrap one’s mind around. We are not only are we affected or opposed by the humans, creatures, and nature around us contemporaneously. We are not only are we affected or opposed by humans and creatures and nature throughout the ripple of time’s history… We are also affected by and opposed by spiritual forces we cannot see with our eyes. There are spiritual agents (angels) who are morally responsible as well and are free to worship and follow God...or not. Check out Isaiah 14: 12-17.
Another illustration of the inner workings of things we don’t understand is told in the story of Daniel chapter 10. Daniel and God’s people are in dire straights and Daniel prays a beautiful prayer (Daniel 10:2 ). And God doesn’t show up. And things get worse.
There is so much more to address...I imagine you have a million, “yes, but…”s ping ponging in your mind. I do too and have searched out a few more nuggets to offer as you engage with what questions you ask.
Or is it that God, not willing anyone to perish (2 Peter 3:8-10), Jesus demonstrating that God does not have intentions to use violence as a tool… does not waste a chance to REDEEM hardship and pain but steps into what shouldn’t be ... and orchestrates a chain of events so that Plan B (His faithful intervening) ALWAYS outshines Plan A (should the hardship never have happened)?
I don’t know, and actually I don’t think that is a watershed question to sit with.
The point circles back to where we locate mystery. If I understand everything that is going on in the occurrences of hardship and pain, I have reduced God to my size. I refuse to serve a God I fully understand. He is bigger than that, other than me.
“It is important to have pars of my life that are buried in mystery. Mystery is as important as revelation. We have to have enough measure of things we can’t explain in life so that we have reason to trust” (B. Johnson 2017 The Power of Trust).
Behind the Curtain: Even Angels Encounter Opposition
This one is hard to wrap one’s mind around. We are not only are we affected or opposed by the humans, creatures, and nature around us contemporaneously. We are not only are we affected or opposed by humans and creatures and nature throughout the ripple of time’s history… We are also affected by and opposed by spiritual forces we cannot see with our eyes. There are spiritual agents (angels) who are morally responsible as well and are free to worship and follow God...or not. Check out Isaiah 14: 12-17.
Interestingly, an angel does show up. He clarifies that his name is Gabriel and I’ll just let you read the rest of this micro-story from the Message: Daniel 10:12-14
This blows my mind open to the reality of the massive part of the story that we cannot see as it intersects with our prayers and needs and praises.
Bottom Line: Where we locate mystery and understanding is essential in the work that we must do in reconciling a loving, good, and mighty God... and living amidst tragic things that are not as they should be.
As you roll this marble around in your mind...wonder at the clarity of perfect God-character theology laid open in the life and words of Jesus. And wonder at the other components of our existence that may be at work behind that which God doesn’t will...but intersects with for the purpose of redemption.
There is so much more to address...I imagine you have a million, “yes, but…”s ping ponging in your mind. I do too and have searched out a few more nuggets to offer as you engage with what questions you ask.
Boyd, G. (2003). Is God to Blame?. Intervarsity Press. Downers Grove, IL
Upcoming Blogs/Videos:
Good Shepherd vs. the Cattle Driver: How do you know God’s character?
Job: Warfare Explained
Two Trees - Why does God Allow Why?
Specific Jesus Examples of Warfare
Unanswered Prayer
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