“God’s in Control”?
Ultimate Vs. Immediate Control
It’s a marvelous truth that ultimately, God is in control. Overall, finally and in the end, He rules, as the book of Revelation so dramatically demonstrates. It is this heavenly dimension of God’s “overall” rulership that is being referred to when people say things like, “Jesus is Lord,” and “everything happens for a reason,” “there are no coincidences,” “all things happen for the good,” “nothing ever happens unless God allows it” etc. Indeed, scripture proclaims, “of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things.” However, this is only part of the truth, the ultimate part.
“Immediate influences” must also be recognized or truth will be top-heavy with ultimate control and topple when challenged by the harsh winds of real-life events. Man, Satan, and natural phenomena impact this world as well as the ultimate control of God.
Predestination
God has foreordained and chosen us to be His forever.
But this world is not a plaything for the amusement of a supreme puppeteer manipulating all details. God is in control but He is not controlling the landing place of every falling leaf. Nor is He controlling man’s will, nor the devil nor every natural phenomenon.
If we were the passive agents of the irresistible will of another there could not be any accountability for anything, as scripture argues, “Then why does God still blame us, for who has resisted His will?”
At the same time, we see God’s ten-time hardening of Pharaoh’s heart to get His will accomplished. Obviously, this is the exception that proves the rule. Such interventions are extraordinary.
That event also reveals the circumstance that calls for such an exception, God’s ultimate destiny can not, not be arrived at. When any event altars that course, God steps in. The Tower of Babel, Jonah’s storm and his great fish, the parting of the Red Sea, The Resurrection were all miraculous interventions that redirected destiny toward its predetermined end. It’s understood, that God can do whatever He wants.
Yet Satan contends for man’s soul. God contends for man’s soul. Man contends for men’s souls with the preaching of the Gospel. All of this amidst the turmoil of a chaotic fallen world. This is not a contradiction, its a contention. The contention is between ultimate and immediate influences.
The Crisis
What is most crucial is discerning who’s doing what. Naively presuming that God is responsible for everything by saying “God’s in control” is simplistic and self-serving. No responsibility for proof, reason or explanation is required. And there is no accountability for the impact it may have on others.
What’s worse is the impact such presumptions have on God’s reputation. They imply that He’s behind all things, including evil. It indicts Him for murder, rape, birth defects, diseases, genocides, famines, wars, tyrants, natural disasters, accidents and all the nightmares of life. They would all have to be God’s doing, if “there are no accidents,” “nothing is a coincidence,” “everything happens for a reason, and “all things have a purpose.” Such un-tempered clichés make God the source of poverty, lawlessness, molestations, insanity and worse.
Thinking He’s the immediate cause of all things is error. It renders Christian witness “saltless” and corners believers with the unpleasant burden of calling darkness light.
The Tension
Immediate vs. ultimate control is like nitro and glycerin. The balance of the two elements must be handled ultra-carefully. Multitudes trace their abandonment of faith to a bitter experience in which God was made to be the cause or the indifferent standby. Young Freidrich Nietsche was such a case. He ended up redirecting the world with his misguided embittered heart, Heb.12:15
Many forsake faith early in life because God is explained to their young impressionable mind as the one who “took” their Father, or “allowed” their abuse because of some unknown “higher purpose,” or “reasons we just don’t understand.” That “light” is darkness. It is not “good news.” Obviously, there’s more to it than that, which must be explained.
Despicable Me
A devastating natural disaster is dismissed by parroting “God’s in control” as if those were magic words. A suicide bombing or plague of disease or loss of a parent is just rubber-stamped with a quick catchphrase like “God is sovereign.” Pleading “God’s in control,” in such cases is simply the default cop-out of powerlessness.
“God’s in control, ” “God is sovereign,” sidesteps the annoying distraction of getting involved like the Priest and the Levite strolling by the wounded man in the ditch in the parable of The Good Samaritan. The motive of the bigoted when ignoring the responsibility of faith is never God’s interests. It’s only “don’t kill my buzz.”
The casual utterance of “God’s in control,” and it’s spin-off sayings like “we just can’t understand His ways,” masks spiritual impotence. On the contrary, Jesus said, “and you shall know the truth and the truth will make you free.” The “God’s in control” dogma is mindlessly held to with white knuckle obstinance no matter how indefensible or how bad it makes God look, or who it hurts. “We can’t understand” ends all discussion.
The bothersome gnats of conscience and common sense get flicked away through common sentimental slogans.” “God works in mysterious ways?” “We’re not meant to understand?” “God must have a higher purpose?” “It wasn’t meant to be?” “God must have needed him more in heaven?” “God must be judging you?” “Maybe your suffering will inspire somebody else?”
These generic sayings are as random as a bowel of fortune cookies. God gets misrepresented as the all-controlling one who “allowed” the assault”, or “caused” the misfortune,” or “took your child.” These are spoken without any consultation or directive by The Holy Spirit. Virtually anything is said to defend the idea that “God’s in control” as if that’s the standing order of God’s Lil helpers.
What these adlibs of natural reasoning really represent is the lifeless detachment from the Living God that is characteristic of all dead religion. “God controls all things” is the generic “hide behind” of “Job’s friends” counterfeiting a genuine hearing relationship with God and substituting it with common second-hand digestions.
The Pitfall Of Presumption
God says, “if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God who gives to all men liberally and rebukes not, and it shall be given him.” Jms.1:5. “The Lord gives wisdom, out of His mouth comes understanding.” Pro.2:6. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God,” Matt.4:4.
If we don’t have wisdom from His mouth, then we have no wisdom in ours, which is the best reason to keep it closed. Job would agree! Speaking for God without being spoken to by God, accounts for thirty-six chapters of added misery from his wife, his “friends” and even himself.
In contrast, “The New Contract” provides the dynamic power of the Holy Spirit that terminates such abuse. Speaking to the carnal Christians of Corinth who were devouring each other with presumptuous judgmental-ism, Paul says, “the spiritual man judges all things,” 1 Cor.2:15. adding, “the natural man receives not the things of the spirit of God,”
The intuitive leading of God’s Spirit overrules the natural pull of presumption. The carnal man speaks only from his own mind as he perceives things through his own eyes, his own ears, and his own heart’s limited understanding. The natural man loves the self-stimulation of expressing his opinion. The spiritual man renounces self-opinion as worthless as a crooked arrow.
In Revelation, as in Job, we’re shown what is going on behind the scenes in the invisible dimension from God’s point of view. Unlike the book of Job, however, all human commentary is muted in Revelation. The writer says, “and when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead…” Rev.1:17. No opinion is allowed throughout the entire account. The point of The Book of Revelation is, seeing how God sees things is blissfully encouraging.
How Do We Know?
Understanding ultimate control is incomplete without factoring in the immediate influences of God’s miracles, Satan, the will of man and natural phenomena. But there is only one way to know the mix and interplay of immediate influences with the overruling influence of God’s ultimate control. God must tell us, as we see in scripture. How else could we possibly know if Jonah’s storm was sent by God or just natural phenomenon? How else would we know that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened by God and not the result of his own ego, or political pressures, or a mental disorder. How would we know that Saul was tormented by an evil spirit and not something in his diet that made him crazy?
Sodom and Gomorrah’s judgment was specifically for Sodom and Gomorrah and not the automatic default explanation of every disaster that ever occurs in a city. We know this only because God specifically tells us.
We know that Job’s disasters weren’t just misfortune or God’s chastisement only because God tells us about the unique hedge that He had around him and the Satanic permission that explains his specific troubles. His friends didn’t know this, but they spoke anyway. They spoke presumptuously. How dare we do the same.
How Dare We
Do we dare apply insights that were spoken by God to a specific circumstance, to other circumstances without the same specific hearing of His voice? Did we actually hear God about the hurricane? What did He say? How did we hear it? When did he say it to us? Or did we just presume that God must have judged that city because it reminded us of a bible story? Dare we make God the villainess killer of innocent mommies and babies without any inspired intel other than the theological escape-hatch of, “God’s in control.” What if it was the random meteorological phenomena of a fallen world that God sent His Son to save us from.
Like Job’s friends, we can mistakenly assume that every storm and every hardened heart and every catastrophe and hedge and every Satanic permission is ours to apply as whim and opinion and religious fun moves us. But misapplying the generalities of God’s ultimate control and specific interventions without regarding the particulars of immediate influences is volatile. Only God knows all the particulars. Presumption does a lot of damage. King David called presumption a sin and prayed God to deliver him from it, Ps.19:13.
It is vital, and moral that we rightly divide the balance of God’s ultimate control with immediate influences by dependence upon His Spirit. To not do so is immoral and abusive.
Continued in God’s In Control Part 6 “Four Influences”
Rom.11:36
Rom.9:19
Rom.1:16-17
Matt.5:13
Matt.6:23
Is.52:7
2 Tim.2:15