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Does God Control Everything?
| There are many
Christian traditions and denominations that assert that God’s
sovereignty accounts for every aspect of life on Earth. It is hard to
assert this without also making God somehow responsible for evil. Many
of these assert that we have no free will and cannot do anything (total
depravity) good unless God makes it happen. This is a hard sell because
most people know someone who is not a Christian, but does do some good
things.
The idea that there is no free will is also a difficult concept to
advance as one might ask how the angels rebelled without free will. If
God gave us and the angles free will, then he would restrict himself
somewhat so that we would be free to exercise our choice. It would be
obvious that some would use free will to rebel against God and pursue
their own interests. This being the case, one would expect the reason
God had in giving his creation free will would be a sort of selection
or filtering process.
One might consider that the misery in the world comes mostly from two
sources. We have selfish natures that cause us to harm ourselves and
others. We are also subject the deceptions of fallen angles (primarily
Satan). There are some biological and environmental difficulties God
placed on us after the flood to act as a restraint that can also be
uncomfortable. However, these tend to act automatically.
Those who see the hand of God in every aspect of their lives often do
so because they assume it honors God to recognize his sovereignty.
However, trying to identify what is happening and why often leads to
looking for signs and portents where there are none. Someone who gets a
flat tire may wonder why God allowed this to happen to them. This is
not too dissimilar from ancient people wondering why Zeus or Odin gave
them bad luck.
The idea of God’s permissive will is often put forth to attempt to
remove blame one might be inclined to give God for the bad things that
happen. However, this does not offer complete guiltlessness as a
decision to allow something bad to happen while controlling everything
else might be considered the same as doing it. If the idea of
permissive will is extended to allowing all of creation to continue to
its end without control, we might get a more accurate understanding.
One might see in a non-interventionist view of creation that the
objective would be to harvest those who would use their free will to
seek truth and trust in their creator to pull them out of the creation
so that they might truly be called the sons of God.
For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. - Romans 8:14
Those that have no interest in God may be allowed to perish. But those
who have been recovered by God are given the gift of eternal life
For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but
unto us which are saved it is the power of God. - 1
Corinthians 1:18
For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. - Romans 6:23 |
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