Quite often, we comfort ourselves during difficult seasons of our life, with the assurance that God is in control. What we mean by that is, although we are powerless to change our situation, God is somehow at work behind the scenes to make sure everything works out ok in the end. So, we may have lost our job, or discovered someone we love has cancer, or miscarried our third child, or declared bankruptcy, or something else disturbing, and it’s all ok because, we tell ourselves, “God is in control.”
But, what if we’re wrong? What if God is NOT in control at all? What if bad things happen and God isn’t orchestrating anything at all behind the scenes?
First of all, I feel the need to point out that it’s entirely possible for God not to be in control and yet, at the same time, for God to be working behind the scenes to make everything work out better for us in the end. In other words, God’s ability to bring a blessing out of our chaos isn’t dependent upon God being in complete control of the universe. It’s very possible that God’s power is more about an ability to influence events and people in more subtle ways without the need for God to necessarily control events or people. Does that make sense?
Authors like Thomas Jay Ord and Mark Karris, for example, suggest that God’s nature is uncontrolling love. If this is so, they argue, then God is not in control of the universe, but God is very much involved in our daily affairs, all the same. So, God does not – and even cannot – make anyone do anything against their will, simply because to do so would be to cease being God. In other words, God’s nature is expressed in an uncontrolling love for everyone. So, God, by definition, is not able to coerce anyone to do anything, nor would God ever even want to do such a thing. Instead, God does everything possible, within the boundaries of this uncontrolling love nature, to show us a better way, without imposing anything upon us.
This means that we are responsible – fully and completely – for our own actions. God makes suggestions. God shows us a higher love. God stands with us. God walks beside us through the valley of the shadow of death. God remains alongside us whether we choose wisely, or foolishly. God never wavers as our constant source of strength. But, in all of this, the one God is not doing is controlling anyone, or anything, in any way. Because that’s not who God is.
I’ll confess, this is a hard one for me to accept. Mainly because, in my own personal life, I have experienced several unexplainable miracles. Many of those miracles really seem to be examples of God stepping in and forcibly controlling the outcomes of otherwise horrific or tragic events.
For example, God stopped me in my tracks one evening as I was walking down a road. It felt as if a giant hand was pushing against my chest. I was half-way between the prison honor camp, where my band was about to play a concert that evening, and the La Tuna Federal Prison fence, (which was surrounded by guard towers). I had decided to walk down to the fork in the road to meet my fellow band-mates who were running late. I figured they might miss the turn, as the drummer and I had done, and I wanted to make sure they found us.
But, then I felt that hand on my chest, so I stood frozen in place for about ten minutes and wondered what was going on. All I knew was that I should not move, but I did not know why. Not until the prison chaplain turned the corner on the two-lane road coming out of the prison and pulled up right next to me and asked, “What the hell are you doing?” did I learn that there had been a bed-check which revealed a missing prisoner. That sent the prison into lock-down.
“Do you see that guard up there?” he asked, thumbing back over his shoulder towards the large gray tower about 50 yards away. “There’s a sniper with your head in his sights right now asking for permission to open fire because they suspect you’re the missing prisoner heading for the main road.”
So, that’s why God stopped me in my tracks.
Another example of when God apparently stepped in and controlled things was when my Dad fell off the roof of our mobile home and landed on his head, shattering and pulverizing three vertebrae in his neck. The doctor’s looked at the x-rays and told him he would have a 50/50 chance of being paralyzed for life – but only if the greatest spinal surgeon in the world did the surgery. Of course, that surgeon was in Moscow, so his odds dropped significantly from there.
A few days later, my Dad went through a CAT scan machine, just minutes after our Southern Baptist Pastor and one of his deacons, had prayed for him. When the results of the scan came back, the doctor told my father he was sorry. “I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “I’m holding your x-rays in my left hand showing the damage to your three vertebrae, and in my right hand I’m holding your CAT scan which shows you have no damage whatsoever.”
My Dad laughed and said, “I know what happened. Jesus healed me!”
So, in those two examples, it’s hard for me to understand how God did not control things to change what was about to happen. If God hadn’t stopped me in my tracks, I’d probably have been shot dead that day. If God did not heal my Dad, he’d be paralyzed from the neck down.
I have other personal testimonies like these. Stories of God’s divine intervention and miraculous healing where I can only say that God was, most certainly, in control.
So, what do I do with this? Is God in control? If so, in what way? Is God’s nature uncontrolling love? Then, if so, how and why did these healings take place? What stopped me in my tracks on the road that afternoon?
For some people, the idea that God doesn’t control anything is easier to believe than miracle stories like these. But for me, the idea of God’s uncontrolling love makes sense theoretically – I actually embrace the idea – even though my problem is reconciling this concept with the miracles I’ve experienced.
This leaves me with several uncomfortable options: Either God is in control of everything, but only chooses to intervene occasionally, or God is not in control of anything and miracles are unexplained and random accidents of nature, like glitches in the matrix or hiccups of physics. Or, maybe as a third option, God is not in control of people, but God is in control of nature and this control is limited by factors we don’t completely understand.
I don’t know. Honestly, I’m really not sure what to think.
It’s very hard to understand why my friends Richard and Mary-Anne weren’t healed of their cancer, but my Dad was healed of his crushed vertebrae. It’s hard to reconcile why one friend’s daughter came back to life after being dead on the operating table, but another friend’s father died suddenly.
These questions have no easy answers. Some people believe they’ve got it all figured out. They reduce everything to an oversimplified definition of faith and contend that there is some mystical formula that everyone can take advantage of if they only believe in the right way or pray the magic words in the right tone of voice. But I don’t believe any of that.
To me, there are no formulas. Things happen: good and bad. We can’t explain it. We can’t control it. We can only thank God that we don’t have to go through any of it alone. He is with us. He promises never to leave us, nor forsake us. Whether the storm passes or we pass through the storm, Jesus is there in the boat with us.
That’s enough for me.
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Keith Giles is the author of several books, including “Jesus Untangled: Crucifying Our Politics To Pledge Allegiance To The Lamb”. He is also the co-host of the Heretic Happy Hour Podcast on iTunes and Podbean. He and his wife live in Orange, CA with their two sons.
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