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<\/a><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n Sentimental Claptrap #5: God Is In Control\u2026God Has a Plan\u2026God Works in Mysterious Ways<\/strong><\/p>\n This is by far the most complex and problematic statement of the whole series. The omnipotence of an all-good God and the existence of suffering is a paradox that philosophers and theologians have attempted to reconcile for centuries. There\u2019s even a name for attempting to justify God\u2019s goodness despite the existence of evil and suffering: theodicy<\/a>. As such, dismissing this entire question with a clumsy, clich\u00e9d verbal pat on the back is, to my mind, the most egregious manifestation of sentimental claptrap.<\/p>\n My sister had a friend in her youth. \u201cFriend\u201d seems like such an inadequate term to capture all that Jerry was and might have been.<\/a> He was a part of our family for a time, so much a part that it seems impossible that there had been a time before he was in our kitchen, drinking orange juice out of the carton as my mom hit him on the head with a wooden spoon. He was so much a part of our family that it seems impossible that so many years have passed without him.<\/p>\n But fourteen years have passed since Jerry died in the ATM bonfire collapse<\/a>. Fourteen years is so long that sometimes it feels like he was never here at all, and\u00a0 so short that it still feels impossible that he\u2019ll never drink another Dr. Pepper in our kitchen. For my sister, I can\u2019t imagine what it\u2019s like. Without a doubt, he was the truest friend she ever had, the one who really loved her, the one who loved her the right way, the one who brought out the best kinds of beauty and goodness in her. For her, the loss of Jerry was and is beyond measure.<\/p>\n As it was for his family, whose grief was so painfully keen to see. As it was for his friends and those who loved him. For me, it\u2019s like the echo of a loss\u2026he was so much older, and belonged to my sister\u2019s world, not mine. But even I can see that life is not what it could have been if he had lived. Things didn\u2019t go the way they should have gone. He should have lived.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t believe that Jerry\u2019s death was part of the plan, some sort of mysterious tragedy God willed into being for the greater good. It was, like all death, the result of evil, sin, and free will. God allows tragedy and suffering because he gave us free will. He can\u2019t always mitigate the consequences of our choices, whatever form those consequences take. He can\u2019t always mitigate the effects of sin in our world. What he can do is bring grace from tragedy, if we allow it.<\/p>\n What grace may have come from Jerry\u2019s death I cannot say. I\u2019m still too stuck on all the rich and beautiful potential that was lost with him. But I\u2019m pretty sure that a bonfire falling on top of him was not God\u2019s plan for Jerry\u2019s life.<\/p>\n As I understand him, God is less the ultimate puppet-master and more the ultimate Time-Lord: he can see all paths at once, \u201call that is\u2026all that was\u2026all that ever could be.\u201d He knows, in every moment, which choice would be the best one for me to make, how it would shape my character, and what road it would take me on. He can see the choices of others and how they will affect me. He can see the Calah that might have been, had I chosen good in every moment; he can see the Calah that might be if I choose good in every moment from this one until my death; he can see the Calah that might be if I turn my back on good forever. He sees all possibilities, the things that might be done to me and the things that I might do, even while he knows the choice I will make in each moment. He prepares a way for grace to be present in those choices and in those circumstances, so that good might beget good, so that bad might be redeemed by good. or even just so that I know he is with me.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no way to say that God has a plan without directly implying that this suffering, whatever it may be, is caused by God. That he willed it, that he wanted it, that he breathed it into being for some incomprehensible purpose. This is patently false. We\u2019ve covered it already: God doesn\u2019t create evil.<\/a><\/p>\n There\u2019s no way to say that God is in control without directly implying that he could have stopped this, but he chose not to. There may be some truth to that, although I\u2019ve never managed to square that with the doctrine of free will. In a very real way God is not<\/em> in total control, because in giving us free will he relinquished that control. He can\u2019t make us do or not do anything. That is his greatest gift to humanity, the gift to freely choose, and it\u2019s the most dreadful gift of all. It\u2019s the gift by which so many of us seal our fates, and some horrible times, the fates of others.<\/p>\n I believe that God does<\/em> work in mysterious ways because I\u2019ve experienced it. The worst possible<\/em> outcome of my increasingly terrible choices became my road back to grace<\/a>, back to God. That is what I think of when I hear that phrase. But it wasn\u2019t the kind of mystery that belongs in a Hallmark card or embroidered into a pillow\u2026drug addiction, unwed pregnancy? That\u2019s not what people mean when they say \u201cGod works in mysterious ways\u201d, and that\u2019s why they shouldn\u2019t say it. A mystery is an unnerving and often terrible thing to be in the middle of. And when I read stories about parents who lost all their children in one fell swoop<\/a>, I think, God, what mystery could unmake their hell<\/em>? Surely not all of the incomprehensibly vast sum of human suffering was part of God\u2019s mysterious ways, right?<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t understand it. Even the echoes of what we lost when we lost Jerry sometimes feel overwhelming. I cannot imagine facing that reality doubled, tripled, quadrupled, and painted with the faces of my own children. All they are, all they were, all they ever could be.<\/p>\n I believe that God loves them more than even I do, and this is perhaps what assures me that God has no life plan drawn up for each of us, no Utimate Sketchbook of Destiny in the works for everyone, everywhere. He wouldn\u2019t love us if he were just controlling us, or what happened to us. He would just be manipulating us, playing out the grand drama of human life for his own entertainment. And as much as I LOVE Richard Gere, I sincerely doubt that God is made in his image.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n