As I have begun to investigate the things that Christians typically say, I would estimate that this phrase or a version of it, is the most common thing that Christian say that is also the must untrue. We like to believe that someone is running the show, that someone is in charge of our country, that someone knows how everything is supposed to turn out. If it doesn’t turn out the way we expect it, we like to have somebody to blame.
When things go the way we expect, we often give ourselves the credit but in religion, we often give God the “glory” and we find a scapegoat, like Satan or the ” other guys,” for the things that don’t go our way.
This system provides a natural way to bypass. most responsibility. We don’t have to deal with the harsh realities of life or our personal responsibility when we can blame everything on someone else. If every good thing comes from an invisible deity, it gives us the subtle assumption that we are on the right team and and somehow inherited these “blessings” and it also assumes that anything that goes wrong also originated from somewhere else.
This theory obviously has many inherent flaws. For example, sometimes what appears to be evil in a person is a woundedness that has not been addressed. We also have a sense that good we do is often found inside of us and not from somewhere out there.
Is God in control?
The simplest thing I want to say is that if God is in control, then he/she is doing a terrible job. Scores of people are dying in Ukraine and God is not controlling that situation. Every Christian alive would admit that God could stop Putin if he wanted to. Why would he not want to? Before we launch off into something about his ways being greater than ours and hard to understand, just answer the simple question, why is he not stopping the killing of innocent people?
Just think about it for a minute. Supposedly Jesus sent a legion of demons into a group of pigs and had them run off of a cliff. Couldn’t God do the same thing with Putin’s tanks and missiles.? And if he could, shouldn’t he?
Saying that God has a plan that we don’t understand or launching into some other wild explanation doesn’t stop the suffering. Children are starving around the world, women are being molested and raped, people are traumatized even inside the church, many are exploited for profit, racism is common even inside the church, there are wars and suffering and hunger. Blaming it on some evil being has gotten old and worn out and doesn’t help solve the problem.
Even when a president is within our party, that we support, we stop making excuses for them after a few years and look for a replacement. I’m not suggesting we abandon God, I just think God needs to be understood better. May I suggest that we get rid of the idea that God is in control, because he is not.
I do believe that the universe is rigged in our favor and it tends to move towards reproduction, growth and evolution. But, there is not a wizard behind the screen orchestrating the play. We have way more than enough evidence to conclude the contrary.
It’s time to move on from our bypassing and deal with what is instead of what we wish things could be.
It’s time to throw off scapegoating and escapism and bypassing and deal with the realities of life.
It is time we stop hoping for miracles and understand that we personally can affect positive change and that we can be responsible instead of bypassing and making excuses.
God is not in control, but in many ways, we are!
I believe that correcting this wrong assumption is one of the most central things to evolve. It is sacred cow that we have held on to for way too long.
We are in control of way more than we think.
Be where you are, be who you are,
Karl Forehand
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