[OBW]

Originally Posted by Nell

OBW,

It seems like you may be walking through a mine field here. As to your first question:

Has anyone considered that our understanding of God's sovereignty and blessing might be misguided?

Yes I've considered it. Further, I think it's safe to assume that our understanding of God's sovereignty and blessing is likely shallow and shortsighted to begin with. So "misguided" is a high probability.

Sometimes what you write drifts toward "relativism" as related to the truth of the Bible. That is, the truth of the Bible depends on what we think or believe it means. I may not have said that exactly right. I only mean that my normal response would be to quote the Bible to you and I hesitate to do that because of the many sessions of hand-to-hand combat with you over what I believe to be truth and your counter response/s.

It seems that the questions you pose here are drifting toward wanting concrete answers about God's sovereignty and blessing and "are we misguided?" These answers are in the Bible as I believe, but I'm not sure that that will satisfy your perspective.

I left the verse out, but just throwing out verses does not address the question. We truly must trust in the Lord and not lean on our own understanding. But at the same time, our understanding can only be seen as our own — or that of others. When we have an "aha" about something, it may or may not be from God. But we tend to attribute it to Him almost without question.

Your assumption that I have a relativistic view of God and scripture is evidence that you do not actually read my posts. There is nothing relativistic in having a reading that does not agree with yours. It just doesn't agree. My question is not whether God is sovereign but whether everything that we attribute to the direct hand of God is truly so. God is always sovereign. But if his present sovereignty was about ordering the details of how things play out, then the whole concept of free will is a farce and the naysayers that make God out to be creating a world full of sinners that do not have the ability to choose is probably right. But I don't believe that. Instead, I believe that he is sovereign in his withholding of his hand in intervention. He set a general punishment on the world at the fall and it continues to rule aspects of natural life to this day. In effect, the effects of the fall are sovereign and the withholding of his hand from intervention in most cases is also sovereign. That does not mean he does not intervene. But he does not always intervene. And it does not mean that he intends for the details of the outworking of the fallen world to happen, though he does mean for them to happen in general. Not the details, but the natural effects of it without specific direction or intent.

Yet in the middle of everything we give thanks to God.

My question is whether we incorrectly attribute the sequence of events in our lives, the lives of those around us, and the generally working of the details of the world in general to God's intervention or direction. Is it more correct to recognize God in his sovereignty as having created all but allowed man to choose to obey and follow, and because he chose not to, the entire system is in decay and under the influence of the evil one. Not just our souls and spirits, but the material world, including our bodies. Therefore 1-year-olds sometimes die. God does not intervene to make it so. (He does use the circumstances for our benefit, even though we cannot fathom how at the time.) And he does not intervene to make it not so.

In general.

This means that he may intervene and sometimes does. There are still miracles, but not constantly. And wo don't get miracles just because we pray for them. And neither is the loss of a loved one necessarily the result of God's specific decision to take them now rather than letting them live. It is mostly just the natural outworking of life. Health. Disease. Natural events. Man-caused events.

My question is raised because I have a personal concern that the emphasis in so much of what goes on around me in Christian circles is about finding God's hand in events. If you lose a job, it is because God intends for your to find a different one. (Reasons of economic downturn, lack of fit for the job, etc., are ignored or also attributed to God — unless it is because we were embezzling. We would not attribute that to God.) Having trouble finding a job in a certain way is evidence that God intends you to take a different tack. Or move. Or retire different tack. Or move. Or retire.


We have a knee-jerk comment for everything. "If God closes a door, he opens a window." "It is what God wants."

I do not see where the Bible actually supports this kind of thinking. I am not being relativistic to say it. I think that we read the Bible with overlays that lead us where the scripture does not. Like thinking that the Christian life is mostly about overtly preaching the gospel. And generally dismissing works because they do no save us.

I realize that Paul does attribute certain things in his life to the hand of God. Or at least to the intentional removal of the hand of God. Like when He refused to deal with Paul's thorn in the flesh. But Paul does not make general comments about God specifically intervening or directing every action. He does indicate that if we walk by the Spirit we will fulfill the righteousness of the law. But that does not indicate that the events of our lives will be ordained, rather that how we face the events of our lives will be with the righteousness of God.

And my comment about preaching the gospel, I keep seeing it brought up as being a part of so many passages that actually do no mention it. I am not saying we have no part in preaching the gospel. But so much of the Christian life is not about overtly preaching the gospel. The goal of having a job is not to be able to preach the gospel to the sinners there. Nice when it happens. But not the goal. That old statement "always preach the gospel — if necessary, use words" is too often presumed to still be mostly speaking. The life that preaches is almost not considered.

I am not saying we should not preach. I am saying that our emphasis is all messed-up. We are too engaged in religious things at the expense of the righteous life that preaches without words. In the world which we all agree is going downhill rapidly, our lives really do not match our words. Our lives should preach. Then, if necessary, words should be spoken. But only out of the background of our lives. Not out of the background of lives that do not match our speaking.

Which comes back to the sovereignty of God. Do you really believe that thinking God is not designing every specific step of your life is some relativistic view of God and the Bible? I know it is a very popular view. But when I read the Bible, I don't see it. Unless you need a decoder ring to find it and I lost mine. What I read would indicate that our lives are not specifically ordained or directed, but that how we live the life we have can be lived with God's righteousness.

For all the grief that we give awareness for expressing his shattered view of his past and of God, he may have said it better than me when he said "In short, our understanding of God's sovereignty and blessing might be misguided precisely because we, our self, are the center of what God is doing. Therefore, everything happening to us has to be of the Lord. " I, for one, am not the center of what God is doing outside of the fact that I am one of many who have chosen to be on his side. In that respect, we are all the center. But that fact does not mean a string of special intervention. If it did, then there wouldn't be death from cancer among Christians. Or stillborn babies. Unless we really believe those sorry platitudes like "God must have wanted them more than we did/do."