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"For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways," says the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts than your thoughts."
(Isaiah 55:8-9)
I recently shared the Gospel with a lady on the airplane. We spoke the entire duration of the flight, over two hours. I followed the BLESS strategy of sharing Jesus with people: Begin with prayer, Listen with care, Eat with and engage (if coke and peanuts on the plane count), Serve, and Share Jesus. I enjoyed our conversation very much. My heart goes out to her as she is searching for peace and purpose and does not yet have a personal relationship with Jesus. There are literally millions of people in our country and billions in the world like her. They are searching for hope and true happiness, and Jesus is the only way to the blessed and fulfilled life everyone desires.
Pastor Charles Stanley says that our view of God's relationship to this world will affect our relationship with Him. In his message on Life Principle 18, "Victim or Victor?" he lists varying groups of people who believe there is no God, or if there is, that He has no dealings with His creation:
- Deists believe there is a God who created everything then let it go on its own; He has abandoned the world. This deity has no connection or relationship with mankind. He is like a clock-maker who winds up the clock but then just lets it unwind.
- Pantheists believe God is everywhere. He is literally within His creation: the ocean, trees, sky, etc. God is within these physical entities, and they are in God. He has no personal relationship with mankind. I saw this firsthand when I took a graduate course at a secular divinity school. While our class was outdoors one day, the professor stroked a tree with his hand as if this tree was animated with life.
- Materialists believe there is no God and no evidence for God. They believe what matters is what one can touch, feel, and measure empirically. Pleasure is preeminent. All of life centers around their own goals and desires, and there is no place for God. I would add hedonists to this group as well.
- Fatalists believe everything has been predetermined and what will happen will happen. There is no God to make it happen, so mankind should simply live out what chance or circumstances have created.
- Christians believe in the sovereign God who created the world from nothing. He is above it and beyond it, not part of it. He controls it all, and He keeps it together in proper order. He loves the world He created and is personally involved in our lives.
Stanley said if someone chooses not to believe or embrace the Christian worldview, then life is filled with emptiness, futility, and lack of purpose.
If God is in control, one might ask, "What about natural disasters, like tsunamis and earthquakes?" Stanley said if things happen apart from the will of God, then there is something that is more powerful than God. There is a difference between God directly causing something to happen versus allowing something to happen. It is not necessarily deistic to believe that God allows many things that He does not directly cause. Could God directly cause natural disasters? Of course. Could He stop them? Certainly. Would we ever have any way of knowing whether He directly caused a natural disaster or just allowed it to happen as part of earth's complex life-sustaining systems that He designed? Outside of those recorded in Scripture, no.
Furthermore, does God allow evil and sin? Of course. If He didn't, we would have no free will, and we would be akin to robots; love, obedience, and worship would be meaningless, as would sin and evil. Also, if He did not want to allow sin, but it happened anyway, then there would be a force (or forces) greater than God... but we know that cannot be true if He is the Creator of all. Ultimately, the fact that sin and evil exist points to the fact that God created us with free will, that we might have meaningful relationship with one another and Him.
These things and others can be very tough to understand. There are also many things we will never understand in this life, and we are not obligated to understand. God does not expect us to understand everything, but He does require us to trust Him in all things. His ways, as Isaiah 55:8-9 teaches us, are higher than our ways.
We will talk more about tragedy and God's sovereignty tomorrow.
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