Is God Really in Control?
by Richard W. Coffen | 1 October 2024 |
To quote recent politicians: “Let me be clear.”
Theologically, divine will means that which God wants. John Calvin averred such in Institutes: God has predestined everything, no matter how small, to happen. That which God wills, is what God wants. According to Calvin, God wanted Adam and Eve to sin! “The first man fell because the Lord deemed it meet that he should….” (Institutes, Book 3, chapter xxiii, section 8).
Therefore, God is in control!
Does control mean accountability?
In 1969, Betty Penrose’s house was struck by lightning. Since God is purportedly in control, she sued God. In Betty Penrose v. God, God was fined $100,000. Why not? God’s in control.
In 2006 when we moved from Hagerstown, Maryland, to Gretna, Nebraska, we had to change insurance companies. Our previous underwriter had dispensed so much money for losses resulting from “acts of God”—tornadoes—that it refused thereafter to insure houses in greater Omaha.
Two years following our move to Nebraska, state senator Ernie Chambers filed a lawsuit against God. Why? Because of God’s role in producing “fearsome floods … horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes… widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants.” (The suit was dismissed because God’s address is unlisted—God can’t be served.)
Just recently, the television news showed an entire house floating down a river as if it were a luxury yacht. Coincidentally, at about the same time, an actual luxury yacht sank near Sicily, with seven lives lost.
Then this week, we all saw graphic images of washed out roads, highways blocked by mudslides in the American south from Hurricane Helene, and properties in ashes from raging wildfires above Loma Linda.
According to NOAA, last year (2023), disasters caused by weather and climate caused damages of nearly $93,000,000,000. According to a July 2024 report, during the months of January to July, 28,154 wildfires consumed 4,449,282 acres. There’s been more since.
Is God in control?
Sometimes, in the Bible, God appears to take control—at least in personal and tribal matters.
YHWH spat fire that devoured spiritually delinquent Nadab and Abihu (Numbers 3:4). Later YHWH slayed defiant Korah, Dathan, and Abiram (Numbers 24:10). Uzzah reflexively reached out to steady the ark of the covenant so that it wouldn’t crash and splinter into shards. YHWH struck him dead—for caring (2 Samuel 6:7)!
But does God still do that?
We’ve all read stories in our publications about Adventist buildings, or tithe-paying farmers’ crops, which Divine intervention saved from destruction by fire or hail or…whatever. We’re to conclude that as judge of “all the earth,” God is in control, graciously saving the righteous and wreaking havoc upon wrongdoers. Historical events—recent and ancient—provide empirical proof.
Yet monsoon-like storms battered Gillette, Wyoming, where some 60,000 people (nearly double the 33,500 population of Gillette!) were camping at the worldwide Pathfinder Camporee. Rain and mire left Pathfinders and their chaperones slogging about in muddy shoes and wearing soaked Pathfinder uniforms. It was the rainy season, and it brought this five-year event to an inglorious end.
Then there’s the conflagration that left the Spencerville Adventist church charred—to put it mildly. If the property is salvageable, it will take multiple millions of dollars and years for restoration.
And this congregation, if you don’t know, includes numerous General Conference personnel.
Considering the biblical examples previously cited, wouldn’t it be logical to conclude that most of the tenters at the Camporee, and most of the congregants at the Spencerville church, are evildoers? Why else would YHWH vent his spleen at their expense? During this time of the Investigative Judgment, the “judge of all [the earth]” (Hebrews 12:23; Genesis 18:25) pronounced these evildoers “Guilty!”—and executed the sentence.
Logic forces me to conclude that as the Spencerville congregation now meets at General Conference headquarters, “soon and very soon” tragedy will strike this new venue. After all, the evildoers have merely switched locations.
I’m being ironic
I hope you haven’t taken the above paragraphs seriously. But just in case, let me offer some straightforward science and theology.
We all go calmly about our daily lives because we live in a cosmos created and sustained by a Deity who never changes (Malachi 3:6; James 1:17). Were God to intervene here or wreak havoc there, we’d all be basket cases. Would you enjoy living in a world in which the law of the impenetrability of matter prevails only sometimes? What if our Sustainer on occasion nullifies natural law to save you from yourself or from another careless driver? It could mean chaos!
As for natural laws: suppose that sometimes Bernoulli’s Principle remains in existence but sometimes YHWH quits his job as Sustainer, so thousands die as airplanes plunge from the sky. The National Transportation Safety Board would be greatly troubled!
A more scientifically and theologically sensible perspective is that natural laws are as eternal as immutable YHWH. Al Smith, my astronomy teacher at Atlantic Union College, used to say that natural laws are God’s way of running the cosmos. Period. Smith proposed that what we designate as “miracle” is God’s using various natural laws, some of which we might be ignorant of.
The Sustainer remains immutable; therefore, we needn’t become neurotic.
Observations from Jesus
According to first-century local news, Pilate slaughtered some Galileans, people from Jesus’ homeland. Most everyone had heard of that procurator’s dastardly deed. Jesus didn’t assume that this was God’s willful executive judgment and resulting verdict.
Again, feasibly a result of an earthquake rumbling beneath the Holy Land, 18 people were crushed to death when the Tower of Siloam collapsed. Jesus insisted that these victims weren’t worse sinners than others. Indeed, such things don’t matter to the divine Judge. He sends sunshine and rain on both good and bad people (Matthew 5:45).
Robert Louis Stevenson says in his book The Wrecker that “turn about’s fair play.” The same may hold true in the context of this essay. One of our favorite proof texts says: “Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come” (Revelation 14:7). Historically, in a height of hubris, we Adventists have applied this passage to ourselves. We are the defendants. He is judging us.
However, there’s another way to interpret it. What if God is the defendant? The time has come for the tables to be turned: God is on trial. The Judge has become the defendant!
God will answer for all that has happened. And in the end, God will set things right.
Richard W. Coffen is a retired vice president of editorial services at Review and Herald Publishing Association. He writes from Green Valley, Arizona.
