The scriptural bias toward chaos

I’m a day behind Darryl in this informal conversation about the sovereignty of God, but yesterday he posted his latest in the series, “Does God control human decisions and actions?” Not to spoil the ending for you, but Darryl’s answer to that questions seems to be “Yes.” As usual, Darryl is humble and gracious, but he brings the big guns to this topic, citing no less than 51 passages of scripture. You really should read it yourself, but in his conclusion, he writes:

At every turn, the Biblical writers see God’s hand in everything that takes place. God is in control of everything – our lives, our desires, our actions – even the sinful ones. He is able to control things so that they accomplish his purposes. At the same time, humans make meaningful choices and are in no way puppets – as contradictory as this appears to us.

I really appreciate the way Darryl has approached this subject, and I’m impressed with his dispassionate approach. Still, I must point out that none of the passages he cites preclude the Kingdom-oriented view of God’s sovereignty I briefly summarized in my last two posts (here and here). For anyone who takes scripture seriously (as I think we all do here) there is no question that an important theme of the bible is that, “God is in control.” That’s not really in dispute.

However, the question remains: at what level of circumstance is his control exercised?

I don’t think the pattern of scripture leads to the conclusion that God is intimately in control of everything at all times. In fact, the passages Darryl cites, which comfort us with the reminder that God is actually in control, are in the far minority. The overwhelming tenor of the entire remainder of the bible is that we are freely and willfully outside his control. That’s why we need the comfort of his broader, long-range sovereignty in the first place.

For example, if God is intimately in control of everything at all times then the fall of man doesn’t make sense, the law of Moses doesn’t make sense, God’s anger and compassion don’t make sense, the prophetic exhortations for repentance don’t make sense, the gospel of the kingdom doesn’t make sense, the sermon on the mount doesn’t make sense, the parables of the kingdom don’t make sense, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit doesn’t make sense, teaching and preaching don’t make sense, prayer doesn’t make sense, acts of kindness and mercy and justice don’t make sense, persecution makes no sense – because all of these presume a broken world of chaos in which people normally have the ability to make choices outside God’s control.

Every time scripture chastises God’s people for doing the wrong thing, that suggests the bias that we live and exist in realms where God does not exercise direct manipulation. Every time scripture exhorts us to do one thing over and against another thing (i.e. the law of Moses, the sermon on the mount, half of Paul’s epistles, virtually all of James, John and Peter’s epistles) it is a passage that suggests this other view. These kinds of passages are too numerous to cite and, taken altogether, create an overwhelmingly biased view of  the world outside God’s kingdom as chaotic. Moreover, taken altogether, this bias dwarfs the passages that remind us of God’s sovereign power – passages that, when examined closely, do not actually claim the total control of God over all things at all times, only the actuality of the total power of God, or the power of God exercised in certain circumstances.

In other words, no prophet or poet in the bible ever says, “Lo, the world is full of people who freely act outside God’s good will and purposes to commit evil,” because such a thing is so obvious it need not ever be pointed out. That’s the world we all live in, and this obvious fact is reflected in the overwhelming bias toward chaos in which the passages of scripture swim. Such a world of danger and death is so disturbing that we cry out for justice, mercy, and liberation, and God’s frequent retort from the prophets and poets is, “Fear not, for God is in control and it will all work out in the end.” Those words of comfort are not an argument that God is behind the tyrants and tornadoes, it is a promise that God will surely conquer those tyrants and tornadoes and set everything right at the end of the age.

Given this, I believe it’s quite valid to say the overall pattern of the biblical narrative depicts man’s dilemma of living in a world that has been divorced from God by sin. Such a world is frightening and full of death. Therefore, scripture is full of reassurances that – in spite of the obvious chaos – God is still, in a larger sense, in charge and driving history toward his inevitable victory and the ultimate vindication of his people.

This view still respects God’s sovereignty, it simply says that – for the time being – God has restrained himself from exercising the full extent of his power to intervene in favor of an approach that is more patient, kind, and merciful so that he might instead redeem us with our capacity for love fully intact. Moreover, it does not caste God in the role of some cosmic, schizophrenic being playing a pointless game of chess with himself – a game in which we are mere pawns. I know this is not Darryl’s view, nor is it his intention to convey such a view, but that is exactly how the Calvinist view tends to inadvertently presents God to a world that is fearful, disgusted, and angry with senseless suffering and injustice.

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