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When my friend, having suffered the untimely death of her young son, says “I trust that God is in control,” I think she is right. I don’t think she means that the tragic event was meant to be. I don’t think she means that it was willed by God or that it is part of a divine plan that only God understands. I don’t think she means that the event was somehow known by God in advance, even before the universe was created. To the contrary I think God weeps with her, wishing it had not happened. But I do think she means that, appearances to the contrary, there is a divine and steadfast love that is greater than any tragedy that she or anyone else undergo. A love that does not cause tragedies but redeems them, and that is always at work even without our asking. This loves comes to us from God’s own heart, unbidden and sometimes quite undeserved. A love that is unilateral. In this sense, yes, God is in control. I thought of my friend as I was part of an interfaith panel last week. I want to offer a reflection based on what we talked about about an hour into it, * |
Forward to one hour from beginning for conversation on God.
Yes, God is in Control
but through Compassion and Redeeming Love,
not through Predestination and Foreknowledge
reflections after an interfaith panel
The other day I was on an interfaith panel with three other friends: a Jew, a Muslim, and a Christian. You'll see them and me in the video. Our subject was life during and after the pandemic. One of the subjects that emerged late in the discussion was how the pandemic influences our faith in God. Do we think that God is punishing human beings? Or fixing a world out of balance? Or testing people’s faith? Or do we reject all of these views, proposing that some things happen, even from God’s perspective, from natural forces that are not controlled by God?
We shared our ideas on these matters, without reaching or needing to reach unanimity. That’s part of the richness of interfaith. You don’t have to agree with others to learn with and from them. Amid the discussions a view emerged that I had heard before not only from fellow Christians and people of other faiths, but also from friends and family members. It is this:
Is God in Time?
Process theologians agree with #1 and #2 but not with #3. We believe that God is all-merciful and compassionate; that God is a source of inner strength helping people respond to any situation But we reject the idea that God knows future events as actual before they occur, because we don’t think that they yet ‘exist’ to be known by God. One of our fundamental claims is that the future is open, even for God.
Some speak of this as dynamic omniscience. God is omniscient, we say; God knows all that can be known. But this doesn’t mean that God knows what doesn’t yet exist to be known. God knows what can possibly happen in the future prior to its occurrence, but not what in fact will happen until it happens. This means that ten million years ago, before life on earth evolved, God knew that a pandemic could occur once life evolved, but not that that it would occur until it actually occurred. There is a part of God that is very much in time; God’s knowledge increases in time.
To my interfaith friends, this very idea – that the future is open even for God – can sound deeply mistaken, and also blasphemous. It seems to impose upon God limitations that do not belong to God, thus denying God’s majesty and mystery. It projects unto God that which does not belong to God, namely temporality. And it is undercuts a sense that, one way or another, God truly is in control of things. It brings God down to our level.
As a Christian, I am not so troubled with bringing God to our level. After all, I think that part of what makes God “God” is that God is not simply majestic and mysterious, but also close and loving. I believe that God appears to us as a baby in a manger, a friend to the friendless, a victim of injustices, and a man on a cross. I think that when we imagine God as “in time,” we are recognizing something that has always been true.
But I also believe there is wisdom in the idea that God is in control; not like a king is in control but rather like a loving parent is in control. Jesus’ name for God was Abba. And I am impatient with process theologians who presume that their ways of imagining God are right for everyone. So I want to make a case for God being in control.
“In Control” as Predetermination and Foreknowledge
By “in control” some of may mean that God actually wills everything to happen as it happens. God wills the pandemic; God wills violence; God wills tragedy; God wills suffering. It's all part of God's plan, known to God in advance, even before the universe was created.
My process friends have a knee-jerk response to this way of thinking. They can’t and don’t place their trust in a God who wills violence. They believe that God is love, and that this is just not the way love works. As one process Christian friend put it to me: “The God of Jesus is not this kind of God. Some things happen in the world that are sad and tragic even to God.” I have Muslim and Jewish friends who would say the same.
"In Control" as Guidance and Redemption
But I suspect that for most of my interfaith friends, this is not what “in control” means. It does not mean that God wills everything. They know that some things happen that go against the very will of God. They know about the holocaust, about injustices, about the cruelty, about greed. They do not think about these as being ‘willed’ by God. But they do believe that in some deep and important way, everything that happens is embraced and surrounded by something still more powerful, namely God’s compassion and mercy, God’s love.
I fear that many of my process friends are a bit tone-deaf to this sense of God being in control, even as, in fact, it is very much in keeping with what they – we -- believe. After all, we process thinkers believe:
Here’s my point. When people say that God is “in control” they are simultaneously saying that there are things that happen in the world, some quite beautiful, that originate, not from human will, but from divine love. No, they do not and need not articulate them in terms of any of the five beliefs just named. But, yes, they feel that, even amid very trying times and sadness, there is something in the universe that is more powerful than the tragedy and sadness. This something – God’s love – may not prevent the tragedy and sadness, but it can and does share in it as an Eternal Companion, redeeming it and recycling the love back into the world. And there’s nothing we can do about this. We cannot change divine love. We can simply be grateful for the fact that God’s love is in control.
I have a friend and colleague, Thomas Jay Oord, who is well-known for speaking of the uncontrolling love of God and for his book God Can’t. I don’t think that anything I’ve said above contradicts what Thomas Oord says. He just resists the idea that the world’s sufferings are willed by God or known by God in advance, and he wants to affirm the idea that God’s way of being at work in the world is through invitation, empowerment, and sympathy, not coercion. I can imagine him writing a book called How the Uncontrolling Love of the God is Nevertheless "in Control" in Five Important Ways. He would articulate various senses in which the word “control” can be used much better than I.
What matters
Back to the panel. In my own work as a process theologian, I just can’t find it in my heart to argue with people about this. My own practice of process theology does not require that all people be converted to process theology. If someone wants to say that the future is already known by God, it doesn’t ruin my day. Is this view inconsistent with a recognition of the contingencies of life? I think so. Is the view that God is entirely outside time demeaning of God? I think not, because it makes God more loving, not less, to be ‘in time’ in some important ways.
But what seems to me most important, for all of us, is to recognize ways that there is a power in the universe that is on the side of life, that is all-merciful and compassionate, that is closer to us than our own breathing even as beyond anything we can quite imagine, in whom we can place our deepest trust. If, in placing our trust in this reality, we find ourselves saying “God is in control,” and we mean that God is in control by love, I’m on board.
We shared our ideas on these matters, without reaching or needing to reach unanimity. That’s part of the richness of interfaith. You don’t have to agree with others to learn with and from them. Amid the discussions a view emerged that I had heard before not only from fellow Christians and people of other faiths, but also from friends and family members. It is this:
- God is all-merciful and all-compassionate.
- God is at work in our lives giving us the strength to respond to any and every situation with courage, creativity, and love.
- God is beyond time and space, such that what we humans call the ‘future’ is known by God already, offering a sense that God is somehow in control.
Is God in Time?
Process theologians agree with #1 and #2 but not with #3. We believe that God is all-merciful and compassionate; that God is a source of inner strength helping people respond to any situation But we reject the idea that God knows future events as actual before they occur, because we don’t think that they yet ‘exist’ to be known by God. One of our fundamental claims is that the future is open, even for God.
Some speak of this as dynamic omniscience. God is omniscient, we say; God knows all that can be known. But this doesn’t mean that God knows what doesn’t yet exist to be known. God knows what can possibly happen in the future prior to its occurrence, but not what in fact will happen until it happens. This means that ten million years ago, before life on earth evolved, God knew that a pandemic could occur once life evolved, but not that that it would occur until it actually occurred. There is a part of God that is very much in time; God’s knowledge increases in time.
To my interfaith friends, this very idea – that the future is open even for God – can sound deeply mistaken, and also blasphemous. It seems to impose upon God limitations that do not belong to God, thus denying God’s majesty and mystery. It projects unto God that which does not belong to God, namely temporality. And it is undercuts a sense that, one way or another, God truly is in control of things. It brings God down to our level.
As a Christian, I am not so troubled with bringing God to our level. After all, I think that part of what makes God “God” is that God is not simply majestic and mysterious, but also close and loving. I believe that God appears to us as a baby in a manger, a friend to the friendless, a victim of injustices, and a man on a cross. I think that when we imagine God as “in time,” we are recognizing something that has always been true.
But I also believe there is wisdom in the idea that God is in control; not like a king is in control but rather like a loving parent is in control. Jesus’ name for God was Abba. And I am impatient with process theologians who presume that their ways of imagining God are right for everyone. So I want to make a case for God being in control.
“In Control” as Predetermination and Foreknowledge
By “in control” some of may mean that God actually wills everything to happen as it happens. God wills the pandemic; God wills violence; God wills tragedy; God wills suffering. It's all part of God's plan, known to God in advance, even before the universe was created.
My process friends have a knee-jerk response to this way of thinking. They can’t and don’t place their trust in a God who wills violence. They believe that God is love, and that this is just not the way love works. As one process Christian friend put it to me: “The God of Jesus is not this kind of God. Some things happen in the world that are sad and tragic even to God.” I have Muslim and Jewish friends who would say the same.
"In Control" as Guidance and Redemption
But I suspect that for most of my interfaith friends, this is not what “in control” means. It does not mean that God wills everything. They know that some things happen that go against the very will of God. They know about the holocaust, about injustices, about the cruelty, about greed. They do not think about these as being ‘willed’ by God. But they do believe that in some deep and important way, everything that happens is embraced and surrounded by something still more powerful, namely God’s compassion and mercy, God’s love.
I fear that many of my process friends are a bit tone-deaf to this sense of God being in control, even as, in fact, it is very much in keeping with what they – we -- believe. After all, we process thinkers believe:
- The giving of initial aims: That God gives fresh possibilities to each and every person, all the time, for responding in a constructive way to what happens as it happens. God’s giving of these possibilities is pure grace. The possibilities are given even if humans don’t request them or think they need them. They are given unilaterally.
- The empathic sharing in joy and suffering: That God shares in the sufferings and joys of every person and all persons, just as God shares in the sufferings and joys of all living beings. This sharing, this deep empathy, is likewise given to every person and to every living being, without being requested. Even if we didn’t want God to feel the feelings of all who suffer in a compassionate way, God would do so. Divine empathy, like the divine provision of fresh possibilities, is unilateral.
- The redeeming of the world: That, upon experiencing what happens in the world, God weaves what happens into a tapestry of beauty, a tapestry of love, turning it, as it were, into a portrait of love, at least in God’s own heart. We do not ask God to do this, it is in God’s very nature to do this. God may not be a fixer, but God is indeed a redeemer.
- The recycling of love: That, as we love our neighbors as ourselves, the very love we give to one another is also received by God and its energy is recycled back into the world as seeds of hope and courage. We do not ask God to recycle love; God does it unilaterally.
- The creating of the universe: That God ‘creates the universe’ either out of pre-existing chaos or out of nothing (see John Cobb Does God create out of nothing?) by ordering potentialities within God’s own mind in ways that can help create a world and availing them to creatures for actualization. The ordering is not requested by human beings. It is pure, unilateral gift.
Here’s my point. When people say that God is “in control” they are simultaneously saying that there are things that happen in the world, some quite beautiful, that originate, not from human will, but from divine love. No, they do not and need not articulate them in terms of any of the five beliefs just named. But, yes, they feel that, even amid very trying times and sadness, there is something in the universe that is more powerful than the tragedy and sadness. This something – God’s love – may not prevent the tragedy and sadness, but it can and does share in it as an Eternal Companion, redeeming it and recycling the love back into the world. And there’s nothing we can do about this. We cannot change divine love. We can simply be grateful for the fact that God’s love is in control.
I have a friend and colleague, Thomas Jay Oord, who is well-known for speaking of the uncontrolling love of God and for his book God Can’t. I don’t think that anything I’ve said above contradicts what Thomas Oord says. He just resists the idea that the world’s sufferings are willed by God or known by God in advance, and he wants to affirm the idea that God’s way of being at work in the world is through invitation, empowerment, and sympathy, not coercion. I can imagine him writing a book called How the Uncontrolling Love of the God is Nevertheless "in Control" in Five Important Ways. He would articulate various senses in which the word “control” can be used much better than I.
What matters
Back to the panel. In my own work as a process theologian, I just can’t find it in my heart to argue with people about this. My own practice of process theology does not require that all people be converted to process theology. If someone wants to say that the future is already known by God, it doesn’t ruin my day. Is this view inconsistent with a recognition of the contingencies of life? I think so. Is the view that God is entirely outside time demeaning of God? I think not, because it makes God more loving, not less, to be ‘in time’ in some important ways.
But what seems to me most important, for all of us, is to recognize ways that there is a power in the universe that is on the side of life, that is all-merciful and compassionate, that is closer to us than our own breathing even as beyond anything we can quite imagine, in whom we can place our deepest trust. If, in placing our trust in this reality, we find ourselves saying “God is in control,” and we mean that God is in control by love, I’m on board.