Easy Plans & Hard Providences

IF all goes according to plan, THEN I will be in Taos, New Mexico in 24 hours. Sleeping in a bed at an artsy Bed and Breakfast. I am a big Travelocity user. Put in the dates, check flights, select flight, check lodging, get lodging, check cars, get a car. Pull out credit card and pay for it all. Easy to plan. Oh those easy IFs, they haunt us.

After I get back from Taos, I have 2.5 days back here in Molumbia, then I head to Philly to fly to the Philippines for my best friend's wedding. We started out playing ping-pong together at Millersville University over three decades ago. Since then we have been whopped around by the paddles of Providence, us ping-pong balls. I suppose my road has been harder, but who really can tell that in the end.

Providence is a term used in Christian theology that speaks of God' s ultimate control over everything for His purposes. It differs from God's ethical will as expressed in the Ten Commandments which is known. Providence is instead unknowable except in retrospect. And even in retrospect, we struggle with what happens to us and the world at large. To put it simply, is darkness from God's hand or does He not create it but allow it? Could stop it but chooses not to?

Or is God not able to control evil? Evil is amok and God is constantly fighting to contest it. Sometimes He wins, sometimes He loses. The Free Will defense is the thesis of God's limited power over circumstances. He has given humanity free will as a moral precept and He must allow people to play the cards as they wish, even if it harms others. God doesn't have total control in other words.

I tend to go with the Reformed perspective that God has total control over everything. We don't have free will anymore. We are born under sin but still responsible for our choices. A very bad dilemma indeed.

According the Scriptures, God permits but does not author evil for some greater purpose that we may never ultimately know. Every tragedy has a triumph possible in it. This is hard when we encounter real suffering. I am not talking about run of the mill irritations but real life smack-downs. Bone-breaking, body-wasting, blood-spurting, mind-crushing, soul-shattering realities.  Where's God. In it, outside of it?

I think it is far too simple that God suffers with us. If He could stop it and decides not to, doesn't that make him party to approving it? Yes, it does. So this is where the nail meets the flesh (rubber meets the road).  God is in the suffering with us but He is also outside of it. He has to be be, otherwise we have no hope. When Jesus's enemies killed Him, they no doubt thought "Good riddance." But, then He was raised by God the Father through the power of God the Holy Spirit. So, evil didn't have the final say-so. God busted the box.

I won't be blogging probably for about three weeks. I have a lot of miles ahead and who really knows what will happen, for good or for ill. I pray that I remain faithful.  I plan to be reading my good friend Tom Becker's recent book "Good Posture:Engaging Current Culture With Ancient Faith."  In my cursory reading of it, I read that Tom writes of having to take meds for anxiety during a trying time of his life not too long ago. Since I have known him through those times, it provides hope that we are all in the process of trying to figure things out and become who God intends us to be. I have finally made some peace with things that didn't turn out as I had hoped, prayed, and worked so hard for. The dark side of dreams are the costs associated with such endeavors. I paid a heavy price. 

This book is no panacea. It is gritty and graceful. It is an antidote to easy-believism where God's goal for us is to skim like a rock on top of roiling waters, to reach the other side of heaven's shore unscathed. This is a book about how to swim and maybe even sink and trust that God shall rescue and redeem His people in the end. How to keep good posture under the weighing realities of life that sometimes crush us. How to stand in the face of a culture that has forsaken God, embraced idols, and is crumbling. 

Lord willing, I will see you in about 21 days back here at bierkergaard.

Do you like what I am laying down? Then pick-up Tom's book. Remember that your money helps messages either to prosper or falter.