I think much of our confusion - more, an inability to grasp anything tangible and personal - in regards to God’s sovereignty stems from falsehoods we believe about His character. Particularly, we’ve pitted His attributes into a war against one another, and those omni- traits tend to win out (in our minds) at the expense of what makes Him personal and interactive-- the living God known by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
We worship and follow the same God who wrestled with Jacob until daybreak, allowing this mere human to take hold of Him and match His strength so that a tricky maneuver became necessary for victory. That’s not the abstract, excessively perfect god who skeptics mockingly try to conceive (and rightly reject). He’s the Almighty who is also Abba Father, stooping down into the dust to play with oblivious children.
Or, more practically for spiritual living, we should remember that we serve the God of Joshua. Following the victory of Jericho, Joshua acted on impulse to strike the city of Ai, unaware that one of his men stole from the Lord in the former battle. God let them go out without His direction, and because of His wrath over their camp it ended in fear and shame. I don’t believe this was God being passive-aggressive, but rather patiently waiting and respecting our agency as creatures in His image.
As soon as they listen to their God, He tells the Israelites to get up, remove the sin, and engage in battle through His strategy. There’s actually indication that He entrusts Joshua to work out much of the plan’s detail (beyond that there will be an ambush from behind the city), and what I find most beautiful is how He weaves and redeems their failure into this new victory (they pretend to flee, provoking the enemy to leave their city undefended). At the battle’s turning point, God directs Joshua to hold out His javelin, which times perfectly with His ambushing army taking the city… giving God all the due glory, yet inviting humans to work by His side.
I don’t know the philosophical answers for determinism and predestination, and I wonder if we are never supposed to know. I just see a God in the Bible who blends human agency and sovereignty, remaining unchanging yet curiously reacting with emotion to the choices of His people. I think it’s of utmost importance that we deconstruct our ideas of a purely rationalistic, lofty divine mind… and continually rediscover the God who is exceedingly personal as He is powerful, expecting great things to happen for His Name through us as we interact beside Him.
No comments:
Post a Comment