Is God really in control of everything?

Last Saturday the 2020 presidential election was called in favor of Joe Biden after 5 long days of speculation and vote counting. Along the way this week I saw several social media posts from friends who are Christians that said something along the lines of this: "No matter what happens, God is in control."

This is a nice sounding phrase that is repeated at funerals, after a job loss, after a bad diagnosis is received, when anything happens that is not how we hoped it would go. It flows out of a common belief that, since God is all-powerful, anything and everything that happens in our world is because it was God's will.  In other words, anything and everything that happens, does so because God made it so - because "God is in control."

I'd like to ask the question, "Do we really believe this?" Further, I’d like to ask, "Is this a helpful idea to hold onto and to spread to others?" And if not, then “What ideas about God might be more helpful?”

For starters consider child trafficking. Let's suppose your child is kidnapped and sold into sex slavery.  Or perhaps you are involved in an agency that discovers a child sex ring and you're able to free those children.  Would you say to them, "God was in control when you were kidnapped and every time you were forced to do unspeakable acts"? Would you actually believe that was the case?  

How about any war in history? WWII and the Holocaust is an easy place to start. Would you tell a surviving member of a Jewish family that God was in control when 75% of her family was murdered by the Nazis?  Would you really believe that?

Regarding the election of the latest American president, how is it that "God was in control"?  Did God manipulate the ballots so that Biden received enough votes?  Did God cause certain ballots to be lost in the mail so they would not be counted?  Did God make a few thousand Trump supporters too ill to go to the polls on election day in the swing states like Pennsylvania and Georgia? 

Again, can we assume because an event happened, that God made it happen or that it was in fact God's will?  It seems to me the answer to those questions is a resounding no. God does not make child trafficking happen.  It is not God's will.  God does not create wars.  The killing of innocent humans is not God's will.  There are many things that happen in our world that are exactly opposite of God's will.  They do not reflect God's heart that humans "do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God" (Micah 6:8). 

God's will happens when humans, in relationship with God and in submission to God's good and loving ways, act in ways that represent God's will. If it is truly God's will that one candidate in an American election wins and another loses, the only way that will happen is if enough American citizens actually vote for that candidate. 

The only way God's will happens regarding child trafficking is when people act in ways to stop it.  The only way God's will happens when it comes to so many terrible problems that cause human suffering is when people act in ways that will bring justice and mercy and goodness and love to life in our world.  

God has created the cosmos from nothing, including our solar system and this planet rotating around our star.  Through miracles we'll never comprehend, life exists here on this planet.  You and I have consciousness, and beating hearts, and lungs that breathe in and out, and there are plants that turn CO2 back into O2 so this can keep happening.  These amazing forces of life would not exist without God's creative goodness. So it can be said life exists because God wills it. But when it comes to individual moments in our world that affect millions, hundreds, tens, or even just a certain person, it seems God mostly allows human free will to take its course. What actually happens is a combination of 3 things: the actions of people who align themselves with love and goodness and mercy and justice, combined with the actions of people who choose to align themselves with self-centered gain, combined with those things that happen as a result of natural forces that are constantly at work in our world.

I refuse to believe that God hands out terrible disease, selects some babies to have birth defects, chooses some people to be unjustly convicted and spend years in prison, selects some people to be born in places where they will face starvation, handpicks some to become billionaires and others to live in poverty.  No, God is not in control of these sorts of things. Nor is it helpful to say "God may not be in control, but God allows these things to happen because God is working all things forward into God's plan for the future."  What would you say about a parent who knew his child was going to fall off a cliff, saw it coming, and had the ability to stop it, but who just sat back and watched it happen?  Would you call that person a good father? No. That father would be condemned for his lack of parental concern, for his lack of action to save life. Such a "God" could not be described as loving and good.

Saying "God is in control" may give some a sense of relief or hope in the future, or comfort that it will all turn out fine in the end, but I'm afraid it leads to two very negative results. First, such an idea can give people an excuse for not getting involved in acting in ways that will usher in the Kingdom of God on earth. That is, if we believe God is in control of everything, the responsibility is solely God's for creating a Kingdom where the least are the greatest, where the powerful serve the weak, where all people have access to food, housing, and education, where love, mercy, and grace are the dominant forces. If human societies are raging with poverty, financial and racial inequity, and abuse of the powerless by the powerful, believers in a God who controls everything can sit back and do nothing. In fact, when believers in that sort of God believe the world is headed to a horrible end such as described in the book of Revelation, they may actually be motivated NOT to act in ways that will stave off those horrible conditions because they want the final return of Jesus to come more quickly.

The second harmful aspect of belief in a God who controls everything is it can lead believers in this God to call evil good (since it is happening because of God's will) or can lead believers to lose their faith in any God at all (since this God does not act in ways consistent with a good and loving all-powerful deity).  In my years as a pastor I saw again and again people struggling to reconcile the suffering in their lives and the lives of those they loved with the idea that "God was in control" of the terrible tragedies. Eventually this leads many to abandon belief in a good and loving God.

So how do I suggest believers in God, especially the Christian idea of God, change their thinking in this crucial idea? Perhaps it is more helpful to recognize that natural disasters, disease, death, climate changes will "rain upon the just and the unjust" as Jesus said (Matthew 5:45), and that the processes God put into motion at creation will inevitably lead to human suffering.  Perhaps it will help to see suffering from natural causes not stemming from "God's will" or because "God is in control", but from the cause and effect of natural forces at work that God rarely if ever intervenes to modify. Perhaps recognizing the apparent truth that God does not control us, our loved ones, our politicians, our co-workers, our friends, or our enemies will spur us to take more responsibility for creating the type of communities where the good ways of God's Kingdom are found. Recognizing and aligning our lives with the God who actually IS rather than the God we WISH for can be a powerful way to come to peace with God amidst the tragedies and suffering that litter human history and our own lives.

God is firmly on the side of love, goodness, mercy, justice, kindness, and equality of access to the earth's resources. Human history, and indeed my own personal history, proves that God provides help to those who will receive it, and inspiration to those who are open to it.  But God will not control my actions or yours.  "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" will happen through the actions of people like you and me, empowered and inspired by the God of the Universe. It will happen when people like you and me have the courage to let go of unhelpful ideas about God's control of all things and replace such ideas with ideas that align with the realities of our world.