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May 2 - May 2, 2020
This better way begins with believing in a God of relentless love.
The first is that God loves us all, all the time. God loves everyone and everything, all creatures great and small. God never stops loving, even for one moment, because God’s nature is love. God listens, feels, and responds by acting for good.
Unfortunately, most people think God causes or allows evil.
In short, love aims to do good. That view of love applies to Creator and creatures.
God always loves, and God’s love is always good. Every idea I advocate in this book assumes God is loving.
Genuine evil makes the world, all things considered, worse than it might have been.
We can’t believe all abuse, pain, and tragedy are necessary. Not everything happens or is allowed for some divinely appointed reason.
To put it more precisely, God can’t prevent evil singlehandedly.
The “God allows evil” view prevails in the minds of so many. So let’s explore it more. Asking this question can help: Does a loving person allow abuse, tragedy, and evil this person could prevent?
Many things are beyond our ability. We can’t entirely control others or circumstances, so we don’t blame good people for failing to do what they can’t do. They’re not guilty.
If God can control evildoers, we should blame God for allowing the atrocities they commit.
The God who “won’t” prevent evil could have stopped Claire’s abuse. That God stood by and did not rescue. Claire cannot believe anyone who allows sexual abuse — including God — is truly loving. How could she trust an abuse-allowing God?
We need to rethink God’s power in light of the love Jesus expresses.
Personal tragedy and unnecessary suffering prompt us to seek beliefs more helpful than the ones we’ve been handed.
“God cannot deny himself” presents us a key idea, and I’ll return to it shortly. At this point, I simply want to say the Bible says God can’t do some activities. It’s biblical to say God’s power is limited.
C.S. Lewis put it this way: “Not even Omnipotence can do what is self-contradictory.”
And what is love? Love is purposeful action in relation to God and others that aims to do good. Love advances well-being. It fosters flourishing, abundant life, and blessedness. To put it formally, to love is to act intentionally, in response to God and others, to promote overall well-being. God’s love always works for the good, because God is love.
Love does not overrule or override. It does “not force itself on others,” to quote the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. 13:5). Love does not manipulate, dominate, or dictate in ways that allow no response. Love does not control. When I say God “can’t” prevent evil, I mean God is unable to control people, other creatures, or circumstances that cause evil. Because God always loves and God’s love is uncontrolling, God cannot control. The God who can’t control others or circumstances can’t prevent evil singlehandedly.
It’s important to recognize that I am not placing limits on God. Rather, God’s loving nature determines, shapes, or governs what God can do.
God’s loving nature determines, shapes, or governs what God can do.
Because God’s love self-gives and others-empowers, and because God loves all creatures from the most complex to the least, God cannot control. God loves everyone and everything, so God cannot control anyone or anything. This means a God of uncontrolling love cannot control evildoers to prevent their dastardly deeds.
“God cannot deny himself.”
If God’s nature is love and love never controls, God would have to deny his love to control others. But God can’t do that.
Essential kenosis says God cannot withdraw, override, or fail to provide freedom, agency, and existence to creation.
Like most theologians throughout history, I think God is a universal spirit without a localized body. Jesus put it simply: “God is spirit” (Jn. 4:24),
To put it simply, God does not have a divine body with which to block evil or rescue creatures. By contrast, creatures do have bodies to exert bodily impact on others. And creatures sometimes use their bodies to stop evil.
I saved you from at least severe injury and perhaps death — a loving act — by stopping your body from moving in the direction you wanted.
It is God's will that we live and not die.
A bodiless, universal spirit cannot do what embodied creatures sometimes can. Despite having no body, God is present and active in all situations. Divine power is direct but persuasive, widespread but wooing, causal but uncontrolling. God’s loving activity makes a difference without imposing control or using a divine body.
Cooperative creatures extend God’s activity. But they aren’t literally divine. We become God’s representational hands and feet.
We rightly blame uncooperative creatures for causing or allowing evils God did not want.
From God’s special incarnation in Jesus to activity in the smallest creatures, God acts without controlling. And this lack of control — at all levels of existence — makes loving relationships possible.
Jessica’s explanation for her son’s death makes more sense. “Henry wasn’t healed on Earth,” she says, “but not because a divine blueprint called for his death. I believe God did everything possible to maximize good and minimize evil as a vicious disease thwarted His loving will.”
Loving fathers and mothers guide, instruct, persuade, call, correct, convince, encourage, nudge, teach, warn, and more. None of those activities involve control.
God acts like a loving suitor. Nothing can stop God from inviting us, moment-by-moment, to a loving relationship. God’s uncontrolling love is uncontrollable!
She came to believe God was always involved, calling her to decisions in light of positive or negative circumstances. God is a loving guide not a coercive manipulator. And not even God could control Janyne’s abuser.
To reconstruct our thinking and living, we need to change how we think and live.
The second idea I invite you to consider is that God feels your pain. God is neither aloof nor indifferent, not a distant stepfather nor an absentee mother. God relates intimately with survivors of evil, and God feels what they feel.
distinguish empathy from pity. To pity is to feel sorry for others at a distance.
Empathizers often imagine themselves in the place of victims. They consider how it might feel to “walk a mile in another’s shoes.”
It’s hard to be moved with compassion when looking from afar. We’re more likely to empathize when drawing near victims. When we get involved, our capacity for compassion increases, because we are “moved.” Jesus concludes the story saying, “Go and do likewise.” It’s like saying, “Move out and be moved!”
As a young husband, I wanted to help. But I had not yet learned love as empathetic listening. I did not know that those who suffer often first need a fellow-sufferer who understands.
“I’m not asking for solutions,” Cheryl finally blurted. “I just need to process what I’m feeling right now!”
What if someone existed who always felt what we felt?
An empathetic God not only feels our suffering but also prompts others to love in specific ways.
what we know best about God comes from the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.
“Prayer unmasks our false selves, and we encounter God as we really are. We are people loved by God, in need of transforming grace.
God is omnipresent and omniloving.
God is present from the tiniest levels of life to the grandest. God is present to every cell, air molecule, and atom.
If we stop and think about it, however, requests for “intervention” don’t make sense. If God is already present and acting for good all the time, we don’t need God to come into our situation. God is already here; an omnipresent God is everywhere.
“God works alongside” people and other entities in creation means God is never the only cause in any situation. Other agents and causes — good, bad, or indifferent — also affect what happens.
