God Can't: How to Believe in God and Love after Tragedy, Abuse, and Other Evils

by Thomas Jay Oord

Others feel God’s love in relational communities of compassionate people. I would like to report that religious communities are always places to feel God’s love. But for many people, church is the problem! Too many church communities are obstacles to grace rather than channels.

But we all need community. Unswerving solitude stunts growth; those who persist alone perish alone. We need relational arks that promote health and healing. We need places and people who express God’s empathetic love.

Some of our most profound experiences of God’s love come from intentional focus. Some call this “centering.” Others call it meditation, reflection, or mindfulness. Many simply call it prayer. The terminology matters less than the actual practice of careful attention to God and life.

“Don’t be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God, and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds” (Phil. 4:6-7). St. Paul doesn’t promise our prayers will be answered in the way we might want. But he does promise peace. Peace can come in many forms, but especially our feeling a deep sense that God loves us.

The third belief we need is that God works to heal those broken and abused, bleeding and scarred, hurt and confused. God responds to evil by working to make things better. The healing God pursues for us can be emotional, physical, relational, or spiritual. Restoration takes many forms.

Deniers make some valid points. But the fact remains: some people get better. Some healing seems authentic. The explanations skeptics give don’t account for all legitimate healing.

We’ve been asking why a loving and powerful God doesn’t prevent evil. There’s a related question I call “the problem of selective healing.” It wonders why a loving and powerful God heals so infrequently. Why do most people not experience instantaneously the healing God can allegedly provide? If God heals, why doesn’t God heal a lot more often?

True Believers sometimes play the Bible like a trump card. Those who question healing are thought to question the Bible’s authority. “Bible-believing Christians don’t doubt God’s healing power,” they say.

True Believers offer answers to why God doesn’t always heal. Some claim the Devil or demons prevent recovery, although most think God can heal no matter what demons do. Others blame survivors for their lack of faith. But telling an abuse victim she lacks faith seems especially heartless! The smug play the blame game.

Cessationists admit God healed long ago, as the Bible describes. And they believe God could heal now, if God wanted to do so. Cessationists think God has voluntarily ceased healing in our day. The Doctor is on holiday from healing.

During this time, I started hearing an add-on to healing prayers. In fact, I uttered the phrase a few times myself before becoming dissatisfied with it. Just after asking God to heal, I heard people add, “If it’s your will.”

Over time, I came to believe “if it’s your will” is a cover-your-ass phrase uttered to avoid the tough questions we all ask when healing prayer fails. “If it’s your will” makes no sense.

Theologian Shelly Rambo describes trauma well when she says, “A basic disconnection occurs from what one knows to be true and safe in the world.” The traumatic event “becomes the defining event beyond which little can be conceived.”21 Trauma persists because the effects of evil often persist.

“If there is a God,” writes Bart near the end of the book, “He is not the kind of being I believed in as an Evangelical: a personal deity who has ultimate power over this world and intervenes in human affairs to implement his will among us.”

The first step toward making sense of healing is to believe God is always present to all creation and always loves to the utmost. God is omnipresent and omniloving.

These ideas may seem tame. Many people believe God loves everyone and everything. And many think God is present to all creation. But few consider the radical implications of these beliefs. All means… all!

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.

The second step to understanding healing says God works alongside people and creation.

“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. We are relational beings in an interrelated universe, so we’re always affected by others. We live in a social network.

All healing — no matter how it occurs — has God as its source. God even works alongside healthcare providers who don’t believe in God!

If we believe God always works to heal but cannot heal singlehandedly, we make sense of why some are not healed. Divine healing isn’t a solitary, controlling “Zap!” It’s not supernatural control. Healing requires cooperation, because God always expresses uncontrolling love.

If God always works to heal but cannot control anyone or anything, it’s not God’s fault when healing does not occur.

The Great Healer doesn’t choose to heal some but bypass others. God is neither asleep on the job nor waiting until we’ve prayed hard or long enough. The God of uncontrolling love always works to heal everyone but cannot heal through overruling power.

Miracles are neither the work of God alone nor creation alone.23

When we realize God can’t heal singlehandedly, we make sense of Jesus’ words about faith. These words point to the role creation must play. When Jesus says, “Your faith has made you well,” he’s saying, “You’ve cooperated with God’s healing love.” And when Matthew says Jesus “did not do many miracles (in Nazareth) because of their lack of faith” (Mt. 13:58), that’s saying, “Some people do not cooperate with God’s healing efforts.”

Our cells, organs, molecules, tissues, bones, and other bodily aspects have capacities of their own. Neither God nor our minds controls them fully. So when we have heart palpitations, chemical imbalances, viruses, damaged organs, cancerous cells, genetic defects, and more, God cannot overpower the flawed actors and conditions causing these problems.

Perhaps my phrase, God is “working to heal to the utmost, given the circumstances” now makes sense. God always works alongside people and creation when healing. “Healing to the utmost, given the circumstances” implies creation may not cooperate. Inanimate entities and conditions may not be aligned for the healing God wants.

When we or other creatures cooperate or when the conditions are suitable, God heals. Thanks be to God! When creatures fail to cooperate or the conditions are not suitable, God’s efforts are frustrated. Blame creation!

The fourth step to explaining healing says God’s uncontrolling love extends beyond death. We continue living beyond the grave because God’s loving presence empowers continuing experience after our bodies die.

Christians find in the Bible many images and stories about life after death. The resurrection of Jesus is primary evidence that we continue existing after our bodies die.

The Bible offers several views of what happens after we die. Two dominate. The first says we continue our subjective experiences as souls or minds. In this ongoing awareness, we relate with God and others in disembodied states of being. In this soulish existence, we experience relational awareness of our past, others, and God. The second view says we take on spiritual bodies after we die. These bodies are not exact duplicates of current ones. We don’t retain the same cells, neurons, muscles, skin, hair, etc. The differences between physical bodies and spiritual bodies are great, but there may be similarities.

After several sessions, the counselor asked a question Debbie had never considered: “What if God wants to heal but can’t?”

“Wouldn’t a loving God manipulate those things?” Debbie asked. “I mean, if God really loves, wouldn’t He intervene or arrange things properly in the world? I want to believe God can heal whenever He wants to.” “How’s that belief workin’ for ya?” the counselor asked.

“Instead of believing God is uninvolved,” the counselor continued, “perhaps we should believe God is always guiding but never dominating, always influencing but not manipulating.”

If good comes from suffering and God wants what’s good, is suffering God’s will?

Joni believes her injuries are part of God’s plan.

In Joni’s view, God permits what He hates and punishes those He loves. Think about that a moment: God allows what He despises and hurts those He adores. Does that make sense?

Given her positive impact and virtuous character, it’s not surprising Joni thinks God wanted her paralysis. But can we rejoice in the good that sometimes follows the bad without thinking God permitted the bad? Can we appreciate Joni’s life without thinking God allows pain and suffering?

This belief says God squeezes good out of the evil God didn’t want in the first place. To reconstruct, we should believe God responds to evil by working with creation for good.

A better translation of this passage overcomes this misunderstanding. That translation supports the view that Joseph’s brothers wanted him to suffer. But it does not imply his suffering was God’s will. This translation says God uses evil to bring about good. “You wanted to harm me, but God used it for good,” Joseph said to his brothers.

Christians give “explanations” for Kate’s cancer. Most “want me to know, without a doubt, that there is a hidden logic to this seeming chaos,” she says. “A neighbor came to the door and told my husband that everything happens for a reason.”

We can be thankful in our suffering, however. We can thank God for giving us courage and patience. We can thank God for being the source of all good. Even in pain, we can thank God for being the source of friendship, hope, breath, and more. Being thankful for the beauty and goodness we encounter — while being clear-eyed about the ugliness and evil — is crucial to living life well.

Fortunately, the passage doesn’t mean what most think. The word “for” in the quotation comes from the Greek word huper. The word often means “on behalf of” or “for the benefit of.” We use “for” in this sense when we say, “we did it for your good,” “I found a doctor for her,” or “I brought nutrition bars for my kids.”

Does God cause or allow evil to punish us?

But most agree the earliest biblical texts say God punishes the unrighteous and blesses the righteous. When we see suffering, we see divine punishment. The story of Job says otherwise.

God was not the cause of Job’s torment, however. Sin was not the source of his pain. Job remained righteous throughout the ordeal. The evil one caused his grief, loss, and misery, Job did not reap what he sowed. Many aspects of Job’s story are difficult to understand. Scholars debate them to no end! Many doubt, for instance, God would ever wager with the evil one. A loving God would not make deals with the Devil that harm humanity. The overall message of Job’s story, however, seems to be this: Good people suffer. Bad things happen to good people. God doesn’t send pain and suffering to teach a lesson. God is not the source of evil. Calamity and destruction come from elsewhere.

Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. Moreover, many of us have human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it.

Understanding the meaning of discipline is key to comprehending this passage. To discipline is to teach, correct, or train. A good disciplinarian encourages learners to adopt better ways of living.

The discipline described in Hebrews is similar to the instruction from a fitness trainer teaching clients how to exercise, rest, and eat properly.

Joni’s preferred translation of Hebrews 12:6 says, “God punishes everyone He accepts as a son.” The NIV translation I offered says, “He chastens everyone He accepts as his son.” There’s a difference between punish and chasten. To chasten means to correct. To punish can mean many forms of harm. It might even mean, as Joni thinks, to paralyze.