Last week a man or woman who is friends with the other Josh Crain (see “ebating Myself [Katrina, Laura, and Calvin: A Plea to the Church, Part 2]">Debating Myself&rdquo commented on my blog (from this point out he/she will be referred to as J-Friend). They didn’t leave a name, but I wanted to respond to some of their concerns. In the future I would appreciate it if you’d leave a name (even just a first name is helpful) if you choose to comment. Otherwise it’s tough to respond. Thanks for the post, though.

The first thing I want to talk about is John 17. I feel that J-Friend went a little far by saying that my discussion of it was an “inaccurate representation of those particular verses.” What he/she meant is that I didn’t address the particular issue that they wanted me to in those verses. I was going for the overall picture of what Christ is saying: that He does indeed want a love relationship with us. J-Friend, however, wants to define the precise group He was talking about, and he/she wants to do that with a Calvinistic slant. My article was not misrepresenting, it just didn’t address his/her specific concern. I would like to do that now, however.
John 17, which speaks of “those who will believe in me,” is hardly evidence that appeals to Calvinistic thought. As I’m sitting here right now, I can pray for those who were affected in Hurricane Katrina even though I only know a few of them by name. In addition, I can pray that God will give wisdom to my church’s new long range planning committee, even though that committee has yet to be formed. Once it is formed however, my prayer is applied to that committee. It is not necessary to believe that Christ had specific individuals in mind in this passage. If we come to the text with certain presuppositions, however, it is possible for us to think that Christ is speaking of specific individuals in this passage.
A similar instance would be the first chapter of Ephesians, which opens with this in verse three: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace which he has freely given us in the One he loves.”
The question is, whom is Paul referring to here? Did God predestine Josh Crain and David Calavan to be adopted as his sons? I believe what Paul is talking about here is something called general election. From the beginning of time, God knew that He was going to set apart for Himself a people to be His own. But the specific individuals that comprise that group are not whom Paul is talking about here, or whom Jesus was speaking of in John 17. It would be the same as if I had a Halo 2 LAN party at my house. My friend Matt my come in and say, “What game are we playing tonight?” I would say, “Halo 2,” because I had decided several days ago for us to play that particular game. Matt could then turn to everyone there and say, “Okay, guys, it was predestined that we would play Halo 2 tonight.” But it wasn’t predestined that Matt or Dave or Josh would play Halo 2; it was predestined that whoever came to the party would play Halo 2.
In Ephesians and John, it is not the individuals that are spoken of, but the group. It is my contention that a Jewish person reading Paul’s letters would have never understood his writings on election to be specific in the sense most Calvinists insist they are. ———————-
Another thing that was criticized in J-Friend’s comment (have I mentioned that I wish he/she’d leave a name? ha ha) is the puppeteer analogy. I realize that Calvinists hate this analogy, but it seems to me that is because it hits so close to home. He says, “you seem to imply that his (Albert Mohler) view of the compatibility of God’s sovereignty and man’s free will is simply illogical. If God has complete control, then man’s will cannot be free; hence the puppeteer analogy. If they are, as you claim, incompatible, an either/or situation, then the inverse must also be true. That is, if man has free will, there must be some areas that can somehow be outside of God’s control, whether they be spiritual entities or physical molecules.”
That is precisely what I am saying. If God chose to set the world up in such a way that His spiritual and physical creation had free will (at least to some degree) then He cannot guarantee how they will use it. By definition, free will entails that some things are outside of God’s control. This is why the devil is truly an enemy of God. God’s decision to grant a degree of freedom to His creation has necessarily caused some things to be out of His control. Satan really can do things that the Lord doesn’t want him to do. What we need to remember, however, is that our freedom (as well as Satan’s or any other spiritual being’s) is finite. Just because God has granted us the ability to have some physical and spiritual say-so in the world doesn’t mean that He has given all (or even a great deal) of His sovereign power or control away. In the eschaton, God’s will is all that is left as evil is ultimately destroyed for the rest of eternity.
Finally, J-Friend charged me with coming “dangerously close to dualism” in my assertion that God is at war with the rebellious evil powers in the world. He claims to argue along the lines of C.S. Lewis that “sin and evil are perversions of everything good that God is and has created.” I don’t disagree with that statement; but who perverted this goodness? I found it funny that he chose to use C.S. Lewis to accuse me of dualism. In his book Mere Christianity, Lewis says, “I freely admit that Christianity…goes much nearer to Dualism than people think…The difference is that Christianity thinks this Dark Power was created by God, and was good when he was created, and went wrong. Christianity agrees with Dualism that this universe is at war. But it does not think this is a war between independent powers. It thinks it is a civil war, a rebellion, and that we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel.”
Furthermore, C.S. Lewis opposes hyper Calvinism when he says in Mere Christianity, “Free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give [creatures] free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.”
This is what I have been saying throughout two lengthy articles now. Calvinists should never enter a debate on providence armed with C.S. Lewis because he does not agree with their providential beliefs.
As far as J-Friend’s assertion of God’s sovereignty, if I understand it correctly then I agree with him. God is always working in the world to bring about His redemptive plan and to further His name and glory. We are presented with and make free choices every day; though we may feel the Spirit of God urging us to follow Him, we have the choice to reject that urging. If this is basically what J-Friend believes about God’s providence then I’m on board with him/her.
Once again, I appreciate the dialogue. I welcome anyone else who wishes to discuss this very pressing issue to join in.

Tags: Josh Crain, Calvinism, open theism, Arminianism, hurricane Katrina, Southern Seminary

The first thing I want to do is to reiterate that my article was over “extreme Calvinism.” I am fully aware that there are many different levels of Calvinistic belief. I used Albert Mohler as an example because it appears he is more Calvinistic than Calvin himself was. This particular brand of Calvinism is all about “God’s sovereignty”, which for the hyper-Calvinist could likely be summed up with the word “control.” God is in control of all things; nothing happens in the cosmos without His ordination. Within this system, the hyper-Calvinist attempts to (unsuccessfully in my opinion) maintain that humans still have free will. However, it is referred to as compatibilistic freedom. Compatibilistic freedom is “the belief that human freedom and divine determination of all things are compatible. Human decisions are considered to be free if they are chosen without any external force or coercion. The person is “free” if she does what she desired to do and since God determines the human desires, divine determinism and human freedom are compatible.” An example may be helpful.
Suppose my wife is at Wal-Mart (the evil empire…haha) and is trying to decide whether she wants to purchase a Snicker’s candy bar or a Hershey’s candy bar. The hyper-Calvinist says that she is free to purchase whichever one she desires. It just so happens that God has given her a desire to purchase a Snicker’s bar, and she does just that. “How can that not be freedom?” the hyper-Calvinist questions. “She chose exactly what she wanted.” Yes, but what she wanted was determined for her, not determined by her.
Severe moral questions arise when we look at a severe example. A man is driving along a deserted country road when he pulls up to a teenage girl walking home from a friend’s house. He may choose to offer her a ride home or to simply pass her up. Or he may choose to stop the car, force her into it, and then take her off to a secluded location where he proceeds to rape and then murder her. The hyper-Calvinist says that he is free to do whichever he desires. The implication is that if he chooses to rape and murder this poor helpless victim then it is only because God gave him the desire to do so. And if God gave him that desire, how can this man possibly be held accountable for his actions? Furthermore, how can God escape the indictment that He is the author of evil? This is “extreme Calvinism”.
Since I know that Josh is a Calvinist, but I do not know to what degree, I am forced to write the remainder of this response as though he were extreme. I will be arguing on that assumption from here on out. If I am way off base on his beliefs, then I apologize. I know of no other way to state my case than to go back to that which I was critiquing in the first place: hyper-Calvinism (as briefly outlined above).
Molecular Control and Materialism
Josh begins by asking me precisely what molecules God is in control of, and what molecules He is not in control of. This, of course is a dangerous question to try and answer, and I’ll make no such attempt. It would be silly of me to try and give a list: God controls what I have for breakfast, but lunch is totally up to me. Ha! I take issue with the question because creation is not about molecules but about entities. It’s not so much about individual atoms as it is individuals.
Secondly, Josh warns me against materialism: “I want to warn you against the conclusion you have drawn that utter control of all physical matter necessitates the absence of free will. Is physical matter all that exists? Would it not be possible for God to control all the atoms in the cosmos, yet leave my soul its free choice of whether to accept or reject him?”
What I may have done in my article was assume a little too much about my audience. I was not drawing the conclusion that control over matter necessitates the absence of free will. I was attempting to allow the reader to get a glimpse of Dr. Mohler’s theology, which is that God does indeed control the human will (he aligns himself with the compatibilist freedom argument from earlier). I felt that particular snippet would help them to see a small part of the more troubling whole.
What we do know from the Bible (which is where I want to keep this discussion centered, as I’m sure Josh does, too) is that creation is vastly complex. Any time that we try to systematize it, we fail to do justice to the entire biblical account. My biggest problem with both Calvinism and Arminianism is that both are guilty of text proofing and neither adequately explains what we find occurring in the biblical narrative as a whole. Whenever you have a system in place that very neatly ties up God in a package (i.e. every molecule is under His absolute control; no molecule is under His absolute control) you can rest assured that your model is way off base.
With all of that in mind, I believe that Josh’s two questions about God’s specific control and materialism are just at the surface of the real issue between us: is God’s will the only one that has power in the universe? Certainly God could have chosen to set up the universe in this way. No creation is a necessary one, and neither is it necessary for God to give free will to the beings He creates. If we understand God’s giving freedom to His creations as a limitation to God then we fail to understand the nature of God. The Lord, being infinitely wiser than we, chooses to limit Himself all the time. The fact that He chooses to always be faithful to His promises is a limitation: He must keep His promises. The decision to make the world one way and not another is a limitation. His devotion to carrying out His redemptive purposes in mankind limits Him. The question is not whether God could have chosen to set up creation one way or another. The question is: how does the Bible say that God chose to set up creation?
God at War
What I want to argue is that the Bible tells us that there are other powers, principalities, and wills that are active in the universe. Some of these are working to thwart God’s purposes, some working to further them. I believe the Bible literally depicts God as being at war with the evil forces in both the unworldly and the earthly realms.

Some examples:
In Daniel 10 we are told of an unusual encounter that Daniel has with an angel of the Lord. After being given a vision that he doesn’t fully understand, Daniel prays and fasts for 21 days. At the end of this time the angel appears to him and says, “Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, on of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia” (Daniel 10:12-13).

What this angel says to Daniel is nothing less than astounding. A demon who was in charge of the Persian territory resists an angel of the Lord, and in doing so delays God’s message from being delivered.

In Psalm 82 the Lord warns angels that if they do not carry out the purposes for which they were created they will be destroyed.

Angels are depicted as having the ability to cause sickness (Mark 9:25; Luke 11:24) and even corrupt the human gene pool if they turn against God (Genesis 6:1-4)

Perhaps the most influential piece of biblical evidence to suggest that God is not behind all of the hurricanes and diseases is the fact that when Jesus had the opportunity to explain why a particular incident happen; when He had the chance to attribute all goodness and all evil to God, He didn’t take it. Instead, He immediately shifted the blame from the Kingdom of God to the kingdom of darkness.

In Luke 13:11 a crippled woman’s ailment is attributed to Satan. Luke 13:1-5 discusses people who were killed by a tower falling on them and some who were executed by Pilate; Jesus refuses to go along with the theology of the day and say that these happened by God because of sin.

In Mark 9:17-29, a demon-possessed boy is difficult to exercise. Jesus exclaims that this kind of demon can only come out through prayer and fasting. Why would that be the case if God’s will is the only one involved?

In fact, the only example that can be given of Christ attributing that God ordained an ailment is found in John 9:1-5. A blind man is sitting on the road, and the disciples ask Jesus why this man was born blind. In the New International Version it is written, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” However, there is a problem with the Greek. In the original language, this sentence is imperative. In other words, it has been mistranslated, probably in large part to fit with the theology of the translators. The original Greek would read something like this:

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned; but let God be glorified by His work in him!” Jesus doesn’t attribute the blindness to God, but He takes advantage of the blindness in order to manifest the work of the Father!

Though this cannot be a comprehensive article on the wills of other’s as presented in the Bible, I feel that there is a clear representation of God’s work in the world and His battle against the evil forces in the biblical narrative. It’s important to keep in mind that in the eschaton God will be victorious. The freedom He has granted to humans and angels (or demons) is finite and completely incapable of ever overcoming the Father.

Enabled Love
Josh’s next argument was on the topic of love. In my previous article I made the comment, “love that is simply generated through us by God but not from us for God isn’t real love.” Josh assumes that if this were the case then “real love must exist as a separate entity or ideal from God.” As we both know, this would move us into the area of dualism (that something coexists necessarily alongside of God throughout all eternity), as well as seem to deny the teaching of 1 John 4:8 that God is love.
However, I was not attempting to pick or choose when I made the above statement. True love for God must be both from him and for Him. I agree with Josh that we cannot love apart from God’s free gift of salvation. What I deny is that this free gift is offered only to specific predestined individuals. However, once God’s gift is accepted and He gives us the ability to love, He also inspires our love. True love is not either from us for God or through us by God—it is both. That is how the two may coexist. Unlike Josh, I do not believe that this is properly called “forced love.” Rather, it is enabled love.

The Tragic Story of Laura
So what can we say in closing? I have attempted to briefly outline part of what I believe about God’s providence. However, one more practical example may be beneficial. When I started part one of this series I entitled it “Katrina, Laura, and Calvin.” More than a couple of people have asked me who Laura is.
“Laura” is an imaginary name of a very real person with a very tragic story. It is taken from Gregory Boyd’s book, “Satan and the Problem of Evil”: **
Laura was living overseas with her missionary parents when another Missionary raped her. This rapist was put on leave but was allowed to rejoin the mission field within 18 months.
Laura was told that men of God sometimes do bad things and need God’s grace like everyone else. God forgives and forgets and so should she. Laura should love and forgive this man and not ever speak of this incident again.
She was told that God “always has His reasons” for allowing things like this to happen, though we won’t know them until we get to heaven. She needed to know that God was “still on His throne” and that what the missionary intended for evil, God intended for good.
Now, as a nineteen-year-old, Laura came to the pastor of Woodland Hills Church to tell him that she was feeling guilty over her inability to trust God. When he asked her what she was supposed to trust God for, her predictable Christian student answer was, “for God’s perfect will for my life.” When he inquired further what that meant, she cited him one of the most quoted verses by young Christians, Jeremiah 29:11. Finally, when he asked what she believed was included in the Lord’s plan to “prosper you and not to harm you,” she exclaimed in an impatient matter-of-fact voice: “Well, to have a good marriage, or course, to have the right ministry or job and to do well in it, and to be healthy and safe. You know, just to prosper!”
“Safe?” he asked her. “Do you mean to be safe from rapists?” After a long pause, she nodded a sheepish yes as her eyes began to tear up.”
“No wonder you can’t trust God, Laura,” he said. You already know that God can’t be trusted to deliver on that one.” Laura initially responded as though he had uttered a hideous blasphemy, yet she saw the obvious painful truth of the point he was making. For ten years she had been encouraged by a Christian community to trust God for bodily protection when all the while she knew from personal experience that it was not only up to God to decide this matter. Intuitively, she knew that free agents like the missionary who had abused her also have a mind and will of their own. She intuitively knew that if there is no divine guarantee against little girls getting raped, there is not guarantee that nineteen-year-old women will not get raped. The result of this instruction was that Laura now blamed herself for not being able to “trust God” to protect her from being raped.
What’s more, though she was too scared to admit it out loud to herself, Laura was privately enraged toward God. She understood her rape as a child ultimately to be God’s fault. We are supposed to accept such tragedies as somehow fitting into God’s plan—and yet we are supposed to trust God for protection from such tragedies! Could anyone have pieced together a more contradictory—and for victims like Laura, a more tormenting—theological puzzle? No wonder Laura was enraged.
A Plea for Caution
What we have to realize is that there are evil things that happen in this world that are not caused by God. When we point to the Lord after every terrible disaster or moral evil and exclaim how mighty and great His ways are that He would ordain such a catastrophe, unbelievers do not get to see the God of the Bible. What they see is the adversary who Jesus came to oppose.
**For those of you interested in learning more about a warfare worldview, I highly recommend picking up Gregory Boyd’s excellent theodicy, Satan and the Problem of Evil.

Tags: Josh Crain, Calvinism, open theism, Arminianism, Spiritual Warfare, hurricane Katrina, Albert Mohler, Southern Seminary

As I write this I am deeply troubled by the general response that American Christians have given to Hurricane Katrina. Please don’t misunderstand; our physical response to the disaster has been wonderful. Many Christians have donated their money to the cause, their time to disaster relief, and their prayer to the victims. Our nation, and indeed the world, desperately need to see us reaching out in this manner. They need to see us meeting needs and proclaiming that the kingdom of God is at hand.
Unfortunately, when it comes to our intellectual or our verbal response to this tragic calamity the results have been far less constructive. An article in the Washington Post pointed out more than a few evangelicals who, of course, “spoke on behalf of God” in letting us know that Katrina was divine retribution. A few examples:
Steve Lefemine, an antiabortion activist, believes he was able to make out an image of an 8-week-old fetus in the color satellite maps of Hurricane Katrina. His belief as to why God “sent” the hurricane?: “In my belief, God judged New Orleans for the sin of shedding innocent blood through abortion.”
Michael Marcavage, a Philadelphia resident, believes that Hurricane Katrina showed up just in time to wipe out homosexuals. “We take no joy in the death of innocent people,” said Marcavage. “But we believe that God is in control of the weather. The day Bourbon Street and the French Quarter was flooded was the day that 125,000 homosexuals were going to be celebrating sin in the streets. . . . We’re calling it an act of God.”
Never mind the fact that America is not Israel; that we’re not a theocracy. Never mind the fact that God’s national judgments in the Bible were always preceded by warnings, and usually an opportunity to repent. The second we can clear God’s name by presenting the sin He was showing His righteous indignation toward, we jump on “pagan” Americans as quickly as possible.
The damage we do is simple to see: we negate our Christian testimony when we help people with our hands and damn them with our mouths.

I just thank God that Jerry Fallwell and Pat Robertson have had the sense to keep their mouths shut about Hurricane Katrina.
Destroying God’s Character
Other theologians have thankfully resisted trying to ferret out the reason behind this devastating hurricane. However, many have hurt Christianity with what they say about God’s relationship to the storm, even while keeping silent about God’s reasons for the storm.
Dr. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Seminary and a staunch Calvinist, had much to say about God’s providence and relationship to Katrina in an August 31 article on his blog.
Dr. Mohler quotes the lyrics to a well known hymn that says the following: God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm. Deep in unfathomable mines of never-failing skill, He treasures up His bright designs, and works His sovereign will. Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take, the clouds ye so much dread, are big with mercy, and shall break In blessings on your head. Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust Him for His grace; Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face.
This is essentially what strong Calvinism teaches: God controls all things from what I “decide” to eat in the morning to a fly changing the course of his flight pattern from east to west. Dr. Mohler states the case precisely when he says that, “God is sovereign, and His ways are always right. He is in control of every molecule in the cosmos at all times.”
Certainly God could have set the world up in this manner. He could have decided to make us to be nothing more than puppets on a string; Himself, the grand puppeteer. That, however, would not have accomplished His purpose: love. In John 17:20-26, Christ’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane seems to capture the very heart and purpose of God in creating mankind.
“My prayer is not for them alone,” Jesus petitions. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”
Jesus’ prayer is as beautiful as it is profound. It is a prayer that we would be able to see the love of the father and to accept Christ, that we may be in Him in the same way that the Father is in the Son. In other words, the point of redemption is that we may join into the triune love of God, dancing forever together with Him in His kingdom.
Love, however, must be freely chosen. “Love” that is forced, or “love” that is simply generated through us by God but not from us for God isn’t real love.
Though the thrust of this particular article is not to disprove strong Calvinism, I think it’s important to see that this model of God’s providence cuts at the very core of what God is doing through His redemptive plan. Furthermore, Calvinism would ultimately assert that God is not responsible for evil, even though He ordains it. I believe they hold this view with a certain logical inconsistency, but I understand what they are attempting. The Calvinist’s understanding of God’s sovereignty can truly be defined by two words: meticulous control. They see God as the ultimate King, and rightly so; but they view Him more as a dictator, unwilling to doll out any freedom or power that is not completely under his absolute control. Therefore, God is ultimately responsible for every rape, murder, pornographer, and demonic act.
Albert Mohler, by choosing to accept this model of God’s providence, may have saved his version of God’s power; but he has slammed God’s character.
Katrina and the Smiling Face?
The line from the above hymn that I find to be unbiblical and ultimately painful is this: “Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust Him for His grace; Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face.” It sincerely disturbs me that Albert Mohler sees this as an accurate description of what was happening in the heavens on August 29 of 2005 when hundreds of people were dying in the disaster that was Hurricane Katrina.
Mohler would have us believe that God was in the heavens, grinning down on this catastrophe for some unknown-to-us-feeble-humans reason. Obviously I have a philosophical problem with this, but more than anything I have a biblical problem with it.
Over and over in the Bible God makes it clear that there are things that happen that He neither ordains nor approves of. In Jeremiah 7:31 the Lord proclaims, “They have built the high places of Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to burn their sons and daughters in the fire—something I did not command, nor did it enter my mind.”
In Genesis 6:5-6 the sinfulness of man (not the sin that God ordained man to commit) causes such pain for God that He is grieved He ever created them. “The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time,” we are told. “The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.”
What’s more is that over and over in the New Testament Jesus is given the opportunity to explain why someone has a particular illness or why someone is demon possessed. He is given the opportunity to explain how it is that God relates to man, and to once and for all show us that everything that happens under the sun is ordained by God’s wisdom. Yet instead of doing that, He does the exact opposite by time and time again pointing to the kingdom of darkness, the kingdom of Satan and his legions of demons.
In Luke 13:10-13 we are told, “On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, ‘Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.’ Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.”
What Christ did here is important because instead of proclaiming that this woman’s illness was from the Lord, the opposite is acknowledged. He comes against this evil, and ultimately it is used for the glory of God; but the illness did not come from God.
I do not believe that Katrina is the Lord’s handiwork. The Bible is clear that there are unseen demonic forces in this world that are at work all around us, seeking to destroy that which God sent His son to die for.
God is weeping for those whose lives were destroyed in the hurricane, but He didn’t destroy their lives. God is hurting for those who lost loved ones and family members in the hurricane, but He didn’t kill their loved ones. God will receive glory from this debacle through the hands of Christians that help those in need, but he didn’t cause that need.
Reacting as Christ Reacted
It is no comfort for anyone but ourselves when we allow our self-righteousness to prompt us to point fingers at “sinful” groups of people as being the reason for God “sending the hurricane” when we still have planks of wood in our own eyes. It is no comfort for anyone but ourselves when we point to this disaster and say, “God’s ways are not our ways,” and then talk to people about the comfort they can find in the God that we say is responsible for destroying their lives or killing their family.
We must follow the example of Christ when confronted with evil, whether it be moral or “natural”. This earth is not what God longed for it to be. Creation “has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time (Romans 8:22).” Creation is complex, and there are many theories as to why it currently looks like a war zone; but most would agree that the presence of the demonic and the fall of man are to be blamed in large part. What Christ didn’t do was blame God. He recognized evil for what it was and He came against it in the name of the Father. For us to do anything less is for us not to resemble Christ.
We are hurting the cause of Christ because we are blaming God for every tragedy that comes about. We must become more biblical in our thinking and less systematic in our theology if we are to present the world with an accurate picture of God-the one who wants to dance with us in His triune love throughout all eternity.

Tags: Calvinism, open theism, Arminianism, hurricane Katrina, Spiritual Warfare, Albert Mohler, Southern Seminary

Tags: dog, Death

Tags: Book of Job

Tags: Book of Job

The book of Job has impacted me greatly in the last year. In studying its text and studying the comments of those who have poured their lives into this book, I have gained a deeper appreciation of spiritual warfare and what it means to be loved by God. I’m excited about doing a month and a half study on it with you guys.

I want to begin by discussing purpose. My belief about Job is that the author’s primary purpose in writing his story is to refute the popular theology of his day as related to evil and suffering. This theology is best seen in the speeches and discourses of Job’s friends all throughout the book (i.e. Job 4:7-9) and can be summed up easily enough: when bad things happen to people it is because they deserved for them to happen. In other words, wicked things only happen to the wicked; the good always prosper while the unjust are always punished.

The first chapter of Job begins by introducing the man who we will be following throughout both good times and bad for the course of the book. Job is not established as a Jew, and his location (“the land of Uz&rdquo is neither clearly Jewish nor Gentile. Job’s lineage is not the author’s focus because the only feature of Job that is to take center stage is his blamelessness. This is the key to understanding the book because if Job is blameless and yet still has terrible things happen to him, then the leading theology of the day is put to death by existential reasoning.

In verse five we are told that Job took the position as priest and offered sacrifices on behalf of his family. This fact places the date of the tale of Job to pre-Exodus because the father of the family functioned as the high priest for his wife and children until the law of Moses set aside the position of Levitical priest from the tribe of Levi. Again, we see that Job is faithful in performing his duties as the priest of his family, and there is no blame to be found in him.

Tags: Book of Job

Tags: Book of Job