Recently I attended an evening with Gerald Robison of Cat and Dog Theology: a surprisingly fun ministry.
After Gerald's talk question time started and a couple of questions dealt with the recurrent 'good God, world of evil' subject.
One of the questions went something like "does God like earthquakes and tsunamis?" because, I guess, the questioner thought that they were part of the 'very good' world that God created. This may have been indicative of a poorly taught or understood theology of creation and its place in the biblical (the 'real') history of the physical world; or a failure to integrate information about spiritual matters, with the covenantal relationship between the material world and our concourse with God.
Gerald's answer focused on Romans 8:22 ("For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now".); and given the time constraints, it appealed to me as a pretty good answer. He went on to affirm that despite the effects of sin on our world, 'God was still in control".
The answer, however, did not quite satisfy. There is a more fulsome response to deal with the why of natural 'evil' (earthquakes and the like), and the notion of God's being 'in control'; the latter being a particularly objectional piece of contemporary reflexive determinism.
That the world is not as God created is clear in scripture: the cosmos left God's hand as 'very good' (Gen 1:31). We are twice removed from this state: firstly by the fall, where God ceased his intimate relationship with his creation (Gen 3:9, for example), and secondly by the flood, and its aftermath.
In the contemporary Anglican church the question of natural evil arises, perhaps, because of the inroads made into the doctrine of creation by worldly admixes of 'theistic-evolution' or Christian Darwinism, and various other reconfigurations of the doctrine brought by metaphorical readings of Genesis 1, etc. Thus, I suspect, the world contorted by disruption is mistakenly 'read' as the very good world that left God's mind as revealed in the genesian account; and God is somehow identified with the blind, relentless, meaningless, cruelty and frustration that 'evolution' entails.
But, not so. God created 'very good' consistently with his goodness and love; he took pleasure in what he had done and gave to us; he also will restore the entire creation to joyful fellowship with him and peace; overturning any idea that this broken world represents, in its brokenness, God's nature. [Despite its broken state, Paul insists that it does still make representation of God]
'Control'
The notion of God being 'in control' comes up frequently, and appears to be used by Christians, in many cases, as the final support for their confidence in God's capability to finally save them. However, the glibness of its expression conjures up for me the image of God as puppeteer; which I don't find in the Scriptures.
Without grappling with the vast world of debate on this topic, and its many colours and flavours (canvassed in Christian Determinism, as one example served up at the top of a recent Google search); I will put down but a few notes.
God's being 'in control' strikes me as a god disengaged from his creation, and one who imposes on his creation or people (those in his image, and therefore not made to be 'controlled') the events and circumstances of their lives.
But God our creator represents himself differently to this. I think of Romans 8:28 where Paul tells us that God (actively) works all things together for good...so, God engaged, at work and, I think one can extend to him working in the world that we are working in, he to reliably bring about what he wills not necessarily over against us, but through and by us, even if we intend otherwise.
The way the teleological dimension of God's relationship with the cosmos is expressed in Job, is I think, what is largely in mind when people talk of him being 'in control'; but the biblical expression is far more helpful: Job 42:2, for instance, where God's ends will out: but reading this with the Romans passage, it is not, I suggest, by 'brute force' fiat, but by his working, by his Spirit in and with the minds and motivations of his creatures in all their circumstances.
I find myself discomforted by the absolutist terms that speak more of a Greek philosophical tradition ('in control' being of this ilk), and am more comfortable with God as represented in the Bible as living with us, and taking a part in the pattern of life, albeit a supreme part, by which his objectives are never thwarted and always achieved: so in these terms, he is not a puppet master, but the supreme moulder, leader, guide and 'captain' of the way of his creation; even his creation marred in rebellion and seeking to be against him.
We, though, in his church, are part of the new creation, seeking not to be against him, but to be entierly for him; but the new creation has intersected with the old, and God achieves his goal while we are wading still through the mess and sometimes horror of life in this now broken creation. We live, as it were, in two creations at once, and this living sustained in God's light by his indwelling Spirit and engaged by the life of prayer.
Just as an aside, I think that some confusion arises when people think of pre-destination, in this context, and perhaps think the Bible teaches that God has pre-destined 'you', the individual, to share eternity with him. I don't think this is so; rather, the destination of the 'train' of the church is eternity with him; but who is on the train is a different matter: not entirely different, but nevertheless, different, as God seeks and saves those who are lost, and would that all come to know him.
