“The 'Removing God’s Sovereignty' Option”
In this post, I’d like to explore a creed that I have long wrestled with that often crops up as a response to the problem of evil. In the face of evil, Christians have a tendency to safeguard our God from evil by removing one of his attributes: his sovereign governance of the world. Often we’re not so bold as to say we remove an attribute of God. But I have read laborious intellectual attempts at explaining away the problem of evil by expertly finding some way of getting God out of this whole “governing an evil universe” thing.
Can this be done and still leave the Christian faith intact? Yes and no. I don’t believe in “domino theology”, where you knock one piece down and the whole thing crumbles with it, so this answer doesn’t undermine the Christian faith entirely. But these “God is not sovereign” explanations definitely impoverish the faith greatly by painting God as some far removed deity who just lets the universe run its course, so that evil occurences happen without his guidance, making them purposeless and meaninglessness chance events. I find these “God is not sovereign” answers are Christianized versions of the cause-and-effect answer.
Let me elaborate on that one idea of “meaninglessness”. Christianity has always put a premium on a loving, personal God who is involved in the world and has a purpose for the whole and the individual. When a sufferer asks why he is suffering, he is implying a faith that there is some sovereign power and purpose undergirding his life. That is, there is a reason such-and-such evil event occurred. This faith in the meaningfulness of life is not possible unless God’s hand is holding life, giving events a divine purpose and a meaning.
I find this both painful and comforting. On the one hand, life has purpose! I am not left alone in the universe, I am not abandoned to laws of causality and chance. God hears my thoughts and sees my actions, and considers them of such worth as to hold me accountable to them. I do not understand why evil things happen, but God is good, he is there, and though he’s not telling me the reason things happen, there is one. There is meaning, a plan, a purpose, and I can rest in that, all because history and matter are in the hands of a good God.
The painful part is that sometimes the suffering is so great, I cannot fathom a reason that could possibly justify this amount of evil. God becomes the cruel silent tyrant who smashes my plans, destroys my life, refuses to explain himself yet demands my praise. When C.S. Lewis lost his wife, he called God the great cosmic sadist. I have certainly felt that way towards God -I think Lewis was being nice in his selection of adjectives actually.
It is shocking to me how many times I have read the book of psalms and failed to observe how often the psalmist responds to suffering by reaming out the Lord: “O God, why do you cast us off forever?” (74:1) “...my soul refuses to be comforted, When I remember God, I moan...Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger shut up his compassion?” (77:2-3, 9) Job’s rants in particular strike me: “The earth is given into the hand of the wicked; he (God) covers the faces of its judges -if it is not he, who then is it?” (Job 9:24) Here we see Job suffering, describing God as a cruel man of war who delights in shooting Job with arrows, and in all the rebuttals Job’s friends give him, they never once consider the option that God did not cause Job’s suffering. The book of Job concludes with this shocking statement: “Then all of Job’s brothers and sisters came to him and all who had known him before, and ate bread with him in his house, And they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him.” (Job 42:11) God’s causality of all events is simply assumed, and why shouldn’t it be? The very question of evil and meaning in life assumes God is running everything. It is the necessary truth to make the question of evil possible, for only if there is an eternal governor with an eternal purpose can there be eternal meaning in our lives, our thoughts, and our sufferings.
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