So I'll be teaching a course on heresies over the next couple of months at my church and our first up is open theism (btw- you can find the recorded classes at our sound cloud account, and I'll eventually be doing screen flows with the notes on YouTube). One of the issues I have with Open Theism is their counselling model, how they deal with grief. From the perspective that God does not know the future, God's will for a person's life can change at the drop of a hat. He can desire one thing one moment, and then in the wake of unforeseen circumstances, have a different desire the next. This creates a God of little hope. What hope can we have in what God will do, if we can't hope in what he hasn't done? I believe not in the God of the simply possible, but the God of purpose.
A few months back I had a major tragedy in my life- maybe you heard about it, it was covered on national news- my two year old son got hit in the head by a ball at an MLB baseball game. I held him as he threw up half a pint of blood, stood over him as he slept, not knowing what was going on inside his body or if he would ever wake up. Thankfully, he did. And was quite himself to boot the very next day. However, his skull was fractured and he had some internal problems that will be with him from now on. As a dad, it hurts. It hurts to know my son won't ever be the same, and certain hopes for his future may never come to pass. How am I to respond to that in my grieving process? I think that as a Christian, the correct response is to rejoice in our trials (James 1:2), obviously. The real question is how do we do that? I can think of two responses:
Praise the Lord because-
-things could have been worse, but we were spared, or
-what actually happened was intended for his Glory and our benefit.
One of these is easy to do, and one of these is difficult. As with most things, I think the path that is more difficult runs more true.
If the answer is to praise the Lord simply because things could have been so much worse, how does that provide thanks or praise for what it was that actually happened? Not to say that this virew is entirely wrong- the Lord is gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in covenant faithfulness- and certainly deserves praise for withholding the full of his wrath from us, for we deserve it. However, it needs a balance. On its own weight or merit, this view provides us with no thanks to God for what it was that actually happened. How does this view actively represent Romans 8:28? How can we rejoice in what actually happened, if our focus is perpetually on what didn't happen? Think about Job's words for a moment:
"Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
And naked I shall return there.
The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away.
Blessed be the name of the LORD.”
And,
"Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?"
In none of this does Job ever come close to saying, "hey, at least I still have my life." Look at what Job praises God for- "the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away"- he's praising the Lord for what it was that happened. And again, he speaks of "accept[ing] diversity," not of being thankful for what didn't happen.
Job's perception of thankfulness and praise is not to dwell on how much worse it could've been- and it couldn't have gotten much worse- but rather, praising him for reality.
Psychologically, I think praising God merely for what could've been is a means of self protection, a means of ignoring the facts of life in order to not be forced to come to grips with reality. It's a way out. An easy path. A means of coping with life without actually having to deal with it. J.R.R. Tolkien once asked the question, "Which one of God's punishments are not also a gift?" I think this applies greatly here. For every difficulty in our life, ever closed door, God opens a new one for us.
What happened to my son was tragic. He will have to deal with it more than I ever will. Something so random, and yet,
"The lot is cast into the lap, but their decision is from the Lord (Prov 16:33)." The Lord's hand was in it, and as random as it seemed, it was his intention. For that, I can praise him, because with that comes the knowledge that there is only good purpose in it, "to those who love God and are called according to his purpose."
God bless,
Mike Senders
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