God and His Will

My denomination just voted on several critical issues. Before the vote many prayed, including me, that God’s will would be done. The vote has been completed now and many are saying that God has spoken. But is that a good thing for us?

It is a good thing because I always want God’s will to be done. It is a good thing because in the end I love God and I do believe that no matter what the circumstances God will work it out to be good for me in the end. It is a bad thing because my understanding of how God works is limited and that might mean the result is not what I really had in mind.

It is interesting how quickly we interpret events as God’s will always as a positive. Theologians have long pondered God’s permissive will but I’m not sure it has ever sunk in. We tend to use every single event that has even the slightest evidence of the miraculous as a testimony to inspire the faithful to even greater faith.

Interestingly, every other religion in the world does the same thing. I read yesterday about a family who got stuck in traffic and were late getting to the beach in one of the Asian countries hit by the tsunami. They were just minutes from being in a location that was wiped out and the writer was praising Allah for his miraculous protection.

Of course I conclude that it was my God that orchestrated those circumstances so that family could be saved for some reason. That temporarily solves my dilemma, but I emphasize the temporary. As I try to make sense of the massive numbers of dead my mind short circuits.

The reality is that I simply do not understand how God works and that leaves me rather ambivalent towards our recently completed vote. If the vote had gone the other way I would have been disappointed but in the end I would have simply packed my bags and moved on to what God had in store for me next. I love being a pastor but I would have been willing to give it up if God wanted me to. My wife and I have been through enough changes in direction, disappointments, vicious attacks, slander and uncertainty to believe that we can still be optimistic about the future no matter where that leads. That’s why even though I am ambivalent about the vote I am optimistic about the future.