In praying, studying, and reading the Bible on how God reveals Himself to us, I came upon an article about the attributes of God. The first word that clung to my mind was “omnipotence.” “Omnipotence” is a theologian’s word meaning all-powerful. (But you already knew that. I define it for emphasis.)
May I submit that whether God is omnipotent is not the question. It is not necessary to cite scripture for most of the faithful to know that God is all-powerful. The question, rather, is whether we believe it and if we do believe it, “to what extent do we believe it?”
May I submit that in our heart of hearts, I and probably each of us, believes that there is at least one thing that God cannot or, at least, will not do. I had come to the erroneous conclusion that God cannot or will not change our national, maybe our world, system that seems to reward wealth and power, and their root – selfishness, and to punish poverty and minority as though they were malum in se. I confess that I had come to the conclusion that apparently, God has given up on us or for whatever reason will not bring about change in the system.
In the wake of the recent protests and the attendant violence that came with them, that being a certain amount of rioting, looting, and burning on the one hand, and excessive use of force by some police departments and, in my view, unconstitutional use of military power by our national leaders at the highest level on the other, my pessimism was reinforced to the point that I felt sick in the pit of my stomach.
However, it is a trite but true statement that God was not surprised by any of this. We’ve begun to see that God’s power has been manifested within the middle of it all. Hear my words, I am not implying that God caused evil. Evil, in my view, results from the human will to do evil or at least to permit evil. Rather, I refer to the gentle nudging of the Holy Spirit that God sent to live in the hearts of certain people whom he did want to influence people for Good. The result of his influence with these people, unknown to me, is yet to be seen. It may not be seen in my lifetime. It may not be seen for decades. But God’s spirit was there working.
In the recent violence committed by all the violent people, we find at least two common threads: confusion, and chaos. In 1 Corinthians 14:3, the Apostle Paul states that God is not the author of confusion and chaos. If not God, then who or what authors confusion and chaos? The Apostle John answering, the question in Revelation 12:9, states that the evil (one) creates chaos and confusion.
Rather, it is the case that God works within confusion and chaos to bring about perfect harmony and divine order to accomplish His will
I came upon two additional words, “Freedom” and “Eternity,” and upon a thought that was new to me: Only in God’s perfect harmony and divine order is found true freedom for mankind. Hans Küng in The Church states the argument for that proposition. In summary, his argument goes as follows.
We, humans, make ourselves slaves to our choices. God’s Holy Spirit invites us to do God’s perfect will. When a person chooses not to do as the Spirit bids, he makes himself a slave to his own will, an inherently imperfect master. Thus, the person, by his own design makes himself a slave to imperfection. Imperfection can never lead to true freedom, thus, that person has chosen not to be free.
On the contrary, when a person chooses to do as the Spirit bids, she submits herself to perfection, becoming a slave to that perfection. Since we become a slave to our choices, she becomes the slave to God’s perfection. Since God is perfectly free, she has chosen to be a slave to perfect freedom. In that sense, she has chosen to become perfectly free.
A more light-hearted example, if you will permit. As I sit on my front porch, I have noticed for several days a green lizard. Perhaps, God’s power revealed through his Holy Spirit is a bit like the lizard. The power of the Spirit is unseen at first. Like the lizard, He blends into the background. Like the lizard, He is benevolent to humans. Nevertheless, the Spirit, like the lizard can destroy evil, if one considers mosquitoes evil as we in South Alabama do.
When the lizard is ready, and for a reason that man cannot know, the lizard engorges his pink throat in an eye-catching display of pink-hued color.
Likewise, when He is ready, and for His own reasons, the Holy Spirit “shows up and shows out,” as the old saying goes. I realize that the analogy is an absurdity and breaks down at this point, but bear with me for the sake of argument.
I am truly amazed not so much that God can and will cause his will to be done to bring about his good purposes, the triumph of the Good and the defeat of evil, I’ve seen Him do that many times. The amazing cosmic fact is that God has already done these things, the very things for which we pray today, freedom, equality, and justice.
Another one of God’s incommunicable attributes is “Eternity.” What God does, he eternally does once for all, from eternally begetting the Son to eternally creating a green lizard.
Thus, God has already brought about his will in the past in one way of looking at it – freedom, equality, and justice. It remains for us who are neither omnipotent nor eternal to see how God’s will works itself out in our time and space.
We can take great confidence and assurance in the fact that God not only knows what needs to be done in our specific situation, and that God does what He has determined to be done, but that He has eternally already done it.
When I am overrun with the immensity of the issues that currently face our nation, the lack of freedom, equality, and justice, I find that last thought to be the most comforting and freeing thought I can think of.
So let it be written, so let it be done.
johnthebaptist15 