I think there is a little kink in the hose here.

If g-d is not controlling. If it is hands off, but does intervene, you are almost back to square one.

When does it intervene? What can humans do to make it intervene? Do we sacrafice, pray, hold our hands a certain way? It comes back to a primitive religious way of invoking diety. Aren’t we back to prayer and sacrifice and living in a way to get attention our dieties attention?

not necessarily. i mean i think history has a pretty clear record of god’s intervention. it’d be hard to pass off the incarnation as anything but.

so i’m not prepared to say that god can’t intervene if and when he wants. and it would seem rather limiting if i was willing to say what god is and isn’t capable of. it would be hard for me not to imagine the creator of the cosmos not being able to intervene if he should so incline.

it’s just my hunch that it’s not his primary way of doing things anymore.

so i do think it can be both/and.

and perhaps the hang-up is with the word intervening. perhaps he doesn’t forcefully intervene but rather is relationally involved and incarnated.

i’m not sure what my current thoughts on this idea are. i see where you’re coming from. but i’m having more of a reaction to the pray to god for rain thing. or the god causes cancer and tsunamis to get people to trust him.

i think in the end you have to recognize that God doesn’t so much declare “this and that” as much as he allows all things to happen. He might not declare the hurricane, but He sure lets it happen.

but why does He allow it to happen? why does he allow suffering? because improbably it’s always through suffering that we become more like Christ. It’s through our death and consequential resurrection that we become new. Christ has lead us into a new life, and also a transfiguration of the old into something new. not just in life, but in all things.

i think i just rambled and went off topic. in the end i think it’s pretty simple. we need God. We need His love, and we need His mercy. the planet needs it, hell the universe is in need of it. not the “i won’t smite you with my wrathful judgment” mercy, but the true mercy of God giving us Himself. and that’s what we should pray for. and we need to stop dissecting what is in effect a mystery. we’re not to understand it.

I understand Jesus being a form of g-d’s intervention with the world and even us living like Jesus is an extention.

But g-d’s interaction or non interaction in everyday life, either g-d is a part or isn’t, g-d is either active or passive.

Are you suggesting g-d is passive in everyday circumstances (with the exception of the jesus equation).

I think others have stated, more or less, what I stated earlier. If God could have intervened, but didn’t, it doesn’t really matter whether he caused the hurricane or he let it happen. It’s the same thing. Debating the distinction is fruitless.

It’s not a matter of control. Control indicates that the entity doing the controlling has to extend some level of effort to exert control. It takes no effort on God’s part to “control” the weather. Jesus simply tells the wind and waves to be still, and they do. This is not control, this is authority. Something that you have not touched on, and something that I think is a critical piece for you to include in your thoughts on this.

“I’m just not comfortable with a God who causes pain in order to get people to trust him, creates catastrophe in order to get people to love him, creates destruction in order to bring life, causes death in order to bring hope.”

Yet you have to compare this with the God described in scripture. You can rationalize away the OT if you want to, but as I’ve mentioned before, the NT has plenty have descriptions of God’s anger and wrath to be consistent with the OT.

This is a God who sent the plagues to Egypt. This is the God described who does similar things in Revelation. We should not just dismiss such descriptions so that we can describe a God that we’d be “comfortable with.”

derek. i don’t think there are passages of wrath in the new. partly because i don’t think revelation is literal. but whether a hebraic allegorical text.

nick i am suggesting that god is way more passive than we think he is, but not limiting (on my theological understanding) him to only be confined to that. i have a belief that his intervention is predominantly passive but i’m not willing to speak for god or tell him that he can or can’t, is able or unable to be active if he wants to at times. it can certainly be both/and. as a future parent, i imagine there will be times that i will take an active roll in my child’s life and intervene on his behalf whether it be with school or with a bully. but for the most part i hope to leave him to himself and let him take the lumps and bruises and figure out life as it comes to him. of course i will be relationally connected to him at all times so i will always be aware of his problems. but i’m not always going to bail him out when the shit hits the fan. sometimes he’s going to have to figure stuff out on his own. especially if he gets himself into the trouble. he’s going to need to figure a fruitful way out of it. deal with the consequences and move on. if i always bail him out . . . i wouldn’t be a very good father. i would be an enabler. and if i always ignored him and told him i would never help him if gets stuck in a jam . . . i’d be a distant ass.

seth. you and your orthodoxy. i agree these things are mysterious. but i also think it’s worth talking about. one could argue that santa claus prayer is a very hurtful and damaging thing. not only to the individual but to others as well. something nick blogged about not too long ago.

for example, a distant acquaintance of mine got dumped. she prayed to god to take her mind off of her ex. she meets 2 new guys in the same weekend and then gives thanks to god that he answered her prayer. god didn’t answer her prayer. life just happens. but holding this view/idea of prayer gives her a bad view/idea of god. one that spills over to many other areas. that’s why i brought it up. because i think this is a big enough issue that it colors the way a lot of people act/react with god/others.

derek/seth. i agree with you. i think god has the authority. i’m not dismissing that. see my point to nick. he can do whatever he wants to whenever he wants to. who the hell am to say any differently. afterall i’m not god. but again . . . i’m not talking about the authority. the question for me is how people pray and have a belief in a god who is a cause and effect god. this i think is a damaging view both in the short run and in the long run.

“i don’t think there are passages of wrath in the new…”

Ananias and Sapphira. Herod Agrippa. I’m sorry, you can’t get away from God’s wrath in the NT. And even without Revelation being literal, it is still a description of God and has merit to the discussion.

Let me do something completely unexpected and agree with something you originally wrote:

“But perhaps we are the ones we have been waiting for.”

I don’t know that I would have worded it that way, because it sounds a little bit like “God helps those who help themselves.” But certainly one of the things God calls us to do is to be agents of justice and mercy in the world. That is something that is very much OT and NT.

Sometimes, when others are praying to God for justice and mercy, God is trying to get us off of our butts and intervene on His behalf. To seek out those who are oppressed and work towards their relief. To seek out those who are in need and provide them food, clothes, and shelter.

interesting posts. i posted a bit ago a question to folks who praise god for every good thing if they are willing to give god credit for the bad. generated a lot of interesting answers. however, it also got one dude all worked up.

he did the usual fundi thing of “explaining” to me that yes god is sovereign but is not the author of evil and this is a mystery and closed it off with a call to turn to jesus.

love it.

Josh,

It seems to me that deism is getting at the right idea, but it isn’t going the whole 9 yards. It still hangs on the idea of God being “human-like”. It borrows too much from pagan images of God as a human intelligence living somewhere beyond the physical universe. I think you would find more freedom if you allow your mind to explore beyond the confines of theism. If we can begin to see God as the ground of all being rather than a being, then it really illiminates the problems in your post and the responses above. Why are we so insistent on thinking of God as a being? Why does it have to be a male being? Do you use the masculine pronouns intetionally or is it just habit?

nice points mike. i agree. i’m definitely not a proponent of deism. although i do see the benefits of god being somewhat “hands-off”.

and i use the masculine god simply because it’s still what most people relate to. if i used “she” i’d lose any momentum of thought as most people would check out.