Photo by Alexey Ruben
I prior understood the sovereignty of God to be a mechanical predetermination of things. It was all rigid lines, concrete silos, systematic categorization, and God – either heartless or resigned or exasperated – in a segregated control room.
Now, however, I would contend that God’s sovereignty looks a lot more creative, dynamic, and relational than our theological systems might make it out to be. God’s sovereignty is more like mercy than like judicial necessities and more like love than like mechanical inevitabilities. There is more of life in it than we can now yet know, and certainly more than we yet believe. Also, it is relational because God is relational – that is why prayer matters. Prayer is a participation in God’s creative sovereignty which in love always hopes, always trusts, always perseveres. Creatively sovereign, persistently invested, God is attentive to what spoken by a child might usher in another piece of redemption.
Let me submit at least this: an infinitely creative God will have energy enough and resource enough to never submit to a less than satisfactory status quo. Anything less than flourishing – than Shalom – will not last, even if it’s all we can yet see. And even though we cannot imagine how God could make all things new – as he claims to do in his Revelation to John – that does not mean it is not possible, because, behold, with God, all things are possible (Matt. 19:26, Rev. 21:5). Isn’t infinite creativity and absolute sovereignty sufficient to dispel the illusion of any tragic inevitability?
We despair for all kinds or reasons. Some for the near certain loss of a planet to pollution-induced entropy. Some for the reactive and self-perpetuating woundedness of humanity. Some despair for the perpetuity of war or the ubiquity of dehumanizing prejudices. Some Christians despair for the loss of a generation to humanistic ideologies. Some for the inefficacy and blindness of the Church they belong to. Some, or perhaps only myself, despaired that God had resigned to a lesser good.
In each of these cases, the person despairing believes that what they understand to be the ultimate good is inevitably impossible and our actual world knows only a compromised good. Many who actively fight for what they understand to be the ultimate good are afraid on a visceral level that it will never come pass. Some resign the world to its entropy and fight only for their tribe, their family, their nation. I submit that so much of the world’s division and strife is because of this tribalism – this hoarding for one’s own and this resignation of the other to the dark inevitabilities. We have worst fears for our personal lives, and worst fears for the world.
Here’s the thing – some of our worst fears will probably come true.
Maybe some “inevitabilities” must come to pass. Maybe those who live by the sword must die by the sword. Maybe those who’ve built their life on a lie must be exposed (As, interestingly, many of the world’s powerful men presently are via the internet). Maybe the arch of every fall story does have to play out. Maybe consequences need to be felt through. Maybe what of a global economy that is built on human exploitation must come to its ruin. Maybe nations built on inflated numbers and false promises need to pop. Maybe our modern “Babylons” must fall and our faith in them be shown misguided. Maybe humanity needs to feel the scarcity we are now starting to feel, which we induced by the exploitation of the planet. Maybe, in every case, we created our own “judgement day.”
But maybe, in the creative sovereignty of God, it is in the completion of these ruin and consequence stories that he can plant the seeds of resurrection. Perhaps the tragic inevitabilities we fear so much are the means by which God will till the ground for a crop of redemption. As the stories of human injustice arc to their completion, then arises the arc of ultimate redemption, by God, by Grace.
In my personal experience, it was in a death of sorts that I found life. It felt like my life ended. Then in that collapse I freshly and dramatically experienced grace and I felt like my life began. It was a personal resurrection that is very real to me and through which now I see the world in resurrection colour. Death is real, but Christ my life is more real, or finally real.
I read my spiritual journey through the paradigm of death and resurrection. Death the horrible final chapter – Resurrection the graciously ironic sequel. Death the inevitability – resurrection the sovereign redemption of inevitability. The first is a true story but it finds itself within a larger one. My familiarity with God convinces me that though death happens, it happens within the context of life. Life is the encompassing, meaning-making narrative.
(Don’t many other popular meta-narratives say that death or annihilation is the ultimate?)
I can’t help but read human history also in the death-resurrection paradigm. Some things must die before their life truly begins. Many are the stories of grief and loss and failure, but these are not the final story. Many are the experiences of ruining trauma and exasperating pain and enslaving mental illness, but these are not the final experience. I’m compelled by the statement of an American pastor:
“I’m not interested in any inevitabilities. I’m interested in possibilities, which is what God is. If there is a God anywhere at all, then there’s nowhere that resurrection is not possible and no story that is necessarily over.” – Jonathan Martin
Perhaps the existence of an infinitely creative, and consumingly sovereign God – perhaps his existence and his nature insist that what Martin says is true: no story is necessarily over. There is no death or inevitability that God has resigned to death and inevitability.
God himself chose to experience death. Think about that. He experienced the ultimate inevitability. He contained it within his experience and then by his resurrection proclaimed that the end is not end. The inevitable cannot remain inevitable if it has God to contend with. Ooh, I like that line. *mic drop*
I don’t know about you, but this makes me feel safe and alive and this allows me to see life as an opportunity instead of a crisis. I feel trauma but it does not finally define me. The same is true of the world that God is invested in: It knows trauma, but that trauma will not finally define it. In partnership with my creatively sovereign God, I’m putting my hand to the redemption coming beyond the death. I take the hand of God who surprised us once and will surprise us again with how completely he can disempower any inevitability.
The Spirit and the Bride say come,
And pray “Your kingdom come and will be done
On earth as is in heaven.”
These are not last-ditch, contingency plan prayers. These are pulses from the very heart of God, beating with the same creative, redemptive ambition that has fueled him eternally. These are prayers that anticipate the same ultimate good that God has always hoped for, worked for, and looked forward to. I submit in conclusion, a perfectly sovereign, and infinitely creative God will have energy and resourcefulness enough to turn any inevitability into a chapter in his redemption story.