God's Sovereignty in the Midst of Life's Struggles

I was recently in a discussion on Facebook dealing with God's sovereignty. In it I was accused of being one of Job's friends, acting as a lousy comforter. I won't deny that I was a lousy comforter because I was in no way trying to be one. I didn't realize that the person with whom I was engaging was currently suffering. When I read what was stated, I simply saw an argument for a certain view of God's sovereignty, one that I couldn't rectify with clear statements regarding God's sovereignty in Scripture. My Reformed understanding is often considered cold by those of a different view, so again, it doesn't surprise me that my interlocutor felt like I was a terrible comforter.

Many folks don't see how a Reformed understanding can bring comfort in times of evil or peril. The truth is though, it is only a Reformed understanding that can bring me peace in my current circumstances. To allow you into my life, here is what is going on: I'm a father of 4 young boys who is self-employed. The contract work I do has been dwindling in recent weeks and months to the point that life has become financially unstable. I am under threat now to lose it all (utilities shut off and eviction). I continued with the work for two reasons: 1) I was hoping the drought would soon end and things turn around (because in theory it would provide the best), and 2) It still paid better than anything I was qualified for in the classifieds. I have applied to other jobs along the way, with a couple interviews, but I haven't received any offers. Life is incredibly hard at the moment.

To quote Dr. James White, theology matters. Your theology will direct the rest of your life and beliefs. The way I see it, I have 3 options as a Christian in understanding my current hardships in light of God's sovereignty. I can approach it as an Open Theist, an Arminian/Molinist, or from a Reformed perspective. I will engage with each in that order.

Open Theism

If I were to look at life through the eyes of an open theist, they would say God rules over this world like a king rules over a nation. God has plans for the world, so in that sense He has a foreknowledge, but He doesn't know any of the contingencies. Man hasn't made His choices yet, so their decision or action does not exist and therefore it cannot be known, much like a king might not know the intent of people in his kingdom until they actually act upon it. Thus, evil is explained away as something God didn't plan for, nor did He even know it would pan out like it did. A car accident where a parent loses a child is just as much a surprise and tragedy to God as it is to the parent. To someone who is suffering, this can be quite appealing, because God is shown to be crying with you, and essentially you can no longer blame Him for it.

Or can you? Why, if God is so powerful did He not stop the accident just in time? Send an angel to be an airbag and protect your child? God didn't, because it was out of His control. He is unable to interfere with a person's freewill, and the future is as much of a surprise to Him as it is to us. Maybe God is a shoulder to cry on, but He is no more capable of saving someone as a monarch is able to keep one peasant from murdering another peasant.

In my own situation, I see no purpose to pray to such a god. God cannot act in the lives of people to direct their steps, because God will not infringe upon man's will and He doesn't even know what a person will do until that moment occurs. So what is the purpose of prayer? How can I ask God to help me as I try to provide for my family? Ultimately, He can't. He will willingly be a shoulder for me to cry on, but He can't help me any more than I help myself. He doesn't even know what job opportunities will exist in next week's want ads. Such a god isn't in any sort of control, but is honestly at the whims and wills of mankind. The peasant rules over the king.

Arminianism

The classic view of an Arminian is that God has complete foreknowledge of the future. Somehow He knows exactly all of our choices beforehand and plans accordingly. The best analogy I can think of is that it is like watching a rerun. You've seen the end of the show, so the story doesn't surprise you, but you still laugh with the jokes and cry with the sorrows. The reason I consider it a rerun is that it suffers the same problem of Open Theism: God will not infringe upon the will of man, so there is nothing He can do to change the direction of the story. Prayer again becomes meaningless. God is nothing but a shoulder to cry on. Worse yet, if you consider God to be sovereign in this understanding, God foreknew what would happen and yet He does nothing. So either God can't act, meaning He isn't sovereign, or He chose not to act. If God loved the world so much, why would He chose not to act in a benevolent way, preventing that child from dying in the car crash, or not permitting someone like Hitler to rise to power? For all the evil in the world, it would seem that the Arminian God is powerless to do anything, because otherwise He acts a great deal against His own omnibenevolent will.

In my own circumstances, why would I pray to such a god? He foreknew these tumultuous times, and yet did nothing to prevent them if he is truly sovereign. Maybe it is because He can't do anything, because He can't infringe upon man's will. So to pray for a job, He can't provide, because that would require the employer's decision making faculties to be directed in a certain direction. Ultimately, what I find here is a god upon whose shoulder I could cry, but a god who is powerless to help me.

Reformed / Calvinism

In the Reformed understanding, God knows the future because He planned it that way. No surprises and nothing out of His control. He acts always in accordance with His good will, and nothing can prevent Him from acting. He directs the hearts of men, and knows all of their days before even day one has been lived. The thing to note is that God has ordained both the means as well as the end. He has also ordained the work of secondary causes. He knows how men will act, so he directs their steps according to their wills for His ultimate purposes. He directs a king's heart like a channel of water. He is the one who brings blessing and calamity, and it is from His divine will we experience both good and bad.

Many find this concept of God to be morally reprehensible. The problem is, if you accuse God of such heinousness, the Arminian God must be considered just as reprehensible if He truly is sovereign because He refuses to do anything about the problems and evils in your life despite His foreknowledge of them. If He isn't sovereign, like the other option in Arminianism or Open Theism, God is impotent and therefore isn't a god at all.

The problem is, though, that God isn't morally reprehensible in the Reformed model. Instead, you see God in complete control, using evil to result in ultimate good. A child may consider being disciplined as evil, yet a good parent knows that disciplining the child results in their ultimate good. If someone was taken against their will and locked in a small room for several years, it would be considered torture and inhumane, yet we create prison cells to lock away criminals for breaking the law, and we see it as justice. Many of the things we consider evil in this life may in fact be justice or discipline because we cannot see the ultimate plan which God is working out in this world, or because we are biased to our own conditions and concerns. There are other evils which simply occur due to this being a fallen world and that there is a war being raged against Satan. There are many possible reasons for the evils that befall us day to day. I would encourage everyone to meditate upon Jesus' response to the problem of evil found in Luke 13:1-5, and consider His servant Job as well.

So what about my own circumstances? In this situation, I see that God has a purpose for the struggle and evil currently befalling me. Maybe I don't understand it, but I can trust that there is a plan, just like my children trust me in the things they don't understand. Further, I see a God who is sovereign. When I pray to Him, I can believe my prayer will be effectual, because the God I trust is in complete control and can act on my behalf. I don't know the future, but I know the one in whose hands the future is. Only in this can I find true comfort, because not only can I cry on my God's shoulder, I can trust that He is in control.