UGW #13-15: Limiting God's Power? Does He Cause Nations To Sin?

Understanding God's Will #13, 14, 15

#13: But aren’t you limiting God’s power when you say that He’s not in total control of everything?

            
No, I don’t think so.  And yes, He is in control of everything as far as everything that happens to us has to go through Him first.  And I am not saying that He’s not all-powerful.  I believe that He is indeed all-powerful.  If He chose to wipe out the earth in a second, He could.  He could do whatever He wants to do.  He could control every movement we make, if that's what He wanted to do.  

But I don’t think that He does do whatever He wants to do or control every movement we make.  Because that's not how He wanted things to be.  I think that when He created the world, He decided to make man with a free-will that He (generally) will not override, even though He can.  Because He wanted people who would choose to love Him and worship Him, not who have to because they have no choice.
           
And if you still aren’t sure if it’s biblically accurate that He voluntarily limits His use of power and that He allows people to make choices that affect His Will for them, if you still want to say that God causes everything that happens and always does whatever He wants regardless of us, here’s a few examples from the Bible: 

            
In 1 Samuel 8, we read how Israel asks for a king.  This was not God’s desire for them.  He even says that they are asking for another king because they have rejected Him as “king.”  But after warning them of what a king will do to them, they demand one anyway.  And so He provides one.  But He makes it clear that this is not best for them.  It’s not His Will that they have an earthly king, but He gives them what they asked for.

            
In Genesis 16, we read how Abraham took it into his own hands to fulfill God’s promise to provide him with an heir.  Instead of waiting for God, he slept with Sarah’s maidservant and she conceived Ishmael.  Was it God’s Will that Abraham didn’t wait and took matters in his own hands?  Did God cause Abraham to do this for some reason?  Of course not.  We never see that God instructed Abraham to do this or that He agreed with Abraham’s decision.  The promised child was Isaac.  But God allowed Abraham to sleep with the maidservant.  And God, in His supreme wisdom, will take whatever happens (even those things He doesn’t cause) and work them out for good.        

            
Exodus 15:25-26 gives us another example of how God works, as He gives these instructions to the Israelites:  “There the Lord made a decree and a law for them, and there he tested them.  He said, ‘If you listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, who heals you.”

            
What happened to the Israelites hinged on what the Israelites did, on their obedience, whether they listened to the Lord or not.  God doesn’t say that He does what He wills, regardless of what man does.  He says that we have an influence on the direction of our lives.  He gives us a choice and responds to us according to our choice.  (And for Calvinists to say otherwise, they have to ignore or alter the plain teaching of Scripture, substituting in some kind of "secret knowledge" about what God really meant to say when He said what He did.)  

Think about how many times you've read things in the Bible like this:  “If you obey ... If you listen to My voice ... I put before you blessings and curses, now choose.”  

            
If Calvinism were true, then none of these commands or warnings matter, for we couldn't even want to obey them unless God predestined us to.  The whole Bible and all of God's instructions to us would be one big joke!  Warnings, like what He told Ninevah about destroying them in 40 days, would be lies, telling them they'd be destroyed if they didn't repent when all along He predestined they wouldn't be destroyed.

Leave it to Satan to come up with a theology that destroys God's Word and trustworthiness (just like he did in the Garden of Eden), in the name of "upholding God's sovereignty and bringing Him glory."

I’m not saying that we have authority over God or that we are sovereign or "in control."  Once again, I am saying that God voluntarily limits the use of His power by allowing man to have free-will.  And instead of overriding man’s free-will (and the consequences that come with it), He tries to get man to work in cooperation with Him to get His Will done, by giving us instructions in His Word, by growing our faith, by helping us to be more like Him, by leading us in wisdom, by prayer, and by teaching us to get our Will in line with His.   

            
At least, He does this with those who are willing to.  We are not puppets on a string, under the control of an all-powerful God that has orchestrated every event and detail of our lives.  He made us with free minds, free-will, responsibility, and the right to have an effect on what happens in this world and in our lives.  For good or bad.  

And that's a scary and sobering thought! 

# 14.  So what about in the Old Testament when we read things like God sending a nation to destroy another nation as a punishment, but then He turns around and punishes the nation that He just used as a tool of discipline?  How could He cause this - force a nation to be His tool of discipline - and then punish them for it?  Isn’t that unfair?

            
I had a hard time understanding this, too, to be honest.  But keeping in mind His justness, His sovereignty, His fairness, and His decision to allow us free-will (and the consequences), this is the best way I can understand it:
          
Let’s look at Isaiah 10 as an example.  In verse 5, God calls Assyria the “rod of my anger, in whose hand is the club of my wrath!”  And God uses Assyria to punish His people who have turned to idols.  And then in verse 12, He says that when it is finished, He will punish Assyria for their haughtiness and pride.

            
So how can God cause a nation to attack another one, but then punish them for it?  

Personally, I think that it comes down, once again, to the difference between “cause versus allow”.  Or in this case, “cause versus use”.  I think it’s not that He caused Assyria to be a certain way and forced them to do what they did.  It’s that He used them as they were. 

            
He looked ahead (not technically though, because He is outside of time) and knew what that country was going to be like, and so He saw how they could be used to accomplish His purposes.  And so He took them as they were, as they chose to be, (not forcing them to be the way they were) and He worked it into His plan to discipline Jerusalem.  And then, since the Assyrians were responsible for the way they were, for the kind of people and nation they had become, God could righteously punish them, after He had used them to accomplish His purposes.

            
Imagine, as an imperfect illustration, an undercover sting by police.  Let’s say that they need to get Big Man X.  And they know the best way to get Big Man X is to use Little Man Y, the crummy toady.  And so they work out a plan that uses Little Man Y to get access to Big Man X, though Little Man Y is unaware that he is being used to mete out justice.  And when the plan works, they arrest Big Man X and Little Man Y. 

            
Now, they didn’t cause Little Man Y to be the way he was, they didn’t force him to be a criminal and do illegal things, they just used what he was to their advantage and to administer justice.  And so he could be fairly punished, after being used to catch Big Man X.  This, to me, seems to be the best way to view it because it factors in God’s justness and sovereignty and our free-will.

But Calvinism, which believes that God first caused Little Man Y to be wicked and caused him to do wicked things, makes God untrustworthy and unjust because this would mean God causes the very things He punishes us for.  And if this is how God is - causing everything we do, giving us no choice to be or act any differently - then why in the world do we bother caring about anything at all and why in the world would we trust/love/worship Him and why in the world would it matter if we trust/love/worship Him or not, because it wouldn't change a thing and we have no control over it anyway?  

I can't think of a better way to make life utterly hopeless and God's Word utterly pointless!

[To emphasize a point: Calvinists try to convince us that God punished Assyria for attacking Israel after first "causing" Assyria to attack Israel.  They use this to "prove" that God can cause us to do bad things but hold us accountable for it.  However, this throws major doubt on God's goodness and justice, and it can't be fixed by Calvinists saying "Oh, well, we just have to believe it because it's what the Bible says."  No!  It's not what the Bible says.  As I already pointed out, God doesn't cause us to sin or be wicked; He just works our self-chosen sins into His plans.  And since we chose to be who we are and to sin, He can justly punish us for it.  And additionally, notice in Isaiah 10:12-14 that, technically, Assyria was punished for being arrogant and prideful, for thinking that they conquered Israel all in their own power.  Big difference!  They weren't necessarily punished for attacking Israel, as Calvinists teach.  They were punished for being prideful, for thinking they won in their own power, for not giving God the credit for their victory.  So in this point, Calvinism falls apart even more.]  

            

#15.  So you do believe that He is sovereign over all things? 

            
Yes, I do.  I just define "sovereignty" according to how I see God acting in the Bible, how He reveals Himself to be, keeping in mind His essential characteristics of being holy, just, righteous, loving, etc., instead of doing what Calvinists do, which is pre-deciding that sovereignty has to mean that God controls everything or else He can't be God and then reinterpreting the Bible in light of that misunderstanding, even though it contradicts what's clearly, plainly said in the Bible and turns God into a contradictory, unjust, untrustworthy monster who has little love for his creation.

I've heard something like this before and I like it (I'm not sure where I heard it, probably from Leighton Flowers over at Soteriology 101):  

"Calvinists start from 'sovereignty' (their misunderstanding of it) and then determine how a sovereign God (as they define it) shows love.  But biblically, we should start from the truth that 'God is love' and then figure out how a truly loving God exercises His sovereignty." (paraphrased)

If you start from a misunderstanding that sovereignty has to mean "controlling all things," then you've got a horrible God who causes the evil things He punishes us for.  (And then Calvinists defend this by saying that being sovereign means He can do whatever He wants to, even at the expense of His love for His creation.  They first misdefine sovereignty and then they use it to defend their misunderstanding of His sovereignty.  Bad form!)

But if you start from the truth that "God is love," that He is being honest when He says He truly loves all people and wants all people to be saved, then you can understand that evil and sin are not caused by Him (because a truly loving, trustworthy God cannot cause evil and sin), and so they must be caused by us and by demons, and so God must have decided to not control everything but to allow us to make real decisions, just as the Bible repeatedly shows in example after example.  And so even though bad things happen, God can truly be trusted and is still truly good and loving, because He is not the cause of evil and sin.

The following is a comment from a commenter, Graceadict (a non/anti-Calvinist), which I found in a post at Soteriology 101 called "5 Reasons Why I Stayed Out of Calvinism".  This comment zeroed in on how Calvinists use "sovereignty" to excuse some of their worst heresies and distortions of God's character.

Graceadict starts by referring to a quote from John Calvin that goes like this: “Hence it is not strange, that by the Apostle a taste of heavenly gifts, and by Christ himself a temporary faith, is ascribed to them. Not that they truly perceive the power of spiritual grace and the sure light of faith; but the Lord, the better to convict them, and leave them without excuse.”

(This quote is about Calvin's belief that Calvi-god sometimes tricks unelected people into thinking they are elected, truly saved, when they aren't, just so that He has even more reason to damn them to hell.  So I guess sending them to eternal torment in hell for the unbelief He Himself caused in them, through no fault or choice of their own, just isn't enough, huh!?!)

And this is where Graceadict starts commenting (altered slightly for clarification):

"BY CHRIST HIMSELF A TEMPORARY FAITH, IS ASCRIBED TO THEM…THE BETTER TO CONVICT THEM, AND LEAVE THEM WITHOUT EXCUSE."

This is such a disgraceful distortion of who God is…  Just think of God’s moral attributes of TRUTHFULNESS, HOLINESS, LOVE, MERCY, JUSTICE, KINDNESS, GOODNESS, LONGSUFFERING, SHOWS NO PARTIALITY.  It (Calvinism's god) is nothing like the God of the Bible. 

It is even more horrible when we understand that, under the Calvi-god system, God could just as easily ascribed a “genuine faith” to them instead of a “temporary faith” (which propels them towards destruction), that Calvi-god wants to deceive them and others and deeply wants them in hell more than anything and so instead of a genuine faith, HE irresistibly gives them a “temporary (fake) faith”.  

In their system no one can have faith apart from God “effectually giving” (forcibly giving) it to them at some point in their lives.  So the fact that God gives a damning faith to them instead of the genuine faith reflects on the nature of their Calvi-god, a morally distorted being who does not align with the Biblical definition of Good, Loving, Merciful, and Holy.

Under the Calvinist paradigm they forget that God is truly a moral being, and a morally GOOD being.  They think their definition of Sovereignty can trump any moral attribute that God has.  So the Calvi-god can author evil, can be unloving, unmerciful, unjust, untruthful, as long as you say:  “WELL GOD IS SOVEREIGN – HE CAN DO ANYTHING, WE MUST SIMPLY ACCEPT IT AND CALL IT HOLY AND GOOD” even though it contradicts the Scriptures’ own definitions of what is Holy, Good, and Loving.

It is not our own standard of Holy, Good, and Loving that is being contradicted.  It is the very SCRIPTURE’S definitions of these terms that is being contradicted.

They think that the term “SOVEREIGN” means He can be as evil and distorted as they want to make HIM out to be and that the Word “Sovereign” takes care of all of those distortions.

“A Sovereign God can do anything.  Who are you, O man, to question God?”

BTW – We are not questioning God.  We are questioning the Calvinists profaning His Holy name and then thinking by tacking on “Sovereign” it makes their blasphemy go away.  It does NOT.

Just like Calvinists use the words “Mystery, Paradox, and Tension” to cover over all kinds of Calvinist contradictions to the Bible (which they assert are true) ... SO ALSO when they use the WORD “SOVEREIGN.”  It is often a tactic to cover over the fact that they have in many cases constructed their Calvi-god who is demonstrably unloving, unmerciful, unjust, untruthful, unholy, evil.  But they think if they just apply the word Sovereign and say “Sovereign God can do whatever HE wants,” it excuses all the Profaning of God’s Holy name and BLASPHEMY that they have just engaged in.

“Sovereign” is NOT a word that can be employed to cover over the profaning of God’s Holy name that goes on in Calvinism.

Take note how they use the word Sovereign to do just that. It does NOT Glorify God… it is truly profaning His Holy name.




I believe that all things are ultimately in His hands.  And all things have to ultimately pass through Him first: what the enemy can do to us, what situations and trials we face, what consequences we reap from our choices, etc.  It all has to go through Him, and He will only allow what He is willing to allow.  That doesn’t mean that He desires all these things to happen, but in deference to our free-will, He does allow it.  And He allows what He knows He can use for our good, for mankind’s good, or for His glory in the near or distant future.  But we still have free-will, and God can use the free-will choices that we make to accomplish His purposes.

Contrary to Calvinism's false dichotomies of "Either God controls everything or He controls nothing" and "Either He is sovereign or man is sovereign," the truth is that free-will and God's sovereignty go hand-in-hand.  (Calvinist give people lots of false dichotomies, forcing you to reject the one that's clearly wrong and to choose the one that's Calvinist.  But they actually leave out the right answer, the biblical one, from the very beginning, forcing you to side with Calvinism.  It's cult-like manipulation!)

God has chosen, as seen all throughout the Bible, to restrain His use of power to give men real choices, and then He works His Will out with and through our self-made choices, our obedience or disobedience.  He is wise enough and powerful enough that He doesn't have to cause everything that happens in order to bring about His plans.  He can take whatever we do, whatever we choose, and work it together into something good.  He is just that big of a God!

And this is how He has decided He wants things to be.  

As I've heard it said before, "Free-will is God's Will."




For the posts in this series, see the "Understanding God's Will" label in the sidebar (or find the original series, without the Calvinism info, by clicking here).