Where is God? - Daniel Mosby
Events like our current situation often cause people to evaluate their faith or lack of. Some people when times are difficult come closer to or discover God as their rock and comfort. Others get angry with God, questioning his motives or existence as from their perspective he is suddenly absent from the world.
I want to spend some time exploring some of these deep personal and theological questions. These are my own opinions that have come from my own reflections on Scripture, time spent with the spirit and conversations with others.
Let’s start by being clear COVID19 is an attack of the enemy, it is not from God. God only brings good. James 1:17 says “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”.
As Christians our best witness to the character of God isn’t Moses, David or Elijah but Christ. In John 14 verse 9 Jesus says “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'?”. Jesus is God, the character of Jesus is the Character of God. And what was Jesus’s Character? One of non-violence, one of healing and one of love. He refused to condemn anyone other than the religious legalistic pharisees who sought to distort God’s identity and make him more about their own values. Jesus only brought good things to the world, it was no coincidence his first miracle was to turn water into wine.
Jesus could have used his power to punish those who wished him ill, he could have refused to heal sinners but that’s not who he was. Jesus was so committed to his non-violent, non-vengeful unconditional love that he died for his ideals. The Cross dealt with sin, it is a degradation and flippancy to the power of Christ’s sacrifice to suggest that the Cross wasn’t sufficient and some extra punishment is now needed in the form of COVID19. I know there are some schools of thought that the virus is being used by God to do some good, but then you have to say that God is happy for thousands to die to accomplish his good. This idea of God using cannon fodder is to be frank quite insulting to his character that is expressed through Christ. Yes, God has an amazing ability to bring good out of the most terrible of situations but that does not mean God caused them.
The next place some people go to is to quote some scriptures usually, but not exclusively, Old Testament that show God as an angry vengeful monster God. On that let me say this, the Bible as a whole is perfect and non-contradictory but you can take passages out of context of the whole and make God out to be something other than whom Jesus revealed him to be. I don’t like that the Bible can appear contradictory but it’s the truth. As Christian’s what we have to do, in interpretation, is always look to the words and actions of Christ. In the sermon on the mount Jesus himself contradicts and even amends the Old Testament when in Matthew 5 38 he says: “You have heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” If that theology was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me. To ignore the teachings of Christ in favour of an alternative apoplectic, angry God is to ignore Christ himself. Christs’ words and actions always showed nothing but love and compassion.
The next natural question for me then is a lot more challenging, if God is all powerful (omnipotent) then even though he doesn’t cause bad things he has the power to stop them. I’m a teacher if a child in my classroom attacks another causing serious injury and I stand back and allow that to happen when I have the power to intervene then I am complicit in the pain, and would lose my job! The argument that I didn’t want to interfere with free will would hold no gravity in the head teacher’s office.
So even though God doesn’t cause suffering is he complicit with it? There’s the age-old adage either God must not be all powerful or he must not be all loving to allow suffering to take place. Well that doesn’t fit with the all good God of love portrayed by Jesus. So there must be something more. I think a good way of looking at it is like this: In allowing free will God has chosen to give up some aspects of his omnipotence. If humans have the capacity to love we must also have the capacity to hate. If we have the ability as a species to produce Mother Theresa we must have the ability to produce Stalin. Love not power is God’s primary concern; love trumps power every time. So God has chosen to give up some aspects of his power in order for us to have love. It’ not that God chooses not to intervene with the suffering; rather that he cannot intervene with the suffering because to do so would be to remove free will.
That argument works for me for the consequences of human action or inaction. Where it is less clear cut is in cases where the suffering is from a natural source. For example: disease, earthquakes, flooding etc. Now again you can, successfully, argue that things like flooding and famine are at least in part caused by human fault in global warming or inequality. You could even argue that some diseases are as we have the medical abilities we don’t share with the developing world. But there are certainly cases such as earthquakes, tsunamis etc that are completely random and could in no way be caused by human activity. These so called “acts of God”.
God made a perfect world without any of these sufferings. But because of the choices of humans starting with Adam and the apple (whether you take that literally or metaphorically) we bought death and suffering into the world. This is where I think we become really arrogant to think that we understand how the Universe works. Clearly the workings of the spiritual world are, at least in part, beyond our understanding. There are forces in play that we have little knowledge of, at least until we meet with God in heaven. Here we have to accept that we don’t understand it all. Quite how natural disasters (or pandemics) are a consequence of sin, the mechanism behind it if you will, is beyond us. One analogy is in a similar way to God gives us free will nature also has free will. In all of this though it is imperative that we remember always that God feels our pain so deeply and is with us always even when we don’t recognise it.
So I can cope with all of that, with my faith in the identity of God (and the true identity of humanity) intact. So then why sometimes does God intervene? Why does he sometimes heal and sometimes not? What I believe is crucial here is not to blame the individual, neither the patient nor the person praying, we must not chastise them for a lack of faith. God isn’t into a blame game. The suffering isn’t caused by individual sin but the collective sin of the world. I know many people with very strong faith who have not been healed.
Again, this is where we must just say, I don’t know. We have to say this is more complicated than I could ever understand but God I trust that you are good. We pray fervently every time in the expectation of healing praising him when he does and remaining trusting in his goodness when he doesn’t.
But what I do know is as Christians God wants us to work together to a point where the original perfect kingdom of heaven, the one without suffering, is restored. 1 John 5:4 says “for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.” That restoration will only come fully when Christ returns, but until then as the Global church our aim is to move towards that goal. As we do that, we will become more intimate with the will of God, more in tune with his spirit, more confident in our identity of being made like him. As that happens our prayer will become more powerful, healings and other miracles will become more frequent.
We don’t know how many pandemics God has stopped before we have become aware of them. We don’t know to what extent God has guided world leaders into taking action to stop deaths from this pandemic. I believe as we work towards full restoration in partnership with God, as we make the Earth and ourselves more like how it and we were created, God will reveal more and more to us. We will see more and more signs and wonders of God’s infinite compassion, grace and love.
To conclude: God is good, anything that is not good is not of him. He isn’t complicit in our suffering; he doesn’t choose to allow suffering. He has chosen love over power and cannot intervene for the sake of free will. But this is a simplification and we don’t yet have all the answers. What we can do though is as individuals, as a local and a global church continue to seek intimacy with the Father that will work towards restoring the original suffering free world God intended for us.
If God is not in the virus where is he? He’s in the nurse caring for the patient, he’s in the 750,000 NHS volunteers, he’s in the rainbows drawn by children, he’s in the applause for NHS staff, he’s in the husband serving his wife in isolation. God is in the good which is still in abundance even in these dark times, if it’s not good, it’s not God.
Daniel Mosby, All Nations Church, Airevalley, April 2020
About the author.
Daniel, or Moz! As he is better known, is married to Keldene and teaches Physics full time at an inner-city Bradford Comprehensive school. He is a father of two young children with additional needs adopted into his family. He is also a Scout and Beaver Scout Leader. Daniel is part of the leadership team at All Nations Church Aire Valley under the leadership of Pastor Geoff Newton where he has specific responsibility for the children’s and youth ministry an area close to his heart. Working with Scripture Union Daniel leads the ministry of “X:site Keighley” which uses events, holiday clubs and residential holidays to help children, young people and their families explore their faith.