Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Suffering and God's Sovereignty



The God who speaks and shows Himself is not a God who explains Himself.

Think of Job. For 40+ chapters Job accuses God and asks God to explain Himself. When God does appear, He does not give Job an explanation. Instead He confronts Job and asks Him, in effect, ‘why do you think you deserve an explanation?’

Why does God act like this?

An explanation is a relational substitute for trust and the Bible makes it clear that in the Divine-Human relationship, God maximally values trust.  

God gives us enough information to know that He has an explanation, even if we can’t know the explanation (e.g. He explains how sin entered the world and how it impacted the created order; He also promises that all will ultimately be remade). 

God gives us enough to be able to trust Him, then He invites us to trust Him. If we can’t accept a God that reveals Himself without explaining Himself, we cannot be Christians.

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