The Mustang 3
‘God is in control,’ is what we Christians like to say when things get hairy, when we are worried about something that is important to us. What do we really mean by ‘God is in control’? I’d like to think about it in relation to my Mustang.
Was God in control of my choosing a Mustang for my first car? Did he decide before the world was made that I would choose a Mustang? If he did decide that, did I really choose a Mustang? Did God in his sovereign wisdom ordain that my father should fall in love with 1967 Mustangs and then own one in his early 20s so that when I was a teenager he would return to his love of Mustangs and begin restoring them so that I would fall in love with Mustangs instead of Camaros? Was God thinking of me when my car went through its stations on the Ford assembly line in 1965? Was God in his infinite wisdom invisibly directing the actions of every owner of that car to make sure that it achieved the proper state of disrepair by 1990? Did God have the designs of the Mustang stored away in his mind since before the foundation of the universe? Does that mean it was his will that Mustangs should handle so badly on wet roads with corners? Did God cause Henry Ford to start a automobile manufacturing company with me in mind? When God created the world did he place a certain bit of iron ore in the ground specifically to be discovered and used in the manufacture of my car? Was God supervising the rubber plantation which provided the material for my car’s tires to make sure that it was exactly the right quality (or lack of quality) rubber? Did God do all that so that he could tell me to sell it after a couple year to finance two mission trips and thus build my character and enable selected Russians and Venezuelans, which he chose before the foundations of the universe, to be saved?
Does that mean free will is an illusion and even the words I am typing now were ordained by God? Even if I type the word %&*@? Did God decide that I wouldn’t actually type the word I was thinking?
Or does it mean that I should go through mental and scriptural contortions to maintain the concept of free will even though God already decided it? If I manage to tie myself in those knots will I be able to get job at the circus?
Maybe God didn’t actually choose all that stuff, he just knew it was going to happen and allowed it? I was going to stay with Mustangs and avoid bringing up Hitler and 9/11, but doesn’t that make God in all his infinite wisdom, infinitely cruel? Seriously, no matter which way you spin it, it makes him cruel doesn’t it?
Or maybe God’s not in control the way I thought he was at the beginning of this post and I need to go look at scripture again without the ‘benefit’ of the phrase ‘God is in control’.
28 August 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: god
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