What does the will of God mean? Every time i hear the phrase what comes to mind is the question, ‘If God dies who gets all His stuff?’

But it’s probably not that. After all, where would we keep it?

i had an interesting interaction around the topic of God’s will on Facebook the other day and for clarity’s sake thought it wouldn’t hurt to write some words on it as to how i see it and hopefully generate some conversation to see what other people think.

As a follower of Jesus i take my ideas from the Bible and how i understand it and as much as some people would prefer to use the phrase “what the bible says” that is just not accurate enough because there is always some form of interpretation involved – the sooner we see that the better. Even the start of most of us having to read the bible in English as opposed to the original languages it was written in means that translation has happened and the fact that if you walk into the book shop which may not be named you have a choice of NIV, NLT, ESV, NESV, King James and maybe fifty other translations tells us that it is not always as clear cut as we would like it to be.

Add to that the fact that people have used the bible to protect slavery and to challenge it, to withhold rights from woman and to champion them, to set up apartheid and to tear it down, to have three mainstream ideas of how the end times are going to happen and so on, shows that “the bible says so” may not be the most helpful phrase uttered ever. ‘This is how i read the bible on that matter’ feels a lot more humble, generous and likely to be correct.

The Will of God

We do tend to like to complicate things and i’m not sure that’s always helpful, so when i think of the will of God i think it breaks down into three quite easy to understand categories:

[I] God is in control of everything and makes everything happen. 

[II] God is in control of nothing and makes nothing happen.

[III] Something in between, where the possibility and mystery of free will lives.

If you can think of a fourth category that doesn’t fit into either of those i will be amazed. How we see each of those three categories though will i’m sure be vastly different.

God is in control of everything and makes everything happen. 

For me, [I] speaks of a puppet master God and gives me the message that nothing i do matter. If God is completely in charge and His will is the only thing that happens, then i might as well sit back and instigate the world’s largest Settlers of Catan tournament in history, because my involvement is absolutely meaningless.

The problems i have with this idea of God, where every single thing is attributed to His will and where people end up saying painful things to people at funerals like “God took your baby!” is that if you believe this, you then really have to believe that God is the one who is responsible for murder and rape and child pornography.

People took issue with an ‘If your God is like that…’ phrase i used the other day but i have to be honest, if you are genuinely saying that that is how your belief and understanding of God works, then that doesn’t sound like anything i want to be a part of. That truly doesn’t sound in any way, shape, or form like a God who is categorised in the bible as being Love. With mercy, justice and grace thrown in for good measure. It just doesn’t. And i don’t think you can have an ‘Everything is God’s will’ theology without that being a logical consequence…

God is in control of nothing and makes nothing happen.

This is the picture of the absent God. A mad scientist in a Universal laboratory who big banged everything together and then sat back to watch what happened. The main problem with this kind of thinking is Jesus because Jesus by His very nature and being was the epitomy of a God who was interested in His creation and chose to do something about the mess it found itself in.

While this theology is fairly easy – i think – to discard, i think in reality a LOT of christians live as if they believed this, even if they would argue that they don’t. We believe whatever we believe about God’s will and plan and then we live as if God is not involved or going to be at all.

So the challenges are how do we “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your path?” [Proverbs 3.5-6] How do we “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be given unto you.”[Matthew 6.33]? What does this mean practically when it comes to insurance or someone being sick – do we pray or do we take them to the doctor or do we do both and is one showing a lack of faith and the other a lack of wisdom?

i often speak about it as “Trust God, but have a backup plan.” Which to me is what insurance feels like, but how do you not have insurance if you have a young child for example? These are complicated issues for sure and i feel like the answers lie in community somehow and the search for interdependence over independence and for us to become a whole lot more creative than we have ever been. But they are not straightforward.

However, if my theology says God gets involved but my life is managed in such a way that if He never got involved i would never even notice [some churches run like that – if God left did we notice?] is that being true to who God is? Has society brought us to the place of being completely self-dependent that we can secretly subtly feel like we don’t need God?

Something in between, where the possibility and mystery of free will lives.

Number III is where i find myself. Because i can’t believe that God literally does everything [that doesn’t make sense in the context of a Bible narrative where He is constantly seeking out people to do stuff] and i certainly won’t believe that God does nothing [despite how my life may often look like that] so it has to be a mix of Him and us.

Alongside this belief operates the understanding that there are three forces at work in the world doing stuff:

[A] God, and Godly messengers [angels]

[B] Us [people]

[C] The enemy [the devil, demonic forces]

If this is true, then any time something happens in the world it can be because of one of those forces and at times perhaps even a combination of them.

i don’t think i can say with any certainty that i know how angels or demonic forces work at all. i have some ideas, i have had some experiences, i have heard other people’s ideas and experiences and i am aware of different theologies built up around them all.

Some people tend to see the devil in everything but i often think that lets people off the hook. No the devil did not kill my friend Matthew who went out for a cycle on his 18th birthday and was involved in an accident. The drunk driver did. Was the devil somehow involved in the process of getting a man to drive drunk? That is where the mystery lies and it might be a lot more subtle than many of us would like to think.

In fact the traditional cartoony idea of the little red guy and the little white guy standing on my shoulder whispering into my ear, while not the most biblical, feels like how i tend to experience the push towards good or evil most of the time.

God's will

Paul writes about the pull towards that which i don’t want to do and end up doing. Is temptation to do evil just some kind of ethereal force or is it a minion of the evil one whispering in my ear? i don’t know that it really matters because i experience it the same way and it’s up to me in those times to find how best i overcome temptation and that might be by calling on the guy in white – which may very well be the Holy Spirit who is living in me, who is also described as ‘Christ in me, the hope of glory’.

There are times in my life where i can look back and testify that God was definitely involved. Words i got, impressions i had for other people that were spot on, divine intervention in other ways. But there are times other people can point to God definitely being involved in their lives where i have a different view on the matter. God definitely doesn’t answer prayer the way i would like Him or even expect Him to answer it most of the time. Mystery upon mystery.

One of the examples i love in this area of thought is a rapper getting up to receive a Grammy for an explicit misogynistic song that he won an award for and thanking God for the award and the inspiration for the song and God leaning out of heaven saying, “Uh, no buddy, please, that one was all yours!” The idea of attributing things to God that are man… and the mirror idea of things we attribute to man that were perhaps God?

So how God’s will works is a mystery to me within the confines of me very strongly feeling like it has to be category III but contained alongside the understanding of the three forces that operate in the world.

i think it might be a semantical thing and we might – hopefully – be saying different things, but i cannot see it being God’s will that someone gets cancer, or someone gets murdered or raped, because those things are not aligned with the character and person of who God is. So if not that it has to be something else. Does God allow those things to happen? Absolutely, and there are people that find that idea completely problematic because how can a good God allow bad stuff? But that question feels like a massive misdirection often from the person or persons or group of people who are doing the bad stuff. Don’t blame God for crap that people do. The fact that people do such evil like that points us towards the need for a God who is able to redeem and clean up and sort out.

My last thought on this for now, well two quick thoughts actually. One is that i believe that God is sovereign in terms of allowing stuff and so while not everything might be His will as far as i understand will, it does all somehow fall into His plan which is largely a mystery to me – i am so much smaller than God and it is perhaps the case of the hugest pride fail to think i should be able to get my mind fully around the things of God.

Secondly, there is a passage that brings me great relief and i’ve seen the truth in it operate again and again, and it is found in Romans 8.28:

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

People mistakenly read this sometimes as all things are good… but no it says to me that even in the darkest of times, even in the most messed up of things that we humans have likely messed up possibly with some help from the evil one and his minions, even when we get it wrong as we do so so often, even then God reaches in and is able to turn things around for good.

Someone dying is typically not a good thing and yet God can bring good out of a situation where someone has died – i have seen this a hundred times.

The question in most of this stuff is, are we running towards God or away from Him?

If we believe in a God who is involved somehow in the bigger scheme of our lives and the lives of all on the earth and who loves everyone and desires that none will be lost and if we believe in a God who calls us to love our neighbour as we love ourselves which you would think would  challenge a perception that i can live in comfort while someone lives in absolute discomfort and hell, then we need to be waking up in the morning, inviting the Holy Spirit to once again fill me and show me what plans He would love me to step into today, what people He would love me to reach out to in love, what systems of injustice He would like me to tackle and what false assumptions He would love me to unlearn.

Maybe if all of us start starting our day like that, we will all soon start to have a much firmer grip on what God’s will is.

What do you think? i would love this to generate some discussion. Agree? Disagree? i will be gentle in my response either way.