TULOG – Chapter 1: Tragedy Need Explanation

The Uncontrolling Love of God – (1) Tragedy Needs Explanation

As I share some observations and thoughts regarding Thomas Jay Oord’s book, The Uncontrolling Love of God—hereafter referred to as TULOG—I want you, the reader, to know that I am not proposing what I believe to be the truth about God’s nature or God’s work in this world. Rather, I am vulnerably sharing my faith journey as I wrestle with my own theology.

For a long time, I have experienced classic cognitive dissonance when I would read or hear Christians respond to tragic events with “God is in control,” or “God has a plan for your life,” or “God works all things together for good,” etc. Even when I read biblical passages such as Genesis 50:20 or Romans 8:28, it would strike me that I had absolutely no evidence that God was working through tragic situations in the world (or in my life) for the world’s (or my) good.

In Chapter 1 of TULOG, Oord recounts four specific, and fairly recent, examples of tragic events (the bomb blasts at the Boston marathon, a small rock smashing through a car windshield, a child born with a rare genetic syndrome, and a woman whose husband and children were murdered before she was raped and left for dead). He questions we all have had, when hearing about or experiencing similar suffering: “If a loving and powerful God exists, why doesn’t this God prevent genuinely evil events?” and “How can a loving and powerful God be providential if random and chance events occur [especially those with tragic consequences]?” (p. 17). Oord notes the main reason people give up or reject faith in God is that people cannot reconcile faith in a loving and powerful God with the impact that evil has on this world (p. 25).

The typical answers that Christians give are attempts to reconcile their belief in a loving and powerful God with the presence and impact of evil on people’s lives. But simply stating that “God is in control” or “It was meant to be” or “God has a plan” just doesn’t cut it for most of us, if we’re being intellectually honest.  So, Christians seek for biblical proof texts—often taken out of context—that will help them trust in a God who has a purpose and plan for causing (or allowing) incidents to occur that bring immeasurable suffering to people’s lives, physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially and/or relationally.

Presently, COVID-19 is causing untold suffering to billions of people. For most of us who live in a country like Canada—with a democratically elected government that is trying to do what it can to respond to the health and financial challenges facing its 36 million citizens—this pandemic is difficult enough. Around the world, millions are contracting this virus and hundreds of thousands are dying. Many of those who don’t die, don’t fully recover but are experiencing chronic (and perhaps permanent) health issues. Those who are suffering most are not the wealthiest people in North America and Europe. Rather it is those in every country who are impoverished, physically ailing, elderly, orphaned, marginalized, disenfranchised, living in war zones, refugees, etc.

Where is God? What is God doing to, at the very least, help the billions who cannot help themselves? Untold billions of prayers have been fervently and faithfully offered as people of all faiths (and even no faith) are begging God to do something to eradicate the virus or at least limit its impact, especially on the world’s most vulnerable. Yet, God does not seem to hear, or if God hears, God doesn’t seem to be acting. Is God not an all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful and everywhere present supreme Being? I agree with Oord, the tragedies that occur by the millions—not just the pandemic—during every rotation of the earth on its axis, require some kind of explanation. I have to “confess” that traditional, “proof texting” explanations that God is in control or that God has a plan or that God is at work behind the scenes do not satisfy me and haven’t for a very long time.

"He's Got the Whole World in His Hands"?

Thus, in the hope of reading a theory that makes sense biblical and experientially, I venture into Chapter 2 of TULOG – The Randomness and Regularities of Life.