Thursday, September 01, 2005
Is God Less Glorious Because He Ordained That Evil Be?
While we all think about this when bad things happen, we always ask, and understandably so, why did God allow all these things to happen?
The reasoning, obviously, will be beyond us. We do have some general answers from Scripture, but we don't have divine knowledge about specific situations.
While we all think about this when bad things happen, we always ask, and understandably so, why did God allow all these things to happen?
The reasoning, obviously, will be beyond us. We do have some general answers from Scripture, but we don't have divine knowledge about specific situations.
But when a person settles it Biblically, intellectually and emotionally, that God has ultimate control of all things, including evil, and that this is gracious and precious beyond words, then a marvelous stability and depth come into that person's life and they develop a "God-entranced world view." When a person believes, with the Heidelberg Catechism (Question 27), that "The almighty and everywhere present power of God . . . upholds heaven and earth, with all creatures, and so governs them that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, yea, all things, come not by chance, but by his fatherly hand" – when a person believes and cherishes that truth, they have the key to a God-entranced world view.
