All I need is . . . God's will.

I recently read the book "Is God to Blame?" by Gregory A. Boyd.  It was a very thorough attempt to get past the "pat" answers that many Christians give for the existence of evil.  I did not agree with all of it, but highly recommend it as a challenging study.  It certainly made me think through my beliefs on God and the reason for the existence of evil.  As a bi-product of this discussion, I found myself contemplating issues concerning God's sovereignty and human free will.

Boyd's basic conclusion is that evil exists because of human free will.  This has been my thought as well.  This statement allows me to separate God's creative purpose (all that he makes is good, including free will; I do not believe that God is the author of evil) with the results I see (the existence of evil is a result of poor choices by humanity, not the design of God).  Yet, someone may still argue that God should have known this and done something to avoid it.  The answers at this point may vary, but Boyd concludes that free will is so radical and irreversibly marked into this world that not even God can undo it.  In essence, God is subject to human free will, and we all (including God) must live with the consequences.  With this line of thinking, the cross of Jesus comes into focus, not as God divine plan from creation, but as the only lovingly divine response to the mess that our free will has made of creation.

Now, as I absorbed this thought, I wanted to turn on it and tear into it.  It did not seem biblical to me (and still does not), although Boyd gives a valiant, if not misguided, effort to show biblical examples for his conclusions.  And yet, he had taken the "free choice" ideal to its logical conclusion.  If free choice is real, and it is free from divine "sovereignty," then Boyd gives us a logical end to this thought process.

After I finished the book, I felt this gnawing emptiness inside of me.  On the one hand, I don't think that God made us to be robots who simply function under the heavy hand of sovereignty.  Yet, the idea that we are completely and utterly responsible for all of our choices and their outcomes in the world left me feeling woefully small and ill-equipped.  That is seemingly too great a burden for me--I mean, are we supposed to feel like we can handle our whole world?

It was in this moment that I found the place where I need to be--somewhere between total divine sovereignty and radical human free will.  In that moment of brokenness I found myself saying to God, "Even if you give me free will to do anything I want, I realize that the best decisions that I can make will be based on your plans.  So, I choose to live based on your plans.  Show me your will, and let me follow it.  Please."  Sovereignty and choice faded into one at that moment.  How can you choose better than to do what God would do?  Or, radical sovereignty requires radical obedience.  Either way, this seems to me to be the heart of the matter.

Does it matter how I got there?  (Did God predestine me to that conclusion?  Or did I seize the moment and choose it?  Don't suppose I will truly ever know--and right now I don't really care.)  Probably not.  Just matters that I stay.

Let the one liners fly.