Is God in control?

For many years beginning in college or maybe even high school, I kept a folded slip of paper in my wallet.  Written on it in blue pen was a single bible verse.  The crease in the slip had been folded and unfolded so many times that the paper was almost torn in two.  The ink had run and faded.  My handwriting was so scrawled that I must have written down the verse in a moment of haste, or perhaps near-panic.  The verse was Romans 8:28, which is included in our epistle reading today and which many of you probably know from your own memory, or bumper stickers, or gauzy social media memes: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to God’s purpose.”

What an enormous comfort.  I don’t remember what I was going through when I hurriedly jotted Romans 8:28, but I do know that for a long time in my younger life I read it often, and relied upon it, and was exceedingly glad St. Paul had originally written those words.  “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to God’s purpose.”

It didn’t take long in life, however, for the verse to raise as many questions as it provided soothing answers.  And as time went on, others I encountered in life would quote this verse back to me in situations for which it didn’t seem to ring true.  Romans 8:28 was deployed as another way of saying—a scriptural prooftext—that God is in control, directing all events, large and small.  Rather than instilling deep peace, it began to make me deeply uneasy, as if invoking Romans 8:28 were an attempt to keep the thin façade of a shoddy religious worldview from cracking.  Sometimes Romans 8:28 was invoked with regard to relatively small or trivial things, but not always.  The straw that broke the camel’s back for me—and I share this as gently as I can, knowing that there is no greater grief in this world—was the first time I, as a priest, had to bury a child.  With good intentions and a loving heart, a parishioner said of the child’s death, “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to God’s purpose.”  And she followed it up with the modern corollaries, “Everything happens for a reason” and “God needed a new little angel.”  To my ears, these words, deployed in this way—both the scripture and the add-ons—seemed less a comfort than a taunt.  The implication was that God took the child, that God caused this thing to happen, and that, somehow, the death of a child was good as part of God’s orchestrated plan.

Hear me say: I didn’t believe it then, and I don’t believe it now.  Whatever St. Paul means by Romans 8:28, it isn’t that.  God doesn’t will the death of children.  God doesn’t lead people to run red lights and engineer automobile accidents.  God doesn’t manipulate the world in such ways.

But St. Paul speaks truth, so how are we to understand his claim in Romans 8:28?  In what way does God weave all things together for good for those who love God and who are called according to God’s purpose?

It is helpful here to draw on the thread of Christian thought known as “process theology.”[i]  Process theologians don’t see our experience in the world as a scripted performance, with us merely playing out parts God has already written from beginning to end.  Such a world would be like a marionette on a string, and in it God would, indeed, be the author of each event that occurs, including the most senseless and horrific.  Instead of such a world, process theologians imagine the cosmos as still unfolding, still emerging, still in process (thus the name of their school of thought), and in which even God, along with us, can be surprised, overjoyed, and grieved by what transpires in each moment. 

This renders God more intimate and relatable, because God is experiencing each novel moment in the world as we are, with wonder, and whimsy, and shock, and maybe even confusion.  But how can this be?  It is possible because process theology also takes very seriously—perhaps more seriously than any other theological school of thought—the creation’s free will, or said differently, our own role as co-creators with God.  We speak, act, birth things into being alongside God, and it is often our human action, both individually and collectively, both immediately as when we run the red light or distally as when, for instance, our pollution of the earth increases societal incidence of cancer, that ushers in pain and leads to grief.  God grants us the latitude by our own free will to create things good and ill in this world, and our creativity can thrill or shock, overjoy or grieve, even God.  This is another way of conceding that, in and through our God-given freedom, God is not entirely in control.

Given all of this, how would a process theologian interpret Romans 8:28?  How would she say that God weaves all things together for good?

In process theology, God holds within Godself as potential—not yet created—the best of all possibilities, for each individual and for the creation as a whole.  And in each emerging moment of existence, God always sets before the creation the best possibility.  I think we can grasp that.  You and I both know in moments large and small in our lives the experience of having before us the next step, not yet taken, that feels best and right, that will contribute something meaningful to the world or will help you flourish.  Those best-possibilities-set-before-us are how and where God acts, and that internal feeling—that tug forward—when we know which next step is right is what the process theologians call God’s “lure,” calling us toward the good and the best for us.  That surely seems like God weaving together all things for good, doesn’t it?

But you and I also know that more often than not we shut our ears, eyes, and hearts to God’s lure.  We ignore the best possibility God sets before us, and we choose otherwise.  God doesn’t do that to us, and God doesn’t impede our free will.  God sets before us the best of all possibilities, and then we choose to take that, or some other, step into the future. 

Every moment of our lives, big or small, mundane or momentous, is a forked path, a decision point between one thing or the other.  In the moment, we choose God’s good, or we choose otherwise.  And when we choose other than God’s good, sometimes that good—whatever it was in that moment—is cut off forever.  Life doesn’t include mulligans.  We do things that cannot be undone.  Our decisions have real and often irrevocable consequences.

Process theology concedes this reality entirely.  In our freedom, we co-create alongside God, but unlike God, often what we create is not good.  But here is where process theology grasps Paul’s great truth in Romans 8:28: In each moment, as soon as we decide, as soon as we act, as soon as we do some thing that takes us a step down the wrong path, a step away from God’s previous good for us, God readjusts and sets anew in front of us, in light of our past decisions, the very best of all possibilities!  And then we choose again.  And then, taking into account the consequences of that choice, God sets before us the best of all possibilities.

Think about it this way: It is as if God is a cosmic GPS.  When I’m driving Google Maps provides me the best route for my journey, but I may choose to turn left when the GPS tells me that a right turn is the best way to go.  My bad choice may put me behind an accident, or in road construction, or onto a flooded street.  Thankfully, the moment I choose, Google Maps recalibrates, and, given the consequences of my choice, Google Maps offers me the new best possible route for my journey.  It doesn’t ignore the choice I’ve made, and it must respond in light of my previous choice, but with a newly recalibrated route it offers me the new best way forward.  And eventually, no matter how many wrong turns I stubbornly make, Google Maps will see me safely to my destination.  It will weave the best route through my journey.         

In our lives, God does the same.  God has granted us a world of wonder and freedom, and for that we are thankful.  But the flip side of that gift is that in our freedom we can choose poorly, and do damage, and the world can do damage to us.  That damage is real, and it can be, for God as well as for us, impossible to undo.  But that doesn’t mean we are bereft, hopeless, or alone.  No matter what bad choices we make, or no matter what the world does to us, causing us disappointment and pain, God is always there, in the next emerging moment of our lives, calling us toward the best of all possibilities for us.  Always.  In every moment.  In that way God lures us forward, never giving up on us.  God truly weaves together our worst and our best moments, until hope against hope, God looks upon our lives and says, “It is good.” 

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[i] For a clear and concise explanation of process theology, see https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/process-theology/.  See also books by Dr. Jay B. McDaniel, my former professor at Hendrix College, who is a leading process theologian.

Coming Soon!

How Do We Know The Way? tackles seminal issues that many Christians have traditionally been afraid to question.  An Episcopal priest, Barkley Thompson approaches these topics from the standpoint of a person of faith.  Barkley says in the preface, “For those for whom questions of belief, salvation, and eternal life have seemed too difficult to explore; for those who have been abused by the answers of a punitive and otherworldly Christianity; and for those just now beginning to seek a deeper meaning to life, I pray this little book is a helpmate.”  Each chapter is followed by provocative reflection questions useful for either personal devotion or small group discussion.

Now available for pre-order at http://www.wordsworthbookstore.com, http://www.barnesandnoble.com, and http://www.amazon.com.

Advance praise for How Can We Know The Way?

“This small book is a force to be reckoned with!”

The Very Reverend Kate Moorehead Carroll, author of Vital Signs of Faith: Finding Health in Your Spiritual Life

“After reading this book, the first thing you want to say is ‘Thank you.’ The next thing you want to do is to share it with others so that they, too, can better walk the Way.”

Jay B. McDaniel, Professor of World Religions, Emeritus, Hendrix College, and author of Gandhi’s Hope: Learning From World Religions As A Path To Peace

“Only a lifetime of faithful study and service can voice such rich and complicated ideas with the accessibility and elegance Barkley Thompson offers here.  His reflections – and their sharp study questions – have a place on bedside tables and at bible studies, alike.”

The Reverend Morgan Allen, Rector of historic Trinity Church-Copley Square, Boston, Massachusetts

Gospel lessons from Iceland: Þetta Reddast

Hello, class.  My name is Barkley Thompson.  I am in the forty-fifth grade, and this is my report on what I did this summer.  I went to Iceland.

 All kidding aside, I’m generally not a fan of the priest returning from time away and phoning in the sermon by offering a verbal slideshow of his summer vacation. If you’re interested in slideshows, become my friend on Facebook.  I’d love to be your friend, and I posted LOTS of photos of our trip.  I am going to talk about Iceland this morning, but this will be much more than a travelogue, I promise. 

I loved Iceland.  I loved the scenery, with its rugged mountains and wild, crashing coastlines.  I loved the geothermal vents that send either constant steam or intermittent geysers high into the air (some taller than Old Faithful).  I loved the glaciers and was able to hike on one of them.  I loved the lava fields that cover everything.  I loved the innate curiosity that allows Iceland to have museums for every subject under the sun, with nothing—and I mean nothing—considered taboo.  (You’ll have to look that one up to know what I’m talking about!)

But beyond all of this, after only a day or two on the island, Jill and I discerned that something was holistically different about the place.  At first, we detected it as if a whiff in the air, but then we began noticing it more pointedly.  It was present among cab drivers, shopkeepers, dockworkers, those who engage regularly with tourists and those who don’t.  Initially, we thought we might be being punked, as if on Candid Camera.  But as we paid closer attention, we realized that what we were experiencing is authentic: Icelanders are unfailingly kind.  Beyond that, but relatedly, Icelanders are non-anxious.  Not superficially and not as some façade for the sake of visitors from other places, but deep down and legitimately, Icelanders walk through life differently than the rest of us, and especially differently (I’ll offer as we approach the 4^th of July) than twenty-first century Americans.

It’s not too much to say that, without pretense and in ways that are almost miraculously unforced, that Icelanders live out the Gospel text we read today, in which Jesus says, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me…and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”

Icelanders embody, perhaps more than anything else, an open-hearted, open-armed posture of welcome, and that makes an enormous difference in their individual and collective lives.  Think I’m exaggerating?  It turns out, as Rainn Wilson reports in his new documentary series The Geography of Bliss and is also confirmed elsewhere, that Iceland consistently ranks on citizen surveys as one of, if not the happiest place on earth.[i]  Beyond that, or perhaps because of it, the violent crime rate in Iceland is virtually zero.[ii]  Can you fathom that?

Undergirding all of this—explaining it, I believe—is a saying endemic across Iceland, one that rolls off the tongue of Icelanders as easily as Arkansans say “y’all.”  The phrase is petta reddast [pronounced thet-ta redust], which means “It will all work out.”[iii]

 It would be a mistake to conclude that petta reddast is a pithy throwaway line, like our phrase “It’s nothing” or “Ain’t no thang.”  It would be equally mistaken to think petta reddast is a Pollyanna, head-in-the-sand approach that ignores the possibility of bad things happening.  So what is petta reddast? 

Petta reddast is actually a kind of lived non-attachment, a philosophy of life that refuses to cling to outcomes.  Consider why Icelanders might have developed this way of being: All the Icelandic beauty I mentioned earlier is also unpredictably deadly.  In Iceland, in the span of five minutes, a sunny sky can morph into an icy gale that will knock over a grown man.  The still sea can suddenly swamp a ship.  Those geothermal vents and geysers are boiling, and we learned of one family who awakened on a random day to find a new geyser bursting through their back yard, mere feet from the house.[iv]  Iceland sits on nineteen active volcanic systems, which are constantly awakening and erupting.  One such system lies underneath Reykjavik, where sixty percent of the population lives.  In wintertime, Iceland is pitch dark twenty-four hours a day, an unrelenting inky blackness.  It is no wonder that in the sixth century St. Brendan the Navigator, upon reaching Iceland, believed himself to have found hell.

All that is to say, in Iceland, from season to season, day to day, moment to moment, outcomes are uncertain and tenuous.  Plans have to be reconsidered.  Steps must change direction.  To cling to hoped-for outcomes would be the way of madness.  To attach oneself to the likelihood of particular consequences, and then find those consequences frustrated again and again and again would lead to anxiety, anger, and conflict. 

None of which Iceland exhibits on any measurable scale!  Petta reddast, which is most often translated as “It will all work out,” really means something close to what the Gospel of Jesus ultimately means, which is not “God will make everything be o.k.” but rather “God is with you, no matter what.”  Things work out not because of particular outcomes, but because of the One—God—and the ones—one another—with whom we travel the Way.

When both individuals and an entire people like those of Iceland live in such a beautiful but potentially terrible place, they either fall together or fall apart.  Icelanders have, for more than a thousand years, chosen the former.[v]  Petta reddast is their philosophy.  I’d go so far as to call it their theology, for surely God is in the midst of it.  Icelanders welcome one another, and they welcome the stranger, because they know the world is too uncertain to go it alone.

Icelanders fall together.  In the United States, we are falling apart.  As we ready ourselves to celebrate the 4^th of July once again, it does us no good, and all harm, to fail to acknowledge that.  We cling to outcomes, to what we want, as individuals and tribes, and too often say to hell with the rest.  Well, Icelanders know what hell really can be.  They aren’t playing political games in a land of plenty.  And we won’t be either if we don’t learn to loosen our iron grip—and soon—on particular hoped-for outcomes and instead open our hearts and our arms to one another in Christ’s holy welcome, to begin falling together rather than falling apart.

We learn Gospel lessons in the strangest ways, in the most unexpected places.  Petta reddast.  It will all work out, not because things turn out the way we desperately want them to, but because we give up the desperation.  It will all work out when we quit clinging to the outcomes we so often zealously, even viciously, desire and instead recognize that all those with whom we walk this Way are infinitely more valuable than anything else, that the walk itself is God’s holy gift to us.  Petta reddast, friends.  And happy 4^th of July. 

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[i] The Geography of Bliss, episode 1, Peacock streaming service and https://icelandtravelguide.is/blog-posts/iceland-is-the-safest-country-in-the-world/#:~:text=1.,murder%2C%20and%20bribery%2C%20etc.

[ii] https://icelandtravelguide.is/blog-posts/iceland-is-the-safest-country-in-the-world/#:~:text=1.,murder%2C%20and%20bribery%2C%20etc.

[iii] https://www.pursuitcollection.com/stories/%C3%BEetta-reddast-wisdom-for-turbulent-times/#:~:text=%C3%9Eetta%20Reddast%20(pronounced%20thet%2Dta,it’s%20going%20to%20be%20okay!

[iv] This story was told to our tour group by guide Stefan Johannsson.

[v] Iceland also has the oldest democratic parliament in the world, the Althing.  It first met in A.D. 930, two centuries prior to Magna Carta in England.