THE TAKE AWAY

Immortal and Moral

Part 2

It continues through chapter 38 and into chapter 39. Who are you to question the way God made the cosmos? Isaiah 29:16 says the same thing — we can no more question the wisdom of God making us with an immortal soul and moral choice than a pot can question the potter why he got a lid and the cup got a handle.

There is a branch of theistic evolution that is quite popular. It says that God set the stage. He created natural laws and universal constants and maybe even sparked the Big Bang, but He hasn't had much more to do with His creation since then. It makes God out to be like some kind of cosmic bowler who releases the ball and waits to see how the pins fall.

That isn't the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible regularly interacts with His creation — but always only for its benefit. Either He blesses and rescues people, or He removes them before they can do (or experience) more harm. All this in the context of respecting their freedom to make moral choices, if not always to act on those choices.

To our great frustration, we cannot see or know why He rides in to the rescue at some events and allows others to play out. This is the God who sunk the bases of the foundation of the earth. It's foolishness to think we can fully understand the way in which He acts through human history.

One last question that calls God's nature out. "What kind of narcissist must God be to create us just for His glory?" Why allow us to bear the brunt of others' malicious moral choices just so God can be glorified by His creation?

Way back in the long ago when I was aircraft maintenance, I learned about the concept of the Hangar Queen. The Hangar Queen was a jet that sat in a hangar, hard broke. When another jet broke, we'd "cann" or cannibalize parts from the Hangar Queen to get the second jet back in the air.

Usually the Queen was waiting on a part that was difficult to get. To my surprise though, we never left the Queen in the hangar longer than necessary. It seemed more logical to me to keep canning from her to keep the others up and running. A scheduler explained why this was a bad idea.

Planes are built to fly. They are not designed to sit on the ground for extended periods of time. The structure of an aircraft is designed to withstand the stresses placed on it by air and wind and lift and running engines. The longer a jet sits on the ground, the more broke it gets. The reason we build aircraft is to fly, and they are damaged the least when they do so.

We are the same way. It just so happens that God is most glorified when we fly. He designed us to have the most joy when we work in a way that glorifies Him. When we don't, we break. The broker we get, when we crawl into our hangar and barely glimpse the sky, the more we forget that we can fly. The sun-split clouds look scary, and we get overwhelmed with the amount of work we must do to return there. So we blame God. We refuse to do the work it takes to fly. We say it's His fault that we're broke, when initially it was just a simple little thing that required patience for the part to come in. We tell God He should have made us a jeep and that He's selfish for wanting us to fly.

Yes, God made us to glorify Him. But He also made us to enjoy life most when we glorify Him. Which makes disobedience a peculiar form of masochism.

Before we can trust God in our suffering, we need to trust God with our selves. How did God make us? With immortal souls and moral choice. Did He have the right to? As the Creator, yes. How has He supported that decision? By interacting with His creation in a way that blesses and protects. What gives Him the right to dictate how we are to interact with Him? He didn't. He gave us the choice. But it just so happens that He is glorified more when we fly than when we crawl around in dark corners.

For more on the moral argument for the existence of God, see the GotQuestions? article.

Image Credit: Martin Cathrae; "Jars II"; Creative Commons

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Published 9-19-13