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Obey The Authorities, Listen To The Experts, But...Everything IS Willed By God

 Let me say it this way: It is comparatively "easier" to lament hardship, death, and moral evil in the hearing of a sovereign God, than it is to believe He is benevolent, but not sovereign. Do you realize that passages of Scripture and the witness of history are troubling precisely because God is confessed as Almighty? What's the point of crying out in anguish to a God who can't do anything? What is "faith", in a Friend who is kind, but feckless? In all this, we must understand that an account of evil, and its relationship to freedom is crucial.

I might do a lot of wailing and crying, because the sovereign God allows truly heinous, unimaginable things. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. I might even dare to say--Heaven forbid!--that I think God is doing a terrible job. I won't ever say He's not there, or that He's been somehow surprised.

Job never got the true answer to his questions. If you read that book of Job, you'll see that. Job is never privy to the conversation in the supernatural realms at the beginning. We see it; we know: The evil one wants to mess with him, and God allows it. This is troubling in itself. One thing I do know: God thunders against Job from the whirlwind; He doesn't sigh and shrug.

There are Christians and others who believe all manner of wacky, dangerous things. People have died of COVID-19, because they believed "faith" would protect them. I'm not going to tell you how much fear you should have about the virus. I'm not going to make any proscriptions against your freedom, at least not beyond my authority. I am going to say that God is sovereign, by definition.

Someone could question Providence--and even turn it into a "shameful" "ism" in the National Catholic Reporter--and this remains true: Everything supernatural utterly relies on a revealing God, who always remains in control.  

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