I remember, as a seminary student, being instructed about what not to say when entering the room of someone grieving. Hospital visits, broken relationships, death – all sorts of trauma – we talked about some of the least helpful things to say. Toward the top of the list were the statements implicating God in the actions. “It was God’s will,” “God means this to be a challenge for you to grow through,” and the most aggravating, “God will only give you what you can stand.” These were all off-limits. By the way, also off limits was, “How are you doing?” That open-ended question is just useless.
To get to know Tom Oord a little more, check out the All That’s Holy Blue Collar Podcast. Tom co-hosted with us a few weeks ago as we talked about Advent scriptures, and Tom shared a bit about what God Can’t do. Also, we spent quite a bit of time with him in a previous season of the podcast. Follow the links here to get to these conversations:
But what was particularly difficult, especially for those of raised on a God of providence. A God that preordains and pre-orders things toward their ends; a God who so intricately oversaw the moments of our lives moment by moment. We struggled to set aside the platitudes and actually enter the meaning and struggle of the trauma experienced by those in our care. One of the reasons it was a challenge, was that it forced us into consideration of some of the ideas about God with which we may not have been prepared to wrestle.
Evil and suffering are inevitable. At times, evil is from the hands of another, or from invisible diseases and disorders. Rather than attributing these to a God incapable of stopping the evil, or a God unloving and not willing to stop the evil, Dr Oord leans on viewing God through the life of Jesus:
we need to rethink God’s power in light of the love Jesus expresses….If we define divine power carefully, this God can rightly be called “almighty.” The God who can’t control others does miracles, healings, resurrections, and more. The God who can’t prevent evil is still powerful! God is not feeble or aloof but strong and active. We should worship the great, amazing, and mighty God of love who cannot prevent evil singlehandedly.
Dr Oord sets this conviction of a God who can accomplish mighty work in the context of Philippians 2 and what he describes as essential kenosis. The self-emptying that was in Jesus as described in Philippians 2 is a description – a definition, even – not only of Jesus, but God inclusively – a God who is self-limiting out of divine love. Dr Oord elaborates:
Loving others is who God is and what God does. Essential kenosis says God cannot withdraw, override, or fail to provide freedom, agency, and existence to creation. God’s love always empowers, never overpowers, and is inherently uncontrolling.
Thomas Jay Oord, takes on the struggle for those of us that love God, and love those in our care. As parents, teachers, friends, parents, and as pastors, God Can’t not only enters into the theological struggle, but it does so by entering the lives of real people engaged in monumental challenges. Oord writes,
“I wrote this book for victims of evil, survivors, and those who endure senseless suffering, I wrote it for the wounded and broken who have trouble believing in God, are confused, or have given up faith altogether. I’m writing to those who, like me, are damaged in body, mind, or soul.”
I found myself most drawn to Chapter Three: God Works to Heal. Dr. Oord tackles, in philosophically approachable, notions of atoms, physics, and all of the universe and its ability to participate with God. In participation with God evil can be challenged and the miraculous can occur. After enumerating fifteen myths about how God works to heal, Oord forcefully states, “God works to heal. your suffering was not God’s will. God neither caused it nor allowed it. God is a healer with works to mend your brokenness.”
Drawing things together, Dr. Oord’s depiction of a God that cannot do some things, is also an invitation to work alongside the God who love uncontrollingly. God does not use God’s might to control, but to influence, to create, to heal and to love. This God is “almighty as…the one who exerts mighty influence upon everyone and everything….and this might is always expressed as noncoercive love.” Summing up in the postscript, Dr. Oord states, “As we and others cooperate in loving relationships with the Lover of us all, we all enjoy the well-being love provides.”
Coming away from God Can’t, the steady challenge throughout is to face suffering and evil head on. To acknowledge there are things that God has no control over. One has to walk the fence between our longing for a God who will fix all things to our satisfaction on one side; and, the God who seems to capriciously predestine us for suffering for a “greater good.” A result may be that Dr. Oord rescues God from being misperceived or misused as a foil to our perceptions of the meaning of our suffering. Yet, more effectively, as a pastor, I find a wider lexicon of ideas, freedoms even, for sharing the suffering of others. Philosophically, God Can’t provides access to some profound thinking. But as one who sits with others in pain, God Can’t presents a loving God calling us to partner in the work of justice, guiding, loving, and healing.