Weddings and interventionist theology
So, when Phil and I were married, we had Nick Cave’s “Into My Arms” as the bridal “march”, ie it played as I was walking into the chapel. It was only afterwards that Phil’s aunt pointed out to us that in a wedding full of almost exclusively church people, at least half of whom were members of a church of which Phil was a minister we had used a processional which began - quite clearly - with the words “I don’t believe in an interventionist God.”
Heh.
Anyway, Wayne and others have been talking about how much God intervenes in this world. I can see already this is going to degenerate into more heretical discussions which will get us fired from our respective positions (except for me, because lawyers aren’t meant to have souls). So, waddaya think?
November 22nd, 2006 at 11:18 am
That is a paraphrase of Andrew Wommack - more of this
…Our faith doesn’t move God. If God hasn’t already moved by His grace, then our faith can’t make Him. Faith simply appropriates what God has already provided by grace. If He’s already provided our needs by His grace, then faith is just our positive response to what God has already done—not something we do to get God to respond to us.
http://www.awmi.net/extra/article/already_got
November 22nd, 2006 at 3:42 pm
Thanks Foundation.
How “interventionist” God is raises another really interesting question for me… why do the scriptures direct us to pray?
The contemplative side of prayer is easy enough to understand… it’s about hearing what God would say to us. And the praise and worship side of prayer is easy enough to understand… it’s giving God His due and putting ourselves in a right position before Him. But what about the petition / asking side of prayer? Why should we do that?
Is God so sovereign… or so impotent… that this is totally pointless? Or is there some kind of “dance” that goes on between God and His people… where the Spirit intercedes through us, or where we dialogue with God and… sometimes… even change His mind somehow?
What do others think?
November 24th, 2006 at 9:28 am
Very good point Janet!
It seems that we all believe that God intervened by sending Jesus.
It also seems that we all believe that God, through the Holy Spirit, indwells each of us an guides us (not controls us) to do His will and so in an indirect way, God intervenes in the world.
It seems that most people commenting here believe that God doesn’t often exercise His supreme authority over all things to manipulate the natural order of things and events other than the odd miracle which is a rare event.
Personally, I’m not sure that God actually does do miracles like that.
Given both points of view, why should we pray thinking that we can change God’s mind and make Him do a miracle which (a lot of people believe) is rare or against (what I am begining to believe) His nature and perhaps cosmic laws he has set up?
Are we all just waiting for Judgement Day (Great terminator movie) When God will tie up the loose ends? Isn’t God’s lack of intervention now a product of His intervention on Judgement Day? Isn’t that why His hands seem to be bound when it comes to protecting the “innocent”? Isn’t that what Jesus was talking about when he declared that He was here to set the captives free? (At the moment we are all still in this state of being bound by sin but free from sin…See Paul….I do what i don’t want to do etc)
If it is a case of God choses to intervene every now and again…I just can’t believe in that God! That would mean that children being abused don’t matter to God! That would mean that it is ok for Hill$ong to misappropriate Government money! That would mean it is ok for Hilter to kill the Jews!
I can’t believe in an interventionist God!
November 24th, 2006 at 10:36 am
God obviously doesn’t intervene in such a way as to stop bad things happening (I mean who hasn’t had something bad happen to them and wondered for at least a moment why God didn’t do something to stop it?). God didn’t stop Jews being slaughtered, children being abused, Hillsong manipulating people and so on…
But perhaps God’s intervention isn’t about stopping things from happening, but helping find a way through them. Prayer becomes very powerful then because prayer is about us seeing how God is intervening and then praying toward that end. For example, if God wants a child to forgive their abusing parent for that child’s (perhaps now an adult) healing, then praying for this may help make God’s intervention toward this possible….
November 24th, 2006 at 9:30 pm
Wayne, I agree with you. I think a major part of what God and Christianity are about is getting through bad stuff. Everyone goes through bad stuff, but it is how you get through the bad stuff that is important. Assuming the bad stuff doesn’t kill you, in which case you simply become and event which is bad stuff in other people’s lives, while you yourself get to move on to whatever is next.
Are you stronger? Safer to talk to? Or are you more bitter and more dangerous to talk to?
People talk about having a relationship with God. But what form of a relationship can you have with someone who isn’t visible, isn’t touchable or corporeal? Some super-spirituals may disagree with me, but it’s not as if you can sit down with God and discuss life over coffee like you can with a good friend. When forced to describe it explicitly, people describe their relationship with God as growing convictions over time. This is a good description. But is this all there is?
November 25th, 2006 at 1:40 pm
I’m really interested in everyone’s views on this, because this issue is not crystal clear in my own mind… it seems to me whatever side you land on is a little problematic.
Neil, one of the problems with the non-interventionist view is the apparent miraculous “interventions” in the bible.
If you don’t accept the bible as an authority this isn’t a problem… one just dismisses all the miracles therein as myths…. although they are so interspersed with the teachings of Jesus in the gospels that I think this means you can’t be confident about a sodding thing in them if you accept this. Given the 1st C dating and widespread distribution and acceptance of the gospels shortly thereafter I’m not convinced by the “it’s just a bunch of crazy stories” hypothesis.
So this leads you too… well, God did miracles through Christ and through the early apostles because it was a unique time of His intervention in the world, and miraculous signs were required to kick start the spread of the gospel. But God no longer works that way today… these were exceptional circumstances where God did not exercise His normal restraints.
But… this smacks to me a bit of what the “anti-charismatic” brigade used to rant on about… that God released supernatural gifts to kick start the birth of the church, but such phenomena definitely died out at the end of the 1st century… so anything that looks like tongues (say) now is of the devil.
I don’t know… I think being too emphatic about these things creates a God who is too small… cannot the Creator of the universe do as He likes, and we cannot fully understand the mystery of it all? God seems to intervene miraculously so rarely… but is it because He can’t… or won’t or… we just don’t really understand this?
I know what you’re saying about the other side of the coin.
Reonn, God does seem to talk right into my head or heart sometimes… it’s different to a chat with a friend (where I see God also) but it’s still powerful to me. But I know plenty of people to whom God never does anything like that… better people than I. So that’s another mystery too!
November 28th, 2006 at 3:55 pm
Just in case the national day of praying for low pressure movements to deliver rain,works and God does intervene,the following letter appearing in todays Melbourne Age newspaper, may help:
“East and Southern Africa are enduring drought of at least equal intensity to that experienced by Australia,but in that continent no rain means famine,starvation and widespread death.Since God has not seen fit to answer African prayers,wouldnt it be embarrassing if ours were?It would be seen as yet another example of the West using its political influence to gain advantage for itself.I suggest that to avoid difficulties,if the skies do open following Sunday’s requests to the Almighty we claim it to have been just a coincidence.” Age 28.11.06
November 28th, 2006 at 5:41 pm
What if the desired rain did fall after the large group prayer effort, but said rain was actually not the result of God’s intervention? That is, the rain would have fallen due to ongoing natural weather movements, but it only coincided with the prayer effort, i.e. it still would have rained without any prayer at all.
Could it be that God’s intervention in the world is so inscrutable such that there is no widely acceptable “test” for determining whether intervention has happened or not.
Now that seems to mean that we can only guess at whether God has intervened - a hunch, gut-feeling, seems to fit our life circumstances, we feel better about how our life is going lately, Aunty Mavis recovered from her illness, Family first didn’t get voted in, Family First did get voted in.
How could anyone ever know if or where God intervene’s anywhere today? Can you really know?
November 28th, 2006 at 6:22 pm
Hi Sanders… haven’t heard you for a while. (then I’ve had some time out too writing essays!)
Could it be that God’s intervention in the world is so inscrutable such that there is no widely acceptable “test” for determining whether intervention has happened or not.
Yep… unprovable.
How could anyone ever know if or where God intervene’s anywhere today? Can you really know?
No… you can’t know for sure. Certainly outside the realm of scientific testing.
Damn.
November 29th, 2006 at 9:44 am
Just to throw something in - I think in these discussions we have a human-centric view of God - ie that if God were to intervene, then he would do so to advance the same agendas that we would choose to. We implicitly assume that if God intervenes in the way that we have been discussing that a) he will do so in a supernatural intervention in the natural order and b) that he would want to do what we ask him.
I think that we always argue about physical/supernatural intervention because that would *prove* the existence of God somehow.
November 29th, 2006 at 10:44 am
Ahh - you mean we anthropomorphise God? Darryl Gardiner pointed this out to us at the forge intensive (yes everything I write for the next few weeks will be based on the forge intensive) - we do te same thing to dogs - we think their happy to see us when we come home because they jump up and start licking our faces when really what is happening is that they see us as the leader of the pack and when the leader of the pack went out to eat they would come back and then all the other dogs would jump up and lick around the leaders mouth and this would cuase the leader to vomit up te food they’d just gorged themsleves on and so they’d all get a feed!
and the funny thing is that we do the same to God - not the licking and stuff - but we figure he thinks and acts like us and sop just like we anthropomorphise dogs we anthropomorphise dogs.
And what’s even funnier is that God is Dog spelt backward!!! Weird huh?
November 29th, 2006 at 11:09 am
Sort of. I guess I find it interesting that we set the test of whether or not God intervenes as whether or not he does what we want when/if he intervenes.
Actually on this topic, I have a really interesting book called “the God Experiment” which tries to scientifically test the effects of intercessory prayer. Must dig it out and post up some quotes.
November 29th, 2006 at 11:46 am
me? I think the heart of this argument is really about the character of God. we stumble over the fact that his ways are not our ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts. God does have an agenda, if it’s not too anthropomorphic to say that
the catch is it isn’t our agenda. I personally believe God is very interventionist, but not to follow our orders. he does work all things for our good (hey dan, that’s 2 bible quotes in one post!!) but HE defines that good, not us. That’s why His acts seem random, because they only randomly coincide with our expectations. And yet, He commands us to pray, and that is not an exercise in futility. Methinks H$ et al have it all back to front — “faith” is not getting what we want from god, it’s going on believing in His mercy and entrusting ourselves prayerfully to Him when the world is bleak and black and our prayers appear to have no more meaning than the eddies of dust in the lightest of breezes
November 29th, 2006 at 12:59 pm
Just a minute, we don’t even know how God intervenes in the world. So far, we’ve seen that God does not intervene to stop evil or deliver good, he doesn’t influence the weather. God doesn’t act on our command - just exactly why the folks at Hillsong would think otherwise seems strange; maybe the’re just simple-minded.
Just what, exactly, is God allegedly doing in the world? Would someone give us an itemized list of how God acts in the world, then we can go through it one item at a time and see how well He’s going.
November 29th, 2006 at 2:21 pm
He gets the following people to say stupid stuff:
Paris Hilton
John Howard
Kim Beazely
John ‘the rev’ Jensen
Homer Paxton
anyone from the AWB
anyone from the NSW Teachers Federation
anyone from the Anglican Diocese of Sydney
Borat (but he’s funny as well so he’s ok)
November 30th, 2006 at 1:44 pm
“Just what, exactly, is God allegedly doing in the world?”
Good question…..
He who has ears to hear, let him hear. God does what God does. Faith gets on board with it and trusts…..
Pretty difficult stuff when we have our own agendas though….
November 30th, 2006 at 4:57 pm
Just to let you know that God’s a trade unionist.Prayers were made to her to ensure that there would be no rain during the mass rally in melb against the Howard govts brutal industrial laws,and sure enough it didnt rain until after the rally finished.
Dan,theres a couple of interesting articles on prayer on the following site:http://www.wku.edu/~alan.anderson/102/102Religion.html
November 30th, 2006 at 5:58 pm
God puts it in the heart of Mother Theresa to care for the dying in Calcutta. God somehow works in Nelson Mandela so that despite years of imprisonment, he works for forgiveness and reconciliation, not revenge. God gives courage to Martin Luther King Junior to stay strong against incredible opposition, without resorting to violence or hate. Jesus even speaks into my heart and reminds me to love and to give and to serve.
Not everyone’s listening.
December 1st, 2006 at 8:40 am
Sorry…what did you say Janet
December 1st, 2006 at 3:27 pm
Ha ha.
December 1st, 2006 at 4:38 pm
“our prayers appear to have no more meaning than the eddies of dust in the lightest of breezes ”
Blestpickle… have you thought of writing a book? You write so beautifully. Maybe you and Cheryl could do a book of poems and devotions and God thoughts.
Sanders… if you’re vaguely interested in evidence God may have ever done something I recommend “The Case for a Creator” by Lee Strobel. I’m impressed by this book because it’s actually readable for non-science graduates, but has first rate science within.
December 1st, 2006 at 8:39 pm
Hey, I’ve just listened to Bono’s speech to the Presidential prayer breakfast… wonderful, moving, inspiring stuff. Twenty minutes long, but worth it.
One of the quotes that reflects part of what is being discussed on this thread is:
“Stop asking God to bless what you’re doing.
Get involved with what God is already doing, because it’s already blessed.”
Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUdrYDk8rVA