This is the first post in a series on God’s Providence
A sore hard spot above my left eye bothered me for weeks. Eventually I pulled out a sharp-edged glass shard. It was an eighth of an inch wide and a little bit longer. I was fifteen years old at the time and the splinter caught my spiritual attention! I’ll say more below.
Bible stories often tell us about divine actions. Ezra knew that “the good hand of his God was on him” [Ezra 7:9] as he rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem after Israel’s seventy-year exile in Babylon. Both Ezra and Nehemiah spoke of the “good hand of God” on them during their hard and dangerous building projects in the ruined city. Before them other Bible figures also experienced this “good hand” care. Including Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and David. So did the later apostles in the New Testament. It’s a feature of any Bible figure who followed God.
God is still active, as in Louis Zamperini’s World War II story in the movie Unbroken. And with Corrie Ten Boom in The Hiding Place. And Rachel Saint, Elizabeth Elliot, with others, in Ecuador during the 1950’s and 60’s as told in the End of the Spear. Many, many other stories can be told of God’s continuing work as the caring and ongoing divine activist who changes lives for good. New stories are being added even in the 21st century. We may get to be a part.
This is God’s “providence”—a term that speaks of his always active care working in all of humanity. He faithfully provides for his own. It began at the first moment, when he created the universe ex nihilo—out of nothing—in order to have a people for himself. And he continues to shape the creation and lives today for the sake of this bond. So while many today don’t believe in God or in the supernatural claims of the Bible, their skepticism actually reveals a spiritual veiling. In the name of science they arbitrarily preclude evident supernatural realities. This blinding worship of a creation without a creator imposes naturalistic cause-and-effect boundaries. While providence, on the other hand, allows us to see the paths and patterns of Intelligent design and care in all we encounter. Good science must also be godly science that gives us meaning.
Once we experience God’s hand for good, we begin to see his activism everywhere, at every turn. And with that assurance we’re free to dismiss the secular bias that cripples so many. God, as a loving creator, sustains his hand for good on every soul that responds to him. He loves us—so we, in turn, receive his love and share it with others. He created us as conduits of his care able to transmit his goodness wherever we go.
The division between those who have this experience and those who dismiss religion, or Christian faith in particular, set up a stark divide. Those who are functionally areligious—without religion—pursue shopping, travel, and varied entertainments. All without a real knowledge of God. This is a “neutral-zone” version of life, in which almost all of life is viewed as morally and spiritually neutral. As if God isn’t too alert. This life might wear a bit of religion at times, but a person’s screen time, quiet moments, or seeing tangible monthly expense summaries, shows their worship. Their “deepest devotion.”
To say more, we all have what philosophers call axiology. It’s the “so what?” quality of life. Axiology includes morals, life values, and measures of the good and beautiful. Over against the ugly and unattractive. To be clear, an areligious life is godless: secular. Some call it neo-paganism, because a variety of dark or “pagan” values are actually in play. For instance, the modern sense of what’s “fair” shapes us, with the vague notion of fairness cultivated by social influencers. In the western world fairness includes a devotion to egalitarian values. Over against lives shaped by complementarian values. In one the genders vie for social power; in the other the genders value defined partnerships. Western cultures also value positional power over selfless service. Wealth over sharing. Pure intellect over sensitive character and kindness. These may not always be conflicted issues in a given setting, but trajectories are apparent. In neopaganism selfishness almost always trumps the needs of the weak and poor. Personal aims dismiss community aims.
The result? Imbalanced ethics—a very dangerous state of being! Like a tall sailboat in a storm. Search online for the video imagery of Bayesian, a large sailing yacht with one very tall mast. It capsized in just a few seconds while at anchor with its sails stored. A sudden severe wind hit the Bayesian while its keel was retracted, and it sank just minutes later.
Spiritually, many people are like the Bayesian today. Sailing with tall personalities yet without any moral ballast to maintain spiritual and social stability in a windswept world. Historical leaders and followers, without spiritual substance, explain the Rwandan genocide of some years ago. Or before that, the collapse of sound social values in Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, and the Army leadership of Japan.
The Christian assumption here is that a sound life results from God’s design: we are made as physical and spiritual beings, by God and for God. So we need open eyes to see the supernatural reality of God’s reign. He is crucial for sound living, while superstitions are like a thick, blinding fog. The source and basis for nature differs from the product. The creator is needed to give us ultimate cause and effect values. So without that certainty it’s impossible to discriminate between the truth and the lie. That is, the truth that God alone is God; over against the lie that we can be like God by defining good and evil for ourselves. Morality is crucial to life and we must have it as a core compass. It was Jesus facing Pilate; Paul facing Nero; Bonhoeffer in Hitler’s era; and our challenge as believers in another contentious era.
Let me return now to my own eyes—or to my left eye in particular. The sharp glass splinter had been lodged in the orbit of my eye for years. Ever since I was less than a year old. In a time before infant restraints in cars my father overran a slow-moving truck and in the crash both my mother and I hit the windshield. At the hospital emergency room the doctor told my mother, who also needed to be stitched, that I had probably lost my eye. My eyelid was cut horizontally, so the eye showed through the closed lid. Yet once he washed away the blood he changed his mind! All was well.
So later, as a fifteen-year-old, I was reminded of my very close call from that accident. And it stirred my sense that I had been protected. And a few months later, as I first met Jesus as my Lord, I came to look back on the accident, and the newly discovered glass shard, as a whisper from him. He knows every hair on every head. He knows sparrows and names the stars. He was also involved in giving me eyes to see. Both my pair of physical eyes, and my spiritual eyes.
