Myth Two - God is Predictable

The story of the sinking of the Titanic on April 15, 1912 is a compelling story. Once you’ve heard the story, you can never forget it. It has become a modern day legend, and the subject of the biggest money-making movie ever to come out of Hollywood.

There’s something strangely fascinating about a ship that was supposed to be unsinkable plunging to the bottom of the Atlantic on its maiden voyage. And there is no end of intriguing details in the story.

The Titanic was originally designed to have 48 lifeboats – more than enough to hold everyone aboard. But the directors of the White Star line cut that number down to 20, because they thought that the lines of the ship would look too cluttered if all 48 lifeboats were carried.

The Titanic was placed under the command of Captain Edward J. Smith – a man who was planning to retire after returning from the maiden voyage. Captain Smith had been involved in a serious collision just the year before while commanding the Titanic’s sister ship, the Olympic. Capt. Smith was found to be partially responsible for that accident, but rather than being disciplined, he was actually promoted. And that is how he came to be the captain of the Titanic.

When the Titanic set out across the Atlantic, Captain Smith received no fewer than eight warnings of icebergs and pack ice that lay ahead. In the days before radar, some ships had even stopped overnight, feeling that it was too dangerous to proceed. And yet the Titanic proceeded at full speed ahead into the dark and fog, where she rammed that fateful iceberg.

The Titanic was thought to be unsinkable because her hull was divided into several watertight sections. She had been designed to float with four of those forward sections flooded. But when the ship slammed into that iceberg, it was five sections that were ripped open to the sea.

As the great ship began to settle nose down, the band played, as if to say “This cannot be happening.” The first several lifeboats were launched only half full or a quarter full because many of the people on board the Titanic simply refused to believe that this ship could actually sink.

As the horrifying final act unfolded and people began to plunge into the icy water, the crew of Titanic sent up several emergency signal flares. Just ten miles away, a cargo ship, the Californian, sat at anchor in the ice field. Her crew could see the lights of the Titanic, they saw the rockets and debated what they could have meant. But they did not respond to the disaster unfolding nearby, and they had turned their radio off for the night.

Of the 2,228 people on board the Titanic, only 705 were saved.

The story of the Titanic is a story of overconfident miscalculation. The designers and builders were overconfident. The captain and crew were overconfident. The passengers were overconfident. These people believed that, on the basis of what they thought to be true, they could count on a safe, comfortable journey across the Atlantic. But reality shattered that illusion.

There is an important lesson in the Titanic for us as Christians. We often sail into life with the same kind of overconfidence. We think we have a pretty good idea of what the future holds for us, and we begin to count on life unfolding in certain predictable ways. But we build our expectations on a myth. This is particularly true when it comes to our relationship with God.

We tend to say to ourselves “God has told me certain things about himself. In particular, he has told me that he cares about me and that he loves me. So that means that I can count on God to act in a predictably loving way towards me”. So my job is to just make sure that I don’t give God any reason NOT to do that.

If I just pray hard enough, if I believe the Bible firmly enough, and if I just stay close enough to God, I can be confident that God will bless me with a safe, enjoyable, happy life.”

Now this whole idea of predictability would seem to be true, because our experience tells us that the better you get to know someone, the more likely it is that you can predict what that person will do. Take a married couple, for example. The longer a couple are married, the more likely it is that they can predict what their partner will do in any given situation. It’s almost uncannny at times!

But when it comes to our relationship with God, that whole premise of predictability breaks down; it is a myth. It’s a myth because it contradicts what God has actually told us about himself.

\God, in the Bible, says “My ways are not your ways, and my thoughts are not your thoughts. My ways are past finding out. You will not always understand my dealings with you. There will be many times that you will not be able to fathom what I am doing in your life.” Because God is God, there is a certain inscrutability about Him—we cannot fully understand him. We cannot comprehend what He’s up to.

And as you look at the people in the Bible, you find that that is exactly what they discovered about God. Most of the leading characters of the Bible went through painful, harrowing experiences in their lives. If we were to have interviewed them as they were going through those experiences, and if we were to have asked them if they understood what God was doing at that point in their lives, they wouldn’t have been able to give an answer.

Joseph, why has God allowed your brothers to throw you in this pit and sell you into slavery? Abraham, why has God commanded you to sacrifice your son Isaac? Moses, why is God making you tend these sheep out in the wilderness for 40 years? John the Baptist, why are you in jail? Why does Herod want to chop off your head? Daniel, why are you in that lion’s den? Paul, why is God allowing you to be so persecuted and abused if you are his chosen ambassador to take the Gospel to the Gentiles?

Those people wouldn’t have known the answer to those questions. And likewise, if we think that we are always going to have a pretty good idea of what God is doing in our lives, and why he is doing it, then we are living in a dream world.

Let me tell you the story of Marshall and Susan Shelley. Marshall is the editor of Leadership magazine, a journal for Christian leaders. I knew Marshall’s father Bruce Shelley, the distinguished professor of church history at Denver Seminary.

Marshall writes…

In March of 1990, our daughter Mandy was born. Amid the happiness surrounding her birth, the doctors told us some disquieting news. She had microcephaly, a small brain. We had never heard the term before. Little did we know how Mandy’s condition would affect our lives.

In Mandy’s case, the microcephaly produced severe and profound retardation. She was never able to crawl, to sit up, to utter any words, to use her hands to grasp. She suffered frequent seizures. We never knew if she could see or hear. The only communication we had with her was when we would give her a bath—occasionally she would visibly relax in the warm water. Eventually, she was unable to swallow effectively enough to sustain herself, so she had to be fed through a tube in her stomach.

As Susan and I cared for her, we wondered about God’s purposes. And many of our friends asked us the questions we were asking ourselves: Why? Why would God allow—no, assign—such a severe condition to a child? There was no known cause for Mandy’s microcephaly except for God’s design. What is her future? Where will the strength come from to care for her?

The only answers that came close to satisfying our confusion centered around God’s unexplainable will, the hope of the resurrection, and the fact that he had provided his body the church to embody his love and care.

Then, in November 1991, our son Toby was born. We learned during the pregnancy that he had a chromosomal abnormality called Trisomy 13, a condition the doctors described as “incompatible with life.” Toby lived two minutes. He spent his entire earthly life on Susan’s chest.

Along with the waves of grief, the questions again swept over us: What kind of God creates a child to live for two minutes? Genetic tests indicated no relationship between Mandy’s condition and Toby’s. Both cases were considered to be “flukes”, design flaws in nature.

We reeled under the sadness. Three months later, in February 1992, we were hit again when Mandy developed a pneumonia that her body didn’t have the strength to shake. After eight days in the hospital, she died.

As Christians, we were convinced that Mandy was in heaven with Jesus. But we missed her deeply. For two years, our lives had revolved around her. Now our house, our arms, and our hearts seemed so empty.

One of the great fallacies we all embrace as human beings is that we assume that we know what is best for us. And so when something comes into our life that doesn’t fit our assumptions—when tragedy and pain come crashing in on us—when crazy, seemingly pointless, arbitrary things happen to us—our faith in God is rocked to the core.

We look to heaven and to the Bible for an answer; for a reason, but there doesn’t seem to be one. God doesn’t send us a telegram, explaining how he is going to work all this out for our good. He doesn’t give us a whole lot to hang our faith on.

And so we begin to find ourselves disillusioned; disappointed with God. We begin to doubt his goodness. We begin to question his love. We wrestle with feelings of confusion, because God has allowed something into our lives that we never expected, that we never anticipated, that doesn’t “fit the pattern” that we have created for ourselves, and we’re having a hard time dealing with it.

What should we do at times like this? How can we process these terrifying moments when life seems to be out of control and God seems to be distant and disengaged? I’d like to suggest three things.

1. We need to learn to let God be God.

As human beings, our problem is that when we assume that we know what is best for our lives, we are trying to make ourselves equal with God. We are trying to climb up onto his level. And that’s something we’re not supposed to do. Lucifer tried to do that, and he became the devil as a result.

We are creatures. Our proper place is to be in submission to God, to be yielded to His will. We are supposed to leave the business of being God to God, because he’s the only one who is capable of handling it!

Isaiah chapters 44-46 contain some tremendous passages in which the Lord reminds us of who He is. He is God and we are his creatures, and we need to remember that. Listen to what he says…

Isaiah 44:6 This is what the Lord says — Israel’s King and redeemer, the Lord Almighty: I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God.

Isaiah 44:8 …Is there any God besides me? No, there is no other Rock; I know not one.

Isaiah 45:5 I AM the Lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God.

Isaiah 45:6 …I AM the Lord, and there is no other.

Isaiah 45:18 I AM the Lord, and there is no other.

Isaiah 45:22 …I am God, and there is no other.

Isaiah 46:8-10 Remember this, fix it in mind, take it to heart, you rebels. Remember the former things, those of long ago; I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me.

So I need to let God be God! I need to stop trying to play God in my own life, assuming that I know what’s best for me, assuming that I know what should or shouldn’t happen in my life.

And that brings us to the next point.

2. We need to learn to say “yes” to the unexpected, unpleasant, inexplicable things that come into our lives.

We need to remember something very important: Nothing comes into our lives that is not first filtered through the loving hands of our sovereign God.

So what are we going to do when pain and heartache and tragedy touch us? Are we going to rail against it? Are we going to say “God, why did you allow this? Why did you let this happen? Why are you doing this to me?” Or are we going to accept it as coming from a Father who loves us and knows what is best for us.

Etty Hillesum was a woman who died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. As a prisoner, she did her best to help her fellow prisoners cope with the death and the horror that were all around them in that terrible place. Just two months before she died, she wrote this prayer to God:

“I now realize, God, how much you have given me. So much that was beautiful and so much that was hard to bear. Yet whenever I showed myself ready to bear it, the hard was directly transformed into the beautiful.”

Am I willing to say yes to the painful things that come into my life? The only way we can do that is to lay hold of the third thing…

3. We need to learn to be confident of God’s goodness.

The great preacher Charles Spurgeon once traveled to the countryside to visit a friend who was building a new barn. On the roof was a weathervane. Written on the weathervane was the text “God is love”. Spurgeon asked the farmer if that meant that God was as changeable as the weather.

“No!” the man exclaimed. “I mean it to say that God is love no matter which way the wind blows.”

Author Gail MacDonald tells the story of a friend of hers who was a pastor’s wife in New England. The woman’s name was Linda. One day, Linda was doing her laundry in the basement of her home when an intruder entered the cellar door and, without a word, began to stab her. Linda fell virtually lifeless to the floor. Her husband, Rich, was at a church meeting, and when he returned home, he found Linda alive, but unconscious. He rushed her to the hospital where for days, her life hung in the balance.

To this day, the assailant has never been identified. But Linda survived her wounds and returned to health. Whenever people hear her story, they say to her “God was so good to have spared you,” Linda replies simply “God is good whether I had lived or died.”

We need to be confident in God’s goodness. Sometimes that goodness is hard to discern, and at times like those, all we can do is trust Him.

In this matter of trusting God, there seem to be three phases of spiritual maturity. I believe that the Apostle John refers to them when he talks in 1 John about the children, the young men, and the fathers.

The first stage is the childhood stage. And at that stage, our faith is very weak. So we need God to show himself to us in remarkable ways. Have you ever noticed that new Christians always seem to get their prayers answered right away? It is because God is fortifying their newborn faith. He’s teaching them to trust him.

Then there is the youthful stage. And at that stage, we have a little more faith, and so we’re able to go through a little more adversity without seeing God directly intervene. But as long as things seem to be on a relatively even keel, and circumstances seem to be fairly positive in our lives, we’ll be okay.

Then there is the mature stage. That is the stage at which God can entrust us with pain and suffering, heartache and sorrow, because He knows that our faith has become strong enough for us to go on trusting Him even in the absence of any positive indicators in our life that He cares about us.

This is when we keep trusting God even though our prayers are unanswered; even though nothing good seems to be happening.

The prophet Habakkuk reached that stage when he said…

Hab. 3:17-18 Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.

What stage are you at this morning? How strong is your faith?

Oswald Chambers writes: There is only one thing God wants of us, and that is our unconditional surrender. Have simple perfect trust in God, such trust that we no longer want God’s blessings, but only want Himself.

Have we come to the place where God can withdraw His blessings and it does not affect our trust in Him?

In C.S. Lewis’s story “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” the children in Narnia meet up with a family of beavers. And as they talk about the great lion Aslan, who is the king of Narnia, and whom the children have never met, Lucy asks: “Is he a tame lion?”

To which Mr. Beaver replies “Oh my goodness child, no! A tame lion? Aslan is not tame; but he is good.”

God is not tame. God is not predictable, he is not manageable, he is not “God on a leash”. But he is good.