A God who can't? Why that is no comfort at all
I recently spent some time with a friend and colleague after our flights were delayed and we missed a connection. This gave us time to really catch up properly. And of course, as it usually does with me, the conversation quickly turned to theology. He grew up in a conservative church. Like me, he has spent years on the mission field in some of the poorest countries on earth, where we are surrounded by human pain and suffering. But unlike me, he has come to a very different understanding of it. His understanding is that God, while he really wants to, simply cannot stop the suffering he sees in the world. God is a spirit, and we are humans, and therefore, there are things he can't ‘physically do’. When I pressed him on this, he told me that he had been deeply influenced by a book called God Can't: How to Believe in God and Love After Tragedy, Abuse, and Other Evils by author Thomas Jay Oord. In God Can't , Oord argues that God’s love is “uncontrolling”, meaning that, becau...