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Q.
Is God “in control”?
Christian Piatt
Who is...
?
Christian Piatt
I met my wife on a blind date.A.
I remember how repulsed and angry I felt when I heard preach-
ers claiming that the catastrophic fl oods in New Orleans were a
consequence of the city’s immoral living practices. It seemed such a
medieval, judgmental way of thinking, and I wanted nothing to do with it.
But on a much smaller, more benign scale, many of us do something simi-
lar on a regular basis without knowing it. Ever heard someone say something
like “everything happens for a reason”? It seems a comforting sentiment, to
imagine God in control, but explain the “reason” to a family who just lost their
baby, or to victims of rape or genocide.
In my belief system, some things are simply senseless, meaning that
human logic can’t untangle them. But that’s just it; we get tripped up when we
try to apply human reasons to God. In doing that, it seems we’re trying to stuff
God into a pretty small box.
My favorite stories about God in scripture include those in which God
exhibits a restraint of power. God could have stopped Adam and Eve from
succumbing to temptation, but instead allowed them to make their own deci-
sions. God could have destroyed everything in the great fl ood, but instead
preserved enough to start afresh.
Not that I take such stories literally, but to me they speak to the idea
that although God may not cause suffering, I believe God is in suffering. And
where there is God, there always is the opportunity for hope.
Jarrod McKenna
Who is...
?
Jarrod McKenna
I have the most wonderful wife and son and community that
make it possible for me to receive and seek to live God’s love.A.
During the Holocaust, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “Only a suffering
God can help us now.” While some fi nd it profoundly comfort-
ing to picture an all-controlling God (somehow distant from the