Generations United Church Podcast

Grow As You Go (Episode 2)

• Generations United Church • Season 1 • Episode 2

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0:00 | 51:58

On today's episode of Grow As You Go, Pastor Tommy Brown, Greyton Etheridge, and Seri Brown discuss a recent sermon from Dr. Jeremy Sims on the topic of "God being in control". Join the conversation.

SPEAKER_03

Hey everyone, good morning, and uh I'm here with Sari, Summer Inter, and Drayton are one of our youth pastors. One of the youth pastors. Callie's not with us today. Roughly 25% of the youth pastors at Disney Church. I feel like you have that proportion very well. That's pretty accurate. Callie's not with us today. It's not that she's no longer with us, she's just not with us. She's not with us today. Today, today, today. Well, my name's Tommy. Uh, if we haven't met, hi, we're meeting right now. Right in the second. And um, we're here to have a conversation today. And this is a big one that actually came out of a sermon that happened on Sunday. So I was not here on Sunday, and I asked my longtime friend, Dr. Jeremy Sims. Shout out. Shout out Jeremy Sims. I asked him to come in and to preach for us. And both of you know Jeremy. Absolutely. So how do you know Jeremy, first of all? How how have you experienced him? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I first time I ever met Jeremy Sims was at Beach Freak and Summer Youth Camp.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, summer youth camp.

SPEAKER_02

He spoke there, I'm pretty sure like two or three years in a row.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Um, and then I showed up to college one day and he was there, and I was like, whoa, what are you doing here? And then he just became like one of my favorite people on campus, and I see him all the time, and he's such an amazing person.

SPEAKER_03

So he's over basically uh I don't know what he does right now, but when you were there, uh when I was doing my doctoral work, he was over the doctoral programs and the ministry-related master's degree uh program or programs and all that. And you were a part of uh one of those programs.

SPEAKER_07

Yep. I went through the ministerial leadership track with him, the master's degree with him, which he had got me in because I've known Jeremy a long time. Jeremy was my youth pastor, and at the private Christian school I went to growing up, he also did our chapels every Thursday, whenever I was in high school. So Jeremy, uh I mean Jeremy's known me since I was in, probably since I was in like kindergarten or first grade, because he was always at the school. But Beach Freak was one of my first real experiences with Jeremy too.

SPEAKER_03

And so I think the first time I met him was at a gas station just outside of Lakeland, Florida. I had heard of this guy because he interned at uh the church where you know we're all now apart. He was an intern before I was an intern.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And um, at any rate, I heard about this guy. I met him at a gas station, and then we ran Beach Freak together for many, many years, and he's just been a dear brother. So when I was going on vacation to celebrate uh our 25th anniversary, your mom and I uh to celebrate our 25th, I had to get a parent's signature to marry her. You know, she's I'm 47, but she's still in her early 30s. Okay, so it's a weird joke whenever I say it out loud like that, isn't it? Yeah, it's just on camera and audio forever. So I think it's fine. She's actually older than me by six months, just for clarifying purposes. Uh at any rate, so we took a few days. And you know, when you leave the pulpit and you don't have one of you know your team preach, which you guys do a great job, but I thought, you know what, let's bring Jeremy in for this. Yeah. It's always a risk to have a guest guest speaker because you're like, what if they say something stupid? Yeah. So that's happened. Especially when you're not present. Or provocative. Okay. Now, Sari, that's really insightful. And so I've had nothing but amazing comments about Jeremy's sermon. And and who knows when this will air, but you know, it was it was on Sunday, I think the 14th of June, if you want to go back and watch it, uh, and he was talking about surrendering control in your life. And then he gets to this point in the sermon where he makes this statement, and you'll read it for us. We're we're gonna quote him, okay? You got that statement, buddy? I did. And and just to be clear, this this has been, in terms of guest speakers, I have received more positive feedback and watched online as people are like, this sermon is etched in my heart. This sermon changed my life. This was an incredible sermon, but there's a moment in that sermon where he says something that I was watching the live stream. I'm like, oh boy, it'll wake you up. Oh boy, here we go. Yeah. So, Sari, I want you to read that statement, and then that's what we're gonna talk about today.

SPEAKER_02

Okay. Okay. Um, so it says control is an illusion, and you are never in control, but more importantly, God is not in control.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, that's where everybody set up that might have been. Yeah, they come. On occasion, as a preacher, you look out into the congregation and you'll notice that this dear brother right here that he had a rough night. He still has like the CPAP marks on his cheeks, and you can tell he just didn't get a good night's sleep last night. And that brother's nodding off. I guarantee you, that brother right there, he woke up. What church am I in? What where am I? So, but more importantly, God is not in control. Yep. Okay, keep going.

SPEAKER_02

Perhaps we want to think about God as he is in control, like he is a puppet master, where he's making things happen the way he wants things to happen, where we're living in the matrix and we don't have a say in what happens. Perhaps we think about that because of the way we fantasize about control, or possibly because of our anxieties of being in control. Maybe it's because we have not come to terms with the fact that God is not in control. God is sovereign, God reigns. Everything is created by God's voice that speaks light. Nothing operates outside of the total and utter dependence of the sovereignty of God. We are anchored into the life of the Father who is sovereign over all things.

SPEAKER_03

So just to get things going, all right. When you hear that statement, and I don't know if you were in church, you have other responsibilities on Sunday. I don't know if you heard that live.

SPEAKER_07

I sat in there during second service.

SPEAKER_03

During the second service, all right. So let's start with you. When you heard that statement, what did you think? And what do you think now?

SPEAKER_07

I think the initial gut check was like, oh my gosh, the Sunday's over. Tommy just got fired. He's gone. Everything's and I was like, oh my Jeremy of all people. And I was like, but I think the initial check is like, I trust Jeremy so much. Like he formed so much inside of me. And so my initial thing is like, where are you going? Like, what do you, you know, like where will you end up? Because it's hard, like something like that just throws you off so much. Because I mean, he's he's basically directly um challenging like the character of God that a lot of us have, like in our in our brain, the character, the image of this perspective of how God operates in our brain. Um, I think as I've sat with more, and obviously I know the full context of where he got to, but I think as I've sat with it more, um, I almost still feel a little bit of a conflict of the whole God's not in control versus the goddess sovereign thing. I almost feel like I understand the difference, but I also believe they may be the same in a weird way.

SPEAKER_03

Okay. Um I think Jeremy's right, absolutely. So how do you think he's right and how do you think that he might be, do you think he might be wrong? Is there a tension in here that he's I almost feel like it's I almost feel and give me room for grace here.

SPEAKER_07

I'm also I'm processing.

SPEAKER_03

And I should say this out of the gate that one of the things that I value is in this space to be able to have a thoughtful conversation to where we can say something and we're we're doing theological work in a safe space to where we can say something and then come back later and say, actually, I disagree with what I said before, or I disagree with what you said, or I like part of what you said. But here's so in the rabbinic tradition, so Jesus was a rabbi, rabbi just means teacher. In the rabbinic tradition, they talk about taking a theological concept or scripture itself and turning it like a diamond.

SPEAKER_07

Inspecting.

SPEAKER_03

And well, inspecting, yes, but also when light hits a diamond from one angle, it's going to reflect that certain way. But when you turn it this way, the colors change because the angle changes. Yeah. So whenever we're dealing with theological issues, especially deep theological issues, the more you turn it, the more you see it from a diverse frame of reference. And it's like, well, this is both true and not true. And if this is true, it makes me think differently about that. So we're going to go ahead and say out of the gate that we may disagree with some of the things that we say by the end of this podcast or the moment we leave here or next year, because we're in the words of Kanye West, the only time we'll quote him in here. Here we go. You ready for this? I one of the best, best lines from Kanye, he said, I'm like the iPhone, I'm always updating. That's right. And whenever it comes to how I understand God, if I'm not updating, I don't know if I'm growing. Yeah. Right? So, all right. So back to you. From Kanye West. I was gonna say another Kanye West quote. Oh, give me the Kanye.

SPEAKER_01

I would wish her the best, but she ain't with me.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, oh, oh.

SPEAKER_07

I mean, that's deep. Wait, another Kanye West Quote. Sorry, last one. Last one. She wanted diamonds, so I brought her to Ruby Tuesdays. Really a deep theological.

SPEAKER_03

Okay. This is where we go astray and where we lose most of both of our listeners. Okay. So great.

SPEAKER_07

All right, move back to the point. The point being was I almost feel like um I almost feel like the purpose that Jeremy was given giving his sermon was like more of the idea of control, like the association of control um and direct power over. And like I believe that that God is sovereign. I believe I also am not afraid to say that I also feel like God is in control. I don't I don't think that negates our free will at any at any way. But um I also think maybe they can work hand in hand. I don't think that there's a clean explanation. Um I think there's just like something inside of me that goes like, I don't have a problem with the idea of saying, I believe God is in control, um, more of like a hot a heart posture from me to God.

SPEAKER_03

What's the difference between sovereign and control? Between God being sovereign and God being in control.

SPEAKER_02

I think Can I ask a question? Yeah. Can you explain to me what the word sovereign means? Because I know what it means if you were to use it in a sentence, but like just like explain what it means in this sentence.

SPEAKER_07

You want to take a crack at that one, Grayton? I think if I had to put it in my simple brain's terms, it when I hear Jeremy say sovereign and in the context of, but also just in the context of scripture, I would say that when I think of sovereign, I think of like, I think of power over kind of like, um, think of it kind of like the umbrella over the entire existence of everything for me is how I see it in my brain. Where it's like, yeah, everything falls under God. Like there, and I liked how Jeremy said it where there was like, this isn't God versus Satan, and everything that's under God and everything that's under Satan, like against each other. It's there is only God, and then there's everything under him.

SPEAKER_02

So he's saying that he's saying that God is above the idea of being in control because God is not like confined by anything.

SPEAKER_07

What do you think? Wait, hold on. Yeah, I mean I I would say that maybe that's I still think that Jeremy was talking more about a hard issue of like our desire of control and how maybe we put that image on God is how I feel about it. Like how we view control is different than how God would view it. God's view of control would align more with being sovereign is how I feel, is how I perceive the sermon.

SPEAKER_03

Can you can you find for us just a good old-fashioned definition of the word sovereign? And I think that that's good to define our terms here. Maybe not a theological definition. I don't know what you're gonna get there.

SPEAKER_07

Uh do you want me to do a theological? I have just direct lay it on me. The direct uh definition is generally means having supreme power or author or authority over.

SPEAKER_03

Okay.

SPEAKER_07

So that's good.

SPEAKER_03

So I mean supreme power or authority over. So when when Jeremy makes the statement that God is not in control, why do you think that's so disruptive? Just on the surface, before he unpacks it, why do you think it was so disruptive in the moment?

SPEAKER_02

Because I think we like to put God into little bite-sized pieces of understandable nature, if that makes sense. So like if someone were to ask me like if someone were to ask me like, well how do you like how can you trust that like God's gonna do what God says it will do? Like my persistency would be like, well God's in control of everything. So like you're gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_03

So why do you want God to be in control of everything?

SPEAKER_02

Because if if I was in control of everything, then I feel like I would like wind up messing something up.

SPEAKER_04

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

So like for me, whenever I think of like the idea of God being in control, it's like I don't have to worry about anything because I know God has plans for me. And God is like all-knowing, he's like He's everything.

SPEAKER_03

So what's the relationship between God's plans for you and the way that you plan your everyday life?

SPEAKER_02

Um, it's definitely changed so much over the past couple of years because I get a lot of my anxious tendencies, I think, from you.

SPEAKER_03

From me? Yes. You're welcome.

SPEAKER_02

So for me, listen, your inheritance.

SPEAKER_03

I'm like Kanye West. I'm always updating. Okay.

SPEAKER_07

Let's not compare ourselves to Kanye too often. My bad. That's twice, isn't it? Twice.

SPEAKER_02

But as long as you don't do it three times, it's not law.

SPEAKER_03

It's like a genie bottle. All right.

SPEAKER_02

So um, but yeah, for like the longest time I was like, if I didn't have everything planned out and I didn't know exactly what I was doing, then I was like, I'm going nowhere in life. Like I was uh there are some things that I'm still fully convinced will never happen for me. And if I don't plan them out to the T. But something that I've gotten really good at is like I'll start worrying about something and I'm like, I don't know if it's gonna happen anyways, but like there is one person that knows if it's gonna happen, I'ma just give it to him. And like a lot of people are like, oh, like just let go and let God like I genuinely have started being like, bro, I don't know. Like you got that, like I don't know.

SPEAKER_03

So my my relationship to um to control does play out through anxiety, and I'm getting better at it. And there there are multiple different um streams that can that that swirl around uh this like why what humans want, what humans need. And one of the things that humans need, we if depending on who you ask, if you ask um Jeremy quoted Thomas Keating, the uh the Catholic theologian, Keating says that in in more or less these words that we have three core needs. We have the need for security, approval, and then power or control. And they're all three related to to each other, but humans have this deep-seated need to have some sense of like stability and and order in their lives. And so that's a that's a good thing to have. And it's natural for us to want that. It's how we go about trying to achieve the sense of that is where I think that we where we really get into into into trouble. We do need some order and predictability in our life. We need to know that when we turn the water faucet on, that it's going to come on. And um, we need to know when our cars are gonna crank. We need to know that the person that's coming home is in through the front door is coming to hug us and not to kill us.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Uh there's a healthy level of control, but sometimes when we don't know what's going to happen and there's some threat on the other side of that potentially, the the response for me is often that I will worry about it because in worrying about it, I go through potential worst-case scenarios, which in maybe psychological terms is called catastrophizing. So at least I know what might go wrong. Yeah. At least I think I know what might go wrong. And in potentially knowing the things that might go wrong, I experience some level of control of control, even if I have no control about any of it at all.

SPEAKER_02

I actually saw, and if it was one of you guys, you have to tell me.

SPEAKER_03

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

But I heard someone talking the other day and they were talking about like why we catastrophize and like, and I have the tendency to do the exact same thing that you do. And I often will like, if I'm worried about something, I'll look for like obsessive reassurance. So, like over and over again, I'll be like, Do you feel this way? Yeah. Well, do you think that this will happen? And if I don't get the answer that I want, I immediately have like a pit in my stomach. And so I saw something where it was like the reason why we catastrophize is because we would rather have. Did Jeremy Sims say this? We would rather have Jeremy during the sermon of that.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah, that's what people generally generally like en masse will absolutely choose a certain negative outcome over a potential positive outcome.

SPEAKER_03

So they'll stay in relationships, they'll stay in situations because there is a security in the predictability, even if the thing is negative and dysfunctional. We would rather go through that pain and suffering than risk the future. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

That's what it was. Well, it stuck with me.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, well, that's good. So great. And why do you want God to be in control?

SPEAKER_07

I think, I think my desire for control just comes out of a place where it's almost it's almost kind of like what you said. Well, it's like, well, I know, I know that I want to be in control. And if I believe all this about God's character, if I believe all these things about God that I read in scripture, why wouldn't I also want God to be in control? Yeah. Like if I believe that, you know, we do this in everyday, like little mundane tasks. Like you see stuff and you critique and you go like, I could do that thing so much better. I wish I could just do that thing. Um, or it's like, if only I could have done something to prevent this. Like if I was in charge, I would have done this thing. Or if I was so um even controlling little stuff, like if I wanted to be in control of that, let alone the big stuff in my life, you know, where what job you get, where what city you live in, who you marry, all of this stuff. Like, if I want to be in control of this stuff, why wouldn't I think that the creator of the universe, the person who I believe like died for my sins and um has, you know, is full of mercy, grace, unfailing love, all this stuff. Why wouldn't I want him to have control over my life?

SPEAKER_03

Isn't there a part of this that we we just want somebody to be in control? Because the whole thing often feels like a dumpster fire. Yeah. And at least I know if somebody is in control, then there's some meaning to control. There's at least a direction to this thing. Yeah, the whole thing. And you hear this a lot. I hear this a lot doing what I do. Whenever something bad happens, people will say things like, Well, God is in control. Yeah. Now, I never correct someone whenever they say God is in control related to something that happens in their own life. One of the things that my friend Rabbi Arthur Kurzweil taught me from uh from his studies and just from his experience and his wisdom is he says, we never make meaning of someone else's suffering for them. We let them make meaning however they need to make meaning. And I think that's good pastoral wisdom. And here's why, even if it's bad theology, it's good pastorally, because if that person is processing that in a way that allows them to maintain their faith in God, their faith in humanity, their hope that things can get better, sometimes allowing somebody the space to grieve in theologically inaccurate ways is actually better than correcting the theology and them just totally falling off the rail altogether. Now you hope that there's pastoral moments down the line, and you hope that they, but I can remember early on in my faith that the idea of, well, that happened for a reason, right? And behind that happened for a reason is God causing that thing to happen. Or the way we usually back off of that a little bit is God allowed that to happen. Now, this brings us to, and there the we could Google it or if we can find it, you know, people can people can do the research on their own. But there there is an idea in theology of a three-legged stool. Okay, and it's a way to make sense of, it's a way to attempt to make sense, uh, to make sense of um the issue in in theology that we call theodicy. Okay. So the the T-H E O in theology is God. Theology is a study of God. So bios or BIOS, B I O is a study of life. So theodicy is the theological discipline of thinking about, talking about, working with the idea of the problem of pain or suffering or evil. You could say it several different ways. So, one of the ways that that in the theological space that they'll talk about. This is the problem of evil can be approached by thinking about a three-legged stool. So we we like to say that God is uh one of three omnis, all of three omnis. Okay. And the omnis are, you might take a credit.

SPEAKER_02

Omnipotent, omnipresent, omnipowerful.

SPEAKER_03

Okay. So yeah, omnipotent or omnipotent. Yeah. It's funny. It's one of those words whenever you say, man, that cologne is potent, right? You don't say it's uh pitent. How would you say omnipotent? Omnipotent. You think the same word that's so pitent.

SPEAKER_02

I've been saying it omnipotent for the last year.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, you put the emphysis on a different syllabus, and it sounds funny, right? But yeah, omnipotent, omnipotent. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

It's like the same thing.

SPEAKER_03

So it's just like that. Exactly like that. It's like Kanye West says. No. Okay. So omnipotent being that God is all powerful.

SPEAKER_02

Omnipotent.

SPEAKER_03

Omnipotent. Okay.

SPEAKER_07

I feel like we're missing the mark here.

SPEAKER_03

It's the same thing. The second one. Go to the second one.

SPEAKER_02

Omnipresent.

SPEAKER_03

Omnipresent. That God is everywhere present.

SPEAKER_02

Including the narrow spaces between this synapses of your brain.

SPEAKER_03

Wow. And then God is also. Thank you for that.

SPEAKER_07

Omniscient.

SPEAKER_03

Omniscient.

SPEAKER_02

What did I say?

SPEAKER_03

I have no idea.

SPEAKER_07

You said omnipresent.

SPEAKER_02

Omnipotent.

SPEAKER_07

You said omnipotent, omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient.

SPEAKER_02

I meant to say omniscient.

SPEAKER_03

And omnipresent. So God is everywhere present. God is all-present. God is all powerful. And God is all knowing. Now, here's the kicker. We also believe, and this is me taking that metaphor and pushing it a little bit, but we also believe that the circular seat of that stool that is holding all of these legs together at the top is love. So we know from John's gospel that God is love. Everything that God does is love. God's judgment is love. God's discipline is love. God's mercy is love. All of the things God is love. So if God is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, if God is all powerful everywhere all the time, and all-knowing, and God is love, that the very foundation of what we sit our faith on is in an all-knowing, all-present, um, all-powerful God who is also loving. How do you explain whenever something happens that makes absolutely no good sense at all? Now, I don't, I don't mean for this to be, how would you say it, triggering for any of our of our listeners? Um your mother and I experienced a miscarriage between you and your brother. Okay. The funny, not the funny thing is, the strange thing is that I had a dream that foreshadowed the entire thing happening. So she was a couple of weeks, uh, a few weeks into the pregnancy, and I had a dream. And in the dream, I went into an OBGYN clinic that I'd never been in before, and we walked down a hallway and we sat in a room. And there was a uh, I'm sitting here in a chair. There's a chair to my right as well. Your mother is on the table laying down. Her head is to my left, and then her feet are in the stirrups. And over my left shoulder is an open bathroom door, and to my immediate left over here is the door where the person would come in. In the dream, we're in that space. I'm sitting where I'm sitting, she's where she is, and an Asian nurse walks into the room and examines your mother and then looks at me and says, in, and forgive me if this isn't the correct way to say it, but uh that her English was not um was not precise in in what she said. She said, I so sorry like that. And then I I in the dream I say, what do you mean you're so sorry? And then I wake up from the dream and I'm just in cold sweats. I journal it, I talk to my boss at the time, who's my pastor, and uh he says, When's the, you know, when's the appointment? I tell him, um, but she was showing no symptoms at that point in time at all. And so um the the appointment was, let's say it was maybe a week or two away, or I forget when it was. Well, she started showing some symptoms that something was was not right. We walked into this OBGYN clinic we'd never been in before, because you were born in Florida, right? We'd never been into the one in North Carolina, walked into the clinic, and as I walked down the hallway, things started looking vaguely familiar. When I walked into the room, it was the room from the dream. And before I thought anything about it, I sat down in the left chair. The bathroom door is open to my left with a light on. Elizabeth's on the table, head to the left, feet in the stirrups. And when an Asian nurse walked in the room, my whole body just went completely cold and numb. When she examined my wife and turned to me in broken English and said, I so sorry. Um, that was it was just an otherworldly experience. I said, What do you mean you're so sorry? And she said, I so sorry, no heartbeat. And so that that was a tragedy. That was a tragedy. And here I am, a pastor on staff at a at a church, and not just a church, but a very large church. And so many people already knew that we were going to have a baby. We'd picked out the room, we had already picked out, you know, colors and maybe name, I don't remember, um, for you know, boy or girl. And it's like, what do you do when the thing that you hoped for dies? And now I've got these people in the church that are coming up to me. And when they found out that Elizabeth had a miscarriage, they say the dumbest things. And as a pastor, you want to do two things at the same time. You want to hear their heart and say, Oh, thank you. And the other thing you want to do is just karate chop them in the neck and be like, You're a total idiot. Like, like, why did you why would you say that? Okay. So they come up to me and they say things like, Well, God needed another flower in his garden. And after I heard that two or three times, I said, if God can create the Garden of Eden and the entire world, surely the brother can plant some flowers. Like if you need some flowers, plant some flowers. There's someone that can pouring for flowers. Somebody up there. Yeah. Get Gabriel, somebody, flowers. And then they'll say things like, Well, God needed another angel in the choir. Bro, humans don't become angels when they die.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Right. But that's Hollywood doing our theology for us. Here's what's the thing behind the thing. What they're trying to do is make you feel better. They're also trying to make sense of what happened so that they can feel better about a situation they can't explain. And the thing behind the thing is they're trying to explain something they can't explain with metaphors that don't make any sense in order to protect God from appearing to not be in control? So here's the question back to the stool. Why would an everywhere-present, all-knowing, all-powerful God, who is also love, take the time, if we believe according to Jeremiah, that before God created us in our mother's womb, that God knew us and had plans for us, why would God, who is all-powerful, everywhere present, all-knowing and loving, create a baby that's going to die just a few short weeks into its life? And I believe that baby was a human and a human in the making and had a destiny and everything else. How do you make sense of a three-legged stool bound together with a seat of love that we rest our faith on when things like that happen?

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Anybody want to go in on that? All right. There it doesn't have to be like a somber, like, oh my God, I'm so sorry.

SPEAKER_07

I think just going back to sorry, there was just something that stuck out to me about when you're talking about like people comforting you whenever things go wrong or whatever, you know, and like that need of I'm glad that you touched on the fact that it's not only trying to comfort you, but like it's also just them trying to comfort and rationalize themselves. I think it's really important for people to be aware of and to know. Because I also think, to be honest with you, there shouldn't be, there shouldn't be like this pressure to help someone's theology and perspective of God in times of tragedy. Do you know what I mean? Like I don't think I think there's this internalized pressure, but like you said, like God doesn't need us to go up to bat for him.

SPEAKER_03

Um isn't that in Job? So when Job goes through his sufferings, the first thing that his friends do, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. Yeah, here we are. The friends come in and they sit with him for a minute, and then they start trying to make sense of Job's tragedy. Surely you did something. You did something. Even his wife, even his own wife. Yeah. Is like, hey, why don't you just curse God and die? Which is on everything you want in the life.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And bad things start happening to that dude. Like his kids die, his cattle gets all the cattle, the land, the help, everything. God is behind the scenes in this whole thing having a conversation with Satan, who asks permission to wreck Job's life because the whole premise is the only reason Job trusts you is because you won't let anything happen to him. And then God, however you want to say it, pulls back the hand of protection or whatever. He just says you can't kill the guy. Yeah. It's like you kill everything else. Whatever you want. You can't kill that brother. Not Job. Yeah. His kids are fine. But not Job. His cattle are fine. Everything is fine. His house is fine. Not Job. Just not Job. Which is a problem for me. That's a real problem for me. I think here's one of the things that Scripture does. Okay. Scripture is polyphonic. Okay. Scripture speaks with multiple voices. The reason some people try to discredit the scripture because there seems to be, how would you say it, um, contradictions is because they don't understand that the scripture is not just trying to say only one thing about one thing.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

So in the book of Deuteronomy, in 28, 20, something, you have you have the writer of the book of Deuteronomy who is saying things on behalf of God. If you will do these things, if you will keep my commands, etc., etc., then you will be blessed. If you will not keep my commands, then you will be cursed. Well, okay. Well, there we are. There we are. So if you read that backwards, here's a mistake we make. This is not what scripture wants us to do. It's a mistake we make. If you read that backwards, you look at somebody who is going through a seemingly cursed time and you say, you must have done something wrong.

SPEAKER_07

You apply it to their life.

SPEAKER_03

And if you look at somebody who is living the hashtag blessed life, then you say, well, they may be doing, must be doing something right. The problem is the Bible is full of examples, not least in Proverbs, where it says, Don't get jealous whenever you see the wicked prospering. The rain's going to fall on the just and on the unjust. What does that tell you? People who do wicked things will also prosper. 30A is littered with reprobates.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Having houses on the beach. So you have in it's called Deuteronomistic theology. You have theology based on the idea that if things bad are happening, it must mean bad things were done. If good things were happening, good things were done. And over here you have Job saying, actually, sometimes you live perfect, perfectly. You live righteously, we should say. And bad things still happen. So maybe Job and Deuteronomy are in conversation with each other to not try and find a nice, neat solution to the problem of pain.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_07

Yeah, I think it absolutely, you know, even where you're talking about, like if I live this righteous life and I I prosper, if I uh live this wicked life, all of a sudden I'm cursed. Yeah. It it's inherently transactional, which we don't believe about God at all. Like it's it's inherently if I do the right thing, if I say the right thing, if I if I go to the right place, if I do my Bible study every morning for 30 minutes, that's right. Then God will absolutely answer all my prayers and my desires. And well, and I think we we misunderstand the idea of like God isn't, you know, it in youth ministry and in kids' ministry even, I always called it uh, and it's been taught to me, where it was like, God's not a vending machine, it's not the vending machine God where it's like you can't go and press the right buttons and get the drink that you want.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, not a cosmic slot machine. Yeah. Not a what would you call it, Sari, like uh is it a postulate or a theorem inside of geometry to where if this and that, then this. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. To where if you just have the if you just know these certainly. Then I'll just live a blessed life and I won't have to worry about it. And a lot of people lose their faith because their faith was built in a faulty idea from the beginning. This is why ultimately that person who goes through the tragedy is making really bad theological sense of it, eventually they need to make better sense of it and understand a little bit more. Yeah, what's up? It seemed like you had to say what you got. You've got it.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I was just I was just gonna agree with that. I think I think that for like this whole topic, the I learned something in my theology class. Lay it on me. Let's go. Um it's not a very comforting way to think about like evil and suffering, though. But we spent a lot of time talking about suffering. And in my theology class, I learned that God has like a way of so like God is above time, outside of time, he's not confined by time. And so, like, did you did you have a theology?

SPEAKER_07

Yeah. No. So what did he say?

SPEAKER_02

So, okay, so God is not confined by time. God is above time. So God's timeline, if you want to look at it, can look like this, or he's this is our timeline right here. Yeah, God is above time, he's below time, he's inside and out of time, he can be in any where he wants to be. Anyways, so God already knows what's going to happen, what has happened, and all the different possible routes that can happen.

SPEAKER_05

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

And a quote that Dr. Davis said was Um, whenever we were talking about evil and suffering, is God will always trade a finite for an infinite. And so that means that it's not a very comforting way to think about it, but if there is a door that needs to be shut for the greater good of infinite possibilities that could happen that works out for God's will, then God will shut that door.

SPEAKER_03

So sometimes God does control.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Well, it also goes into free will, where it's like we're free to the extent that God's allow that God's God allows us to be free.

SPEAKER_05

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

Because we have free will to choose to follow him or to not choose to follow him. But there are also times where in our life we need to have a little bit of control because think about it this way there were probably girls that you dated before mom where you were thinking, I'm gonna marry her and I want to marry her.

SPEAKER_03

I can neither confirm nor deny whether or not those allegations were. Right, but like as a lawyer, they're not true.

SPEAKER_02

Probably are happy that those things didn't work out because God shut that door and God was like, No, not what I have planned.

SPEAKER_03

Maybe God shut that door, or maybe I shut that door, maybe they shut that door.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And so, and here we are again, back to the three-legged stool.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

So one of them has to go, is what where we came back to. And I think that's really insightful what Dr. Davis is saying. I also think that it implies, just to jump back, it implies that at some moments God does control. And we know that got some moments God does control in scripture, uh, the parting of the Red Sea. That was God stepping into space and time and doing something.

SPEAKER_07

Mana from the sky.

SPEAKER_03

Mana from the sky, the sun standing skill, standing still. So why, why does God step in in those moments and God doesn't step in in my moment of need, then you start to question like, gosh, is is did God not see it? Was God not there? Am I not important enough? Is God not powerful enough? Or does God not love me enough? So if you if you go back to the stool, to me, you it's not that any of the legs of a stool have to go away in order for your faith to stand. A two-legged stool doesn't work very well. I think you need omnipotent, omniscient, and omni, and um omnipotent, omniscient, omniscient, and omnipresent. Omnipresent. The one that I really had to do some work on is what did I mean whenever I said omnipotent? So here's here's why I say that. To me, when I say that God is all powerful, I don't mean that God holds all power. What I mean when I say God is all powerful is that God is most powerful. And that in God's most powerfulness, because God is also loving, God shares power. God gives power to humans, God gives power to the created world, God gives grants power to the demonic realm. That's true.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

God grants power to the angelic realm. If God allows it, God permits it, God grants it, however one would say it. Yeah. But there is no power in the world, to Jeremy's point, that is not granted, given, and in some sense, even sustained, because God allows that power to happen in the world. So when we say God is all powerful, what we don't mean is God has all power, because if I hit you in the face, God is not hitting you in the face. I'm hitting you in the face. Did God allow me to hit you in the face? In some sense, yes, because God is everywhere present, all-knowing, and all-powerful and didn't intervene. But because God is love and shares power with us and does not want to control us, then God permits these things to happen. And the thing behind the thing that we, I think, all believe is the world is not as God would want it to be. We live in a broken world, fractured by sin, being healed and being healed by the redemptive and resurrected power of the Lord Jesus Christ and his son, the sons and daughters of God being agents of hope and reconciliation and healing in the world as his ambassadors on his behalf. We act with God's agency and authority. We are the image of God in the world, meant to right the wrong and correct the brokenness and heal the world. But that will never finally happen until Christ returns and things are in the future as they were in the beginning, but taking to their full potential that God gave Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. We're gonna have a city in a garden. It's not just a garden, it's a city in a garden. So we have power, the broken world has power. God does not have all of the power. So here's what I want to put something out there. What I want to say is I think we can say that God is in control, but God is not controlling. God does hold the ability to control the world. So in essence, you could say, yeah, God can God can control anything. Out of love, God chooses not to always control everything. And that hurts sometimes because we don't like it when God doesn't control the situ. I didn't like it when we had our miscarriage. I didn't the only person that I think got it right was an attorney at the church whose name was Dennis. And Dennis came up to us one day. He said, Lori and I have never experienced anything like what you're experiencing. We've had a very charmed life. I just want you to know that we're sorry. And here was the interesting thing. Back to the dream. As I share this dream with people, they would say to me over and again, have you ever read the book, The Shack? And I'm like, I've never read The Shack. Here's why I hadn't read The Shack. Because I don't read books that everybody else reads. I'm a diva. If everybody's reading the book, I'm not reading the book.

SPEAKER_07

It's too popular, it's not good.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like the I'm like the indie emo book reader, right? A bit of a diva. And so eye roll. I saw that. The people who are listening, I don't know if you heard Siri's eye roll, but and so they kept asking me that. And I'm like, no, I've never read it. They said, you need to go, uh, you need to go take a look at the shack. I'm like, I'm not taking a look at the shack. Real reason I was hiding from the shack is I don't like stories that are about pain because it reminds me of my own pain. But in I I still haven't read the shack. Uh I tried to watch the movie, I didn't find it to be that compelling.

SPEAKER_07

It's not a great movie.

SPEAKER_03

And so in the shack, apparently the Holy Spirit is personified as an Asian woman. Is that true?

SPEAKER_07

Can you can you Google that for me? In the movie, I could have sworn it was a a black woman.

SPEAKER_03

I think the black woman might have been God the Father.

SPEAKER_07

You're right.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07

I got you. Keep keep talking. I'll be back.

SPEAKER_03

So I'm pretty sure that the Holy Spirit was represented or personified in in that book. And I'm not endorsing the book. I'm just doing theology work out here. And so, at any rate, it occurs to me that in the dream and in reality, it was an Asian nurse that came into the room and said, I'm so sorry, which sent me down this rabbit trail for how in the Christian tradition, the Holy Spirit has often been referred to metaphorically, because anytime you're speaking theologically, you're always speaking provisionally and with metaphors and analogies. The Holy Spirit has often been referred to, both in scripture and in Christian history, as uh as a nurse and as a midwife. God is God as sometimes as mother, sometimes as mourner, sometimes as midwife. There's a book by that title. Now God is not a mother. All of our language is always provisional. God is not a woman, neither is God a man, right? And in some sense, although we call God father, he didn't physically procreate us. Yeah. So all of our God is a father to us. Um but uh the Holy Spirit is like that nurse who comes into the room and doesn't fix the issue, but just speaks out to the pain and says, I'm so sorry. Which doesn't mean that God caused the the thing. It means like Dennis, that God sees the thing, God grieves the thing, God weeps over the thing, God witnesses to the thing, God mourns the thing, God enters into the suffering of the thing, and rather than delivering you from the thing itself, delivers hope amidst the pain. So sometimes God delivers us as a mighty warrior, sometimes God delivers as a nurse taking and receiving the dead thing and saying, I'm so sorry. It's the only way I think you can have a three-legged stool and still have God as love, is if you problematize your understanding that God of omnipotence to say God does not control all things through power. God, through his own power and love, shares power with the world, and that means that sometimes bad things are going to happen to good people. But in it, God still witnesses to and ministers amidst the pain.

SPEAKER_07

I think what what comes to mind immediately whenever you're talking about um power and um like even God granting power and giving power to the natural world. I think about the story of the woman touching the hem of his garments. There's a specific line there where it says where Jesus, like, I felt the power like leave me. Yes. And I remember I taught that, I don't know, like a year or two ago, where I taught in the idea of like God is with us, He's very aware through our healing and through our suffering and through our interactions. Yeah. Um, but I think it also goes to a point towards where you're saying, like, in that moment, you could almost say, like, Jesus is granting that power. Like, it's not that Jesus was like, oops, I lost some power. I did it. Like it was, I still believe Jesus, Jesus may have framed it in the way obviously the text says Jesus says, like, I felt the power leave me. Yeah. Um, I think that's an active like transfer of power. Um, and so I think that's just what pings in my head immediately, a story that connects to that idea so yeah, so clearly to me, where um it even aligns with Jesus being so active in our um in our suffering. Um and even in the context of the rest of that specific story where he calls her daughter. And and even in the moments of like obviously she got her healing, but he he healed her in ways that we didn't even that she didn't even know that she needed. Yes. You know, calling her daughter was such a big deal because like she was this she was this pushed away, shined person who who wasn't allowed into society as a regular person. And I mean he healed her um relationally, societally, and physically. Um and so I think that just speaks yeah directly to your point. I think that just was like screaming in my head so loudly whenever you're talking about the truth of power, and then even with with healing and um the Holy Spirit.

SPEAKER_03

So so think about Jesus coming into the world. So a minute ago I said God is not a man, but God incarnate in the flesh through the Son, Jesus the Christ Mary's boy. God is a man in that sense. Yeah. And for every person that Jesus healed, he walked by another. For every leper being laid at the pool of Bethesda that was healed, there were many more who were not healed. For every mouth that was fed, there were many more gaping for bread. So even Jesus does not right all of the wrongs in the moment. But to your point earlier, this whole thing is going somewhere. And I think that one way that I've come to say it is just simply this. I I don't think that God causes all things to happen. I I don't believe that personally. If you believing that helps you process your life, go for it. I think it breaks down at some points. And so while I don't think that God causes all things, I believe the scripture and I believe that the scripture is true when it says, in all things, God works together for a good. In all things. It's one of the most important prepositions in scripture. And to me, uh it means that that God, like a weaver, is taking this and weaving it with that and pulling and luring all things in process toward a good that we cannot possibly see or imagine, and at the end of all things, that the world will be set to rights. I believe, this is my personal theology, people can disagree, and I don't care. I believe one day I'm gonna see your sibling between you and your brother. I believe that. I believe that in the new heavens and the new earth, that all things are going to be made new. Yeah. And that God is good even when I don't understand. So if you want to say God's in control, go for it. If you want to say God's not in control, go for it. But what I want what I want to say is I think God can be in control without being controlling. Yeah, I agree. Any closing thoughts before we go today? You good? Yep. This is this is deep. We haven't had enough coffee for all of this yet. Well, um, I just want to pray for the people that are there listening this morning. God, I know that um conversations like this, they are necessary, but they're also hard. And so I pray for every person who's struggling this morning to make sense of the things that they're going through. I pray that in the midst of all of that sense-making, that you will let their brain just take a break and they will appreciate your goodness and your love for them, and they they can trust that in all things you're working for the good, and you are working out a destiny filled with hope for them, even through the hard places. In Jesus' name. Amen. Well, we'll have to have my friend Jeremy Sims back because who knows what he's gonna say next time. Who knows what we're gonna say next time. But what if we've said a lot of things today?

SPEAKER_06

A lot of cany. A lot of cognac. So give us another cunning.

SPEAKER_03

I don't think that my child knows another cunning. Okay, we're signing off for today. God bless you, everyone. Take care, and uh, we'll see you later.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you for joining Grow As You Go. Be sure to hit the follow button wherever you listen to podcasts.