God doesn´t control all things?

There's a difference in "control all things" and "being in control". Yes, God is in control! He has the ability (and the right!) to control all things. But, he allows free will. Since he allows free will, he does not actively control all things. He is in control because he allows the things to happen, but that is not the same as actually controlling the action.

In short, God can control all things, but sometimes allows things to play out for themselves. He knows ahead of time what we are going to do and can bring glory to Himself through anything.

 

I have always wondered what God thinks when one of his created beings becomes, through His grace, a very accomplished scientist, and proceeds to explain to the world that there is no Creation to the universe, or that God has no part in the running of it.

 

I totally agree with you. Grace was not a "reaction" to what Satan did. That makes it sound like Satan was in charge and God was reacting to him. God does not react; this would mean God is in time and reacts to events as they happen.

 

I certainly didn't mean for it to come across that way. God intervenes all the time. Without his intervention I'd be heading straight for hell! I just don't believe he controls people to a point that we are all walking robots doing exactly as he bids. If that were the case, there never would have been a need for Jesus to die since we would have obeyed the law perfectly.

 

I recommend a discussion in the most recent Trinity Journal between Tom McCall and John Piper on God's sovereignty.

I would also recommend one work that McCall cites that the broader Reformed tradition in the past never upheld divine omnicausality or determinism of all actions, but they of course upheld election unto salvation. Richard Muller has a helpful article on this in one of Schreiner and Ware's old volumes "The Grace of God, the Bondage of the Will."

 

To say that God "controls" everything, is nothing more than to ascribe some measure of truth to Flip Wilson's famous line, "The Debbel made me do it!"

Only difference is he would then say "God made me do it."

 

I have given up on trying to figure God out like a science project.

Some of us on this board need to do the same.

 

This sounds patronizing.

I don't think anyone is tyring to figure God out "like a science project." It can be productive to discuss God's nature and attributes using the Bible as the source.

 

The outworking of God's nature and attributes in the redemption drama continues to defy our lofty human reasoning.

 

Well, I would say that some of this is beyond our human comprehension, but not that it defies our human reasoning. God is a God of reason and reason is based on His character.

 

At least for me, God continues to defy human reasoning.

 

As He did for Job when God spent chapters 38-41 of the book of Job talking about how his nature and actions are beyond human reasoning and knowledge. I think you are in pretty good company. :thumbs:

 

Quote in the op is someone saying God is not sovereign, denying His power, compromising who God is.
We don't have full understaning of God and how He works, so we make stuff up, like He isn't in control anyway.
Which is a lack of faith.

 

Sometimes we need to qualify what we mean when we say "God is in control".

Was God in control of the Nazi holocaust?
The genocide of Stalin, Po Pot and Saddam Hussein?
The Spanish and Roman Inquisitions?
The Massacre of the Waldenses?
The St Bartholomew Day Massacre?

Those acts were best described by the following verse:

NIB 1 John 5:19 We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.​

God is sovereign and in ULTIMATE control.​

Revelation 16-22 Clearly details that final and ultimate defeat of the evil one.​

HankD​

 

God is all powerful and is complete control. However, sometimes God gives us things because of our sinfulm desires. God din't want Israel to have a king but they wanted one. So he gave then Saul. People do not want the light of God, so he gave them the darkness of sin. Was God in control when t Israel split into Judah and Israel? Absolutely. Was God in controll when the Jews were taken into captivity? Yes. Was God in control when Hitler murdered millions? Absolutely. How about when Stalin murdered even more than Hitler? Yep! You can go on and on. God allows us to sin because that is what we want. James wrote that lust is conceived in our own mind and becomes sin. Only when we submit to God does he have complete controll of us, not because he can't but because chooses.

Someone asked how God felt when one who was created in his image, nutured by him, and loved by him, denies his existance? I heard someone say that is why he gives us teenagers, so we would know how it feels