An Involved God

Something I've changed my mind a few times about has been how involved God is in our daily lives. For as long as I've been a Christian, I've believed that God is ultimately in control. But I've questioned just how actively involved in things God is. I'm not kidding when I say I've been to just about every extreme.

For a while I believed something which was kind of Calvinist in nature. I held that everything that happened in my life was ordained by God. So even something simple like picking a pair of socks for the day or stubbing my toe was something that God saw beforehand and approved of. God selected who I would run across in life, what job I'd work at, what TV shows I'd watch that day, etc. In this sense, God was heavily involved. It was also more personal since God himself had approved an eternity beforehand what would happen on a daily basis.

Then my thoughts switched and I held that God was pretty hands-off about things. He decided the times of our birth and death. He also gave us natural talents in certain things. For me that would involve programming and writing. Throughout our lives, God would intervene to make a few things happen, but it wouldn't always be obvious it was God acting. Outside of these, he let us choose things for ourselves. What college to attend, what job to work at, who to marry, what car to buy, and so on. In regards to God's plan for my life, he knew what choices I would make, and permitted them to happen. If something was incredibly outside his will, he would have done something to stop me from doing it. The Holy Spirit was still working repentance and greater holiness in me, but nothing dramatic. This felt almost deistic in nature, since it seemed like God wasn't very active in my life, at least not in any glaringly obvious way.

I had switched to this more laissez-faire belief because, for the life of me, I could not find any Bible passages indicating God had any strongly active roles in daily life. It didn't adversely affect my faith. My faith isn't founded upon how active God is in my daily life, but the death and resurrection of Jesus, which is a sure thing.

Since then I think I have swung to what seems to be a reasonable, happy medium. I didn't expect the issue to be addressed in the Small Catechism but it was. I think the way Martin Luther handled the questions is pretty good. Specifically, questions 108 and 110 for the explanation of the Small Catechisms address the question nicely. They indicate that God is presently active in sustaining the universe. That's something that I assumed for a long time. I take it to mean that if God were to stop tending to the universe it would fall apart. They also indicate that God actively provides needs.

This idea of God providing things on a daily basis is certainly more involved than the hands-off approach, but not so strongly active as to take on a Calvinistic perspective. I couple this with the notion of God having a perfect will and a permissive will. God provides and leads, but doesn't direct everything. Honestly, my take on God's will and my will are a post unto itself. So let us suffice to say that I think God is involved in my life, which is a comforting and (at least seemingly) true notion.

Devotionals

Back when I was going through the membership class with my hometown church's pastor, one of the things he offered me was the little daily devotional book published by the LCMS, "Portals of Prayer." Each day has two readings (from what I've seen, a New Testament reading and a Psalm) followed by a page-long message and a short prayer.

At first I was hesitant to read the book. Given the chance I would rather dig into deeper theological stuff. Such as reading the Defense of the Augsburg Confession, which I haven't had time to do for a while. However, after a couple weeks school started taking up a huge portion of my time and mental power. Suddenly, reading confessions wasn't so easy. But I wanted to continue getting some kind of dose of theology and Bible. That's where the devotional came in. The whole thing only takes a few minutes to go through. It's nice to have a planned reading for the day as well as a message to go with it. Whether it's had any impact on me isn't clear, but I still like it. It's certainly better than not having any Biblical readings at all.