Eyes

Nations watch horizon planes with terror,
fearful of all but their own.
Parties proclaim their solution as the only sensible way,
the only civilised way dammit!
Groups find solace in shared outrage,
"they can't do this!" they cry.
Neighbours terrotorise their communities,
ruffling curtains, straining eyes.
Eyes used to come in pairs but not now,
even the indivisible has been impaired and conquered.

1 : 6,716,117,644

Well the Olympics have gotten underway and maybe it's just the cynic in me or the old age but they don't hold the same allure that they once did for me. I still pop in and out as I'm having my dinner or whatever but I can take them or leave them. It's interesting though to think about how the Olympics and other such pursuits affect us psychologically and as the population increases, are more and more of us giving ourselves over to mediocrity? Now I'm no expert in the study of population but as far as I can gather, the number of humans on the planet is increasing and has been doing so since the time when there were no humans. I've no idea whether it's going to plateau anytime soon but one thing is clear, as individuals, we are becoming less and less of a novelty in our world...less and less unique if you will.

I wonder how that affects us psychologically...Surely when Adam and Eve were wandering around the planet, after the fall, one of the things that must have popped into their heads was how special they were, how they were the only ones of their kind on the planet, how everything revolved around them (figuratively speaking of course!)...how proud they must have felt. And now the best we can do, because there are 6,716,117,644 people on the planet and counting, to feel unique and special is to excel, to rise above the masses and be noticed. The problem is that, mathematically speaking, the more people there are, the more difficult it is to rise. Of course, it's easy to rise to the same height or level of achievement (this can be clearly seen as world records are broken) but relatively speaking, this is much lower as more and more people 'excel' and also, and this is my point, as more and more people exist.

One may look at it like this: Just say for example we put twenty people in a straight line along an over-sized, novelty x-axis and each person stands an arbitrary unit apart. Now if we label the y-axis as being 'achievement' or 'level of excellence' and one of those people rises five units along the y-axis, it is quite an obvious peak and if it were drawn, it would be clear for all to see and admire, thus affording the person fame, fortune and all the other 'f' words they care for.

However, if we put 6 billion people along the x-axis and one of those rises 20 units along the y-axis of excellence, it is theoretically and virtually negligible as any mathematician worth their salt (and most who aren't worth any salt) will tell you. So what does that feel like oh excellent one? To have done all you can to achieve excellence and still not be able to able to break through the meniscus of mediocrity?
I'm sure it can't be pleasant. Whether or not you put it down to our innate pride or our desire to excel, both of these take a hit as we become more and more anonymous...as we become more and more uniform...as we become more and more homogeneous...as more and more procreation means we become more and more linear.

It was only this Saturday in one of the weekend sections of a paper that a columnist was bemoaning the fact that he was getting bored with music...that as he approached music as an à la carte consumer, picking and choosing which tracks he wanted, he realised that it was becoming dull to him and so on. Again, I'm no music historian but we are surely reaching a (if not the) saturation point when it comes to music, not to mention film and, though I admit to irresponsible extrapolation, every other major artistic discipline. To take the music business as an example, long before apple started bobbing for customers, generally speaking, mainstream music was becoming more and more well...mainstream. And as more and more of the supplementary streams were engulfed, torn to bits and left high and dry by the mainstream, excellence and individuals' uniqueness were out the proverbial window.

So what is one to do, musician or otherwise? If we are hardwired to be unique and to be 'excellers' and to do great things with the world around us, how can we possibly function when we are (as I'm guessing anybody who's reading this is) average Joe or Mary Soaps? Well I think the answer lies in God... We are not necessarily going to be the most excellent person in the world at what we do if we focus on God. However, we will become closer and closer to what he made us to be and so, though through the eyes of the world we are possibly even further away from breaking through the average, in God's eyes, we are excelling. We are becoming all that He created us to be. Though this may sound airy fairy to some or it may sound strange to others, I wonder isn't that precisely what Jesus meant when He said "He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses His life for my sake will find it." It is when our focus is so much on the Lord Jesus Christ, on God, that we truly lose our lives, we forget ourselves, we forget our pride and our selfish ambitions. And yet the funny thing is, it's when we focus on God (and it is true that that which you focus on, you become like) that we truly find our life because we become more godly, more resembling His image and likeness. It is a beautiful thing when something that was created fulfills its purpose. I think often we only realise how beautiful it is when it stops working (as anyone who has encountered the blue-screen of death or has had a puncture will tell you). Let us all wake up and realise that God created us with a purpose and that purpose is to bring glory to Him. He created us to find our whole purpose for existence in Him. Let us seek to be as observant with the spiritual aspect of our lives as we are with the puncture. Let us look at it and realise that it is in need of repair. Let us stop denying that which is staring us blankly in the face. We were made for God...We find our meaning and our purpose in God...It is only by centering our lives on God that we will start to live...It is when we do this and we accept that we need to be reconciled to God; that we need to repent of all the wrong that we have done in our lives, not so as to earn our way into His good books but out of thankfulness and admittance that the Lord Jesus Christ has done it all on our behalf and all we need to do is accept that by faith.

Let me draw this to some kind of (hopefully) concise closure. Nowadays, if we are to rise above mundane mediocrity, we have to climb so high up the y-axis of excellent that it's either humanly impossible to get there or humanly impossible to stay there. When we look to the living God, we see the Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son who enables us to rise. The mind-boggling thing is though that instead of expecting us to climb up to Him, He comes down to us. God becomes man...He humbles Himself to that extent. And it is when we look to this God-man, who humbled Himself that we become more like Him...we humble ourselves (for what other response could we have)...we accept that He has done it all...and it is then, that we find life...it is then that we realise it isn't the bland linear x-axis that is the problem, it's that all the while, we have been looking side-on at a great masterpiece...and as it is slowly turned upright, the colours, the faces, the landscapes, the past, present and future of this Masterwork begin to become clear and we sing "Hallelujah, Praise the Lord for He is great, I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them."



And slowly the '1' in the title of this post becomes less and less 'me' and more and more 'God'...

Who ate all the oil? (or The Artificial Sun)

I wrote the following back in 2006...It probably wasn't overly prophetic back then which emphasises all the more how long we have been faced with what we are faced with now.

As mankind traverses its way through a field of much uncertainty, there is no area of greater concern than that of finding a renewable source of energy. For centuries, we have been relying more and more heavily on the crutch that is fossil fuel. Like an elderly man leans more and more on his nightstand each morning just to get him out of bed, we too have come to the stage where we simply cannot carry out our daily lives without fossil fuels. They quite literally are the power behind our very existence. And just like that elderly man realises that one day, that nightstand simply won’t be able to support him anymore, we have come to the dawning of the inevitable – fossil fuel will not last much longer.

You may well be thinking that this all sounds very ominous and may well be quite a headache for billions of people. And you may well be right. Thinking about it logically, it would seem that we have three options: Our first option is that we immediately resign ourselves to literally reversing our style of living to that of a couple of hundred years ago where people got around under their own steam (or the steam of their donkey) and conserve what little fossil fuel is left so that it can be displayed in museums for generations to come so that our grandchildren may gaze in awe and wonder at these lumps of “coal?”. The second option is that we continue as we are, ignoring the inevitable until one day, we go to fill up our car but to find the garage is all out. The garage calls it’s supplier but to find that its supplier is all out, the garage’s supplier calls some guy in a hot country far away who, to the misfortune of humanity, realises that his supplier (the earth) is also all out. Now, admittedly the first of these options holds a certain Amish charm but all in all, these options present extremely limited opportunities to ‘advance’ as mankind defines the term. And that is where the third option comes in.

The third option is to find an alternative that can realistically fuel our insatiable appetite for energy. Now this sounds quite difficult to achieve and it most definitely is but in China, this is exactly what they are doing with the aid of superconducting technology. This is an area that has not quite come out of the blue. China has already built a similar device in the early 1990’s [1] in partnership with Russia. The device that is currently being built is a full superconducting experimental Tokamak fusion device, which aims to generate infinite, clean nuclear-fusion-based energy according to [2]. (The Tokamak takes its name from a Russian snack which has the same toroidal donut shape as the fusion device.)

The project is called EAST (experimental advanced superconducting Tokamak) and will require an investment of nearly 300 million Yuan. This sounds like quite a substantial amount of money but is only about one fifteenth of the cost of similar devices being developed in the other parts of the world. It is believed that deuterium extracted from the sea can be used in a deuterium-tritium fusion reaction under huge temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius. After this nuclear fusion has taken place, the deuterium extracted from one litre of sea water will produce energy equivalent to 300 litres of petrol. It is no surprise that a device that can withstand these kinds of temperatures will be no less than an ‘artificial sun’. Once it is also able to control a deuterium-tritium fusion reaction it will be able to supply nearly infinite, clean energy.

Russia is not being left behind in this. It is reported at [3] that Russian engineers have managed to create a magnetic field which is 20 million times more powerful than that of the earths. Magnetic fields of this strength will allow them to control a thermonuclear reaction. The only thing holding them back is time: the aim is to grip previously heated plasma with this field in a few nanoseconds in order to ‘light the sun’. So far, 5 microseconds is the best achieved time.

Now this all sounds very similar to a nuclear power station but the fundamental difference between fission and fusion is the key. Fission reactions are based on splitting atoms releasing huge quantities of energy. This type of reaction is infamous for it’s involvement in the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Fusion reactions differ in that they are based on forcing the nuclei of atoms together releasing even greater amounts of energy as in the Hydrogen bomb or the sun. In the sun, the energy required to overcome the charges that repel the atoms from each other is produced by the high temperatures and the high pressures (the temperature of the sun is over 15 million degrees Celsius and the pressure is 100,000 times that on the earth’s surface.) It is not possible to create the level of pressure required but higher temperatures may be used to compensate for this ‘low’ pressure. It has been stated earlier that the reactions would be possible under temperatures of 100 million degrees. To the average man on the street it would seem that this would be difficult to attain but temperatures of around 300 million degrees have already been achieved in experimental reactors. At these temperatures, plasma is formed by the electrically charged gases. This plasma is a form of gas that has a great deal of energy looking for a way out. This has been quite a problem to solve. Even if a material was found that could contain the plasma, how would it possibly withstand such high temperatures? The answer of course came in the form of the magnetic field and it was from this idea that that the unusual shape was adopted. [4]

The devices being constructed in China and Russia are not only seen as stand-alone devices but are also expected to play a part in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). This is a project that has contributions from many different countries, including The People’s Republic of China. According to [5], it is technically ready to start construction and the first plasma operation is expected in 2016. The part of the device which is of particular interest is the superconducting magnet system. It consists of 18 Toroidal Field (TF) coils, 6 Poloidal Field (PF) coils and a Central Solenoid (CS) coil, Correction Coils. As stated at [5] superconducting saddle-shaped correction coils placed around the machine outside the TF magnets are used to accommodate field errors due to manufacturing inaccuracies or to misalignments during assembly of the magnet coils, as well as to control resistive wall mode plasma instabilities. It goes on to say that both the CS coils and the TF coils use a similar superconductor configuration. The superconductor is an Nb₃Sn cable-in-conduit type. This compound is brittle and initially the wires contain separated Nb and Sn (as well as a copper matrix) which react together after a 200 hour heat treatment at 650 °C. This can only be performed after all cabling and conductor bending operations are complete, but before any temperature-sensitive coil components are added (such as the coil electrical insulation). It must also be noted that, to maintain the cryogenic temperatures needed for superconductivity, the tokamak vessel and superconducting magnets are located inside a thermally shielded cryostat.

Unlike fission which is widely regarded as being at least potentially dangerous, a fusion reaction requires leak-tight confinement, not because of the possibility of a catastrophic chain reaction but because otherwise, the plasma involved will be extinguished. As well as this advantage, there are other environmentally friendly advantages: the fuels used in these types of reactors are deuterium and tritium, both isotopes of hydrogen, and both non-radioactive. There are also no hazardous wastes produced as any reaction products are either absorbed by the surrounding lithium or are non radio-active like helium.

All in all, it would seem that we may not be at as much of a loss as we are led to believe by the sceptics. However, there may also be an interesting period of transition in which we are all asked to lay off the energy for a while. If I was a betting man though, I would put my money on the class of 2106 wondering what all the fuss was about (instead of having to worry if they’ll have enough candle-light to finish their physics assignment). It’s so simple, it’s beautiful.

REFERENCES:

[1] Angola Press (2006) China to build world’s first "artificial sun" experimental device [online], available: http://www.angolapress-angop.ao/noticia-e.asp?ID=409853 [accessed 3 May 2006]

[2] People’s Daily Online (2006) China to build world’s first "artificial sun" experimental device [online], available: http://english.people.com.cn/200601/21/eng20060121_237208.html [accessed 3 May 2006]

[3] Pravda.ru (2006) Russian engineers from the Federal nuclear centre in Saratov will attempt to light an artificial sun on the Earth.[online], available: http://english.pravda.ru/science/19/94/379/11675_technology.html [accessed 3 May 2006]

[4] People’s Democracy (2006) An Artificial Sun on Earth [online], available: http://pd.cpim.org/2003/1228/12282003_snd.htm [accessed 4 May 2006]

[5] http://www.iter.org/index.htm

Ups and Downs

As the French Philosopher Jean-Michel Plateau once remarked "You must go up a hill before you can go down one." It was this that came to mind as I cycled home from Cork airport after a splendid trip to London...Considering what I've written here before, I think my view of the Christ-following life is one that is filled with ups and downs. Though we can surely expect various types of prosperity at times and good times at times, we must also expect the down times, the persecution, the abased times (as Paul puts it with the help of Mr. N. King James). I'm wondering though am I leaning towards a view that is far too close to a swings-and-roundabouts perspective. In other words, if I am going through a down-turn, is the only thing that keeps me going, the hope of better times to come? Surely that's a part of it but there must be a more comprehensive, underlying, central thing. Psychologically, it seems to be quite an ingrained part of who we are (humans) which is indicated by such sayings as "Every cloud has a silver lining" and so forth...yes, I can't think of any more...oh wait, I have one: as Homer said (as taken from the producers of Waiting to Exhale) "When there's nothing left to believe in, believe in hope"...and so forth!

So what should we expect from God? When we're going through a tough time, should we simply be clinging to the hope of better yet to come? When we're going through a good time, should we be wary of the coming drought? How is that we get to the stage where we know how to be abased and to abound? On first glance, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but it doesn't sound like Paul (Philippians 4:12) is advocating a kind of immunity to the circumstances (as I often think it sounds) but rather is telling us we don't just seek to ride the storm as it were but we seek to be content in the midst of the storm.

Why does this come to mind? Well as I've already mentioned, I was coming back from a trip to London the other day which was great. However, the last day of the trip was, in a word, unpleasant. I had booked a flight which was to leave at 6:20 am. With a train journey to the airport which would take 46 minutes and a walk to the train station that would take 30 minutes, I duly arose at 3:50 am, left the apartment I was staying at, walked half an hour through London streets (taking one wrong turn), arrived at the train station in plenty of time, got on the train (having purchased my ticket in advance too) and waited the twenty or so minutes for the departure time. The departure time came and went and to cut a long story short, 40 more minutes came and went before we hesistantly started to inch forward...Though I wasn't impressed, I was sure that we would arrive on time but we didn't. We arrived at precistely 6:17 am, I sprinted as hard as I could through the airport to the first Ryanair person I could find and asked them was I too late. They said "Yes" and that I should go to ticket sales to buy a ticket for the next flight...I thought, how bad could this be? Well, though much internal debate raged, my decision was effectively made for me as the only way back to Ireland that day was to fly to Cork (Belfast, Dublin, Kerry were no-go's) and the flight to Cork was at 10 to four that afternoon...and this one-way flight also cost twice as much as my original return flight cost. So I headed back to London then, had a genuinely lovely day in the sun but all the while was thinking 'why?' And I am still wondering.

Now the point of all this is not to bemoan Ryanair for it wasn't their fault and if you fly with them, you take your chances of getting ripped off if you don't dot all your i's and cross all your t's. The point is not to just moan or whine for the sake of it. The point is, what does one do? How does one be content in this circumstance? I know that compared to what people have suffered, do suffer and will suffer, this is small fry but I'm not even beginning to compare them. But when one comes across a genuinely frustrating and annoying circumstance like this, what are your options?

For the sake of structure, at the moment I see my options (considering what I would generally do) are 1. Bring it to God and say "I don't know why God, but you do and therefore I'm going to just trust though I may never know why." I find that I very often take this option and I feel that it has often brought me to a point where I do see some reasoning or purpose behind the situation and it brings me to a point of contenment. 2. Try and see what lessons there are to learn purely through reasoning. In this case, the things that I though about were: God is repaying me for the bad things that I've done. I quickly sought to dispel this superstition and it became replaced by: God is disciplining me for the lack of time I've spent with Him over the last while and He's seeking to bring me back to Him. I think this may endure but I have drawn such a fine line between the two that I find it difficult to stay on either side of the line, regardless of which side I want to be on. God is showing me that I haven't been fully converted 'of the wallet' yet and has taught me this as part of His ongoing plan to take one of my clutching fingers at a time off my wallet. Even as I type, I'm finding that this actually seems to be the reason and that it is truly a lesson I won't quickly forget. I think with a little perspective, I'll be able to see fully if this is what I am to learn (of course among a myiad of other subtle lessons). I think the slight difficulty I have with this is that the reason I booked the early flight in the first place was because it saved me money and this then begs the question of "What's being flathulach with money and what's realising that it's all God's anyway and not clinging onto it?" But for the sake of completion, I'll go onto the other thoughts I had...Maybe God is giving me an opportunity to see the parts of London that I missed out on during the previous days (I did get to see Westminster, the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, St. James' Park, The Changing of the Guard and three more Aston Martin Veritages...oh and Boris Johnson cycling to the Houses of Parliament (or maybe No. 10, I'm not sure).

I think I must leave it there as I'm not sure yet...maybe I'll think more. If it was a lesson, it felt like a very harsh one. If it was discipline, what was it for? If it was to realise that I need to let go of my wallet, why such an elaborate lesson? Or should I simply say, as I often do "Who am I to question?"

Trusting or presumptuous?

Arguably the foundation stone in any relationship is trust. I think in our relationship with God, the venn diagram that illustrates the relationship between trust and faith has a very large area of overlapping. Abraham had faith in God...how different to that is simply 'trusting' God?

Anywho, to get to my point (or at least, question), how do we know when we are trusting God and how do we know when we are being presumptuous?

Maybe one could say that presumption is based on nothing but our own whimsy whereas trust is based more upon statements or promises made (explicitly or implicitly) by the other person (and the character which they display)...but if trust is based on statements or promises made by another (regardless of how impossible they seem), then where does that leave faith? Abraham had faith in the character of God but didn't necessarily know (in fact, was wrong) how God would deliver himself and Isaac in the famous son-sacrifice scene.

So in a practical sense, what is it that makes us put our foot on the water à la Peter? Is it because we fancy seeing if we can walk on water for the craic or is it because our Lord has called us to walk on water?

When, how and why does presumption give way to trust and/or faith?

What difference does God make in your life? #1

Where to start? My return to blogging could find no worthier question than this...a part of me feels like listing all the things that God has or does do for me (I don't mean that in a kind of "He's my personal servant" kind of way). Another part of me feels, surely I could make this more interesting by maybe going through a whole day or week or something and list all the things that God has done for me or the difference that God makes in my life...

Hmm...Well firstly, if God is who I know him to be then the difference he makes cannot be comprehended by the human mind simply because if God ceased to make the difference that he makes, then I wouldn't exist and I can't get my brain around the idea of me not existing, whether it be before I was born or after I die. I believe the reason that I can't get my brain around this is not because my brain is too small, no it's something more profound than that altogether because of course my brain can tell me in many ways what it would be like for me not to exist: somebody else would rent my room for example. However, because my brain is there to guide me and keep me thinking well, a good-functioning brain will immediately ward me away from these thoughts because my brain is connected to my soul and spirit and so it knows that because eternity is written on my heart, it defies the logic of my heart to think about such things and so my brain, though it can when pushed, will generally decline going down such a dark alley...much like I imagine a dog will growl when there's an intruder outside that we are unaware of but the dog knows won't be helpful.

So I genuinely believe it is that mind-bending to try to think what difference God makes in my life for if He weren't there, I wouldn't be here. That is how major it is. I owe not only my existence to him but my continued existence to him. For me, that's the bedrock truth.

Then there's the fact that because God is holy, it means that if I am to please him, I too must strive to be holy. I can try to do this under my own steam but will fail. If you don't believe me, try it for yourself. If you are being realistic about denying the truth of this, you must be rigorous in seeking to undermine it. We have a tendency to be very selective in what we remember so write down a list of things (or even one thing) that you will endeavour to do or keep for a week or a month, and see how long it is before you fail to do it. (Or something that you will not do for a month.) Now this is the most legalistic way of looking at it but sometimes we need to be that basic with ourselves because we are so in denial of who we are and what we at. Every single human being will fail to not only live up to God's standard but also to the standard of others around them and even their own standards. Realising this, I am in a dilly of a pickle...If I owe my very existance to God and yet he is so holy that I can't even approach him, what I am to do?

To be continued...(after a delicious lunch of apple, cheese and sausages while watching Seinfeld).

Leprechaun-Horse-Digestion-Bastille-Extraterrestrial #1

The leprechaun whistled a cheerful tune
As he hung his green dungarees out
On the horse, to dry
My he had had a right royal time last night.
Not knowing whether it was Bastille day or not
But he didn't care...his life at this moment was far above the ground it was extraterrestrial.
How blissfully ignorant he was of the impending rebellion his digestion was planning.

If God is Sovereign and the world is like it is, He is not good.

D. If God is Sovereign and the world is like it is, he is not good – discuss.
Preamble
This is a statement that God is not good if two conditions are met. The first being that God is sovereign, which He is and the second being that the world is like it is…which it is. Therefore we are left with the conclusion that God is not good …which is false. Hmm....it seems that we have a profound doctrinal difficulty on our hands.
How is the world?
Without wishing to over-simplify, this whole discussion hinges on the way we handle the terms ‘good’ and ‘ungood’[1]. As humans, we like to put things in boxes and categories; sometimes humorously so. How easy it is to put the whole planet and all its inhabitants into a ‘bad’ box just because we are having a ‘bad’ day. And who could possibly decline putting the whole universe into a big heart-shaped la-vie-est-belle box after watching ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ or while listening to Ennio Morricone’s theme from ‘The Mission’?
Tentatively approaching the second half of the conditional element of the statement, we agree that the world is as it is or else we’re in a huge amount of trouble when it comes to discussing anything. If the world isn’t as it is we may soon end up in a hippyish hallucinogenic haze with our thoughts meandering down meaningless metaphors of no-return: “The world isn’t as it is eh?” I think it was above the door of his house in New York that John Lennon had “This is not here” cut into the glass. Deep, man. But enough about the seventies, let’s get onto the more important matter of eternity…
The latter half of the condition, that God is not good, implies that the world then must be a ‘bad’ or ‘evil’ place. We must then consider how we are going to define ‘good’ ‘bad’ and ‘evil’. To be able to define what is ‘good’ we must have some yardstick. However, if we are to quickly say that “Yes, God is how we define what is good”, it defeats the whole discussion without any thought. The other option is to go by man’s definition of what is good. The following example might illustrate what road this will take us down: If I am running across the road and trip in a pothole and break my leg, is it good? Of course not, it is horribly bad and painful. However, if I am running across the road and trip in a pothole and break my leg and then watch as the truck, that I hadn’t seen, speeds through the ‘me-shaped’ space that I would have been occupying had I not been halted, is it then good that I broke my leg? So good seems to be defined by our feelings and circumstances. Now this seems like quite a comfortable pair of shoes to put on so let’s walk around in them for a while… basically what we have arrived at is a situation where we have had the following discussion with man:
Us: “Man, how dost thou define this concept thou speakest of which is called ‘good’? Is it in terms of what thou Creator wouldst hold true?”
Man: “I say ‘nay’, for that would defeat the argument.”
Us: “How then shall man define what is ‘good’?”
Man: “The only way is by man himself; for God and man are the only ones involved in this discussion. Since we cannot include God in this definition, we must centre it around man and his experience(, pomp) and circumstance.”
So now, ‘good’ is a slave to our feelings at a particular time. I think we can state without much disagreement that if, we are to define ‘good’ in this way, then the world is not totally good or totally bad. It seems to be a mixture of both. (It could easily be argued that well, because there is even a little bit of bad in the world, then it is totally bad. Something along the idea that we have all fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). This of course, will have to be founded on the premise that God is good (otherwise how could we fall short of His standard of goodness?) and so if that is the case, we easily dispel the statement that He is not good through simple logic.) So I’m afraid we’re stuck with this idea that there is some good and some bad in the world – it’s not just a black and white view.
From a human perspective, there seems to be two ways that ‘bad’ can happen in the world. There seems to be things that happen to us as a direct result of human decision (whether it be our own or someone else’s). And then there are things that seem to be entirely accidental which don’t seem to be as a result of any human decision. After all, accidents happen! However, the Bible tells us that all human hardship came about after the fall which, incidentally, involved arguably the worst human decision ever. (Although haven’t we all made that choice at some point in our lives?) Now it may be thought that to bring a Biblical statement unquestioned into the discussion is a bit unfair so let’s back away from that for now.
Let’s firstly take those times when bad things happen to good people as a result of someone else’s decision. Most people will understand that yes, human beings have free will. It has been given them by God. (For those of you down the back who are saying “But we never subscribed to the idea of God existing” then you’re in the wrong discussion group!) So what we have built up thus far is that bad things happen to good people through the bad decisions of other humans which are reliant on their ability to make those decisions or their ‘free will’. We have also said that this free will is God given. This begs the question is God then not indirectly responsible for these acts of evil. And there’s the crunch.
What do we think of when we hear the word ‘sovereign’?
I think it is important not to let our own flawed ideas of sovereignty get in the way here. We must hold in tension the fact that God is sovereign but that He has given us free will. God’s sovereignty is clearly not practised with a heavy handed rule over man. He has given man the freedom to do what we will which would enable him to commit wrongdoing. I suppose a question that may reveal the heart of the issue is “Are we willing to give up our free will so that the world would be a totally good place?” And I think if we’re honest, no one among us would say “Yes”. Free will is one of God’s greatest gifts. It is one of the fundamental characteristics that God has deemed necessary for us to be ‘made in His image and likeness’.
So I think it is fair to say that we are agreed that free will is something that is fundamental in the make-up of what it means to be human. The fundamental question is “Why then could not God, who is infinite in His wisdom and power, not create a human race that had ‘free will’ of sorts but could not choose to defy their creator?” (After all, as it is, we have ‘free will’ only within the bounds of God’s universe. We are restricted, for want of a better word, to exist as He has ordained; from a purely physical sense, we have free will but we do not have the ability to grow wings for example, for that is outside the bounds of what God has prescribed in the natural world. From a mental point of view, we have free will to think what we like but only within the bounds of what we have experienced – it is beyond the human mind to imagine something from scratch that doesn’t already exist. Indeed, this can be used to argue for the existence of God: We’ve never experienced something which is infinite, therefore, how could we understand the concept of infinity unless an infinite Being exists.) It truly is a difficult question and one that will most likely never be conclusively answered during our experience here. The important thing to take from this is that, as humans, we tend to learn through experience much more effectively and thoroughly than we do through reading a book; an idea that I will come back to in a while.
Trust in Him
I think that we should not think that we ultimately know what’s best. This whole discussion has built on the idea that ‘good’ is defined by what man thinks is good. And the Bible tells us that it is this very sin that resulted in all of mankind being cast into a state which required them redemption through Jesus. If we allow ourselves the luxury of starting with the premise that God is good and work from that, we can use the knowledge that God is our Father to understand why seemingly bad things happen to people. As children, there were many things that happened in our lives that seemed unfair or bad and our earthly fathers often rebuked us or disciplined us. At the time, we felt hard done by but with mature wisdom, we realise that it was for our good. We are told repeatedly in the Bible that our faith will be tested or that we must endure trials.
Granted this idea is relatively easy to apply to situations in our Christian lives where we can see the results of the rebuke but I believe that we should also apply it on a much larger scale. We must view it through God’s eyes. We cannot possibly understand all that God does or how He works in our world. As humans, it is just beyond our comprehension. We must simply trust in the promise that all things work together for good to those who love God (Romans 8:28).

Having come this far, I think there are a few lingering questions:
1. Why could God not have created a world in the first place where the issue of rebellion against Him wouldn’t even have come into our minds and yet we would have had free will?
I suppose the way I see it is that we have to trust in His wisdom. We will never be able to answer it fully on this earth but just think of that hymn
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.
Think of how the wretch knows of such sweet grace. It is because he knows what it is to be a wretch. Think of how he can appreciate what it is like to be found…it is because he was once lost. Think of why he thinks it such a great thing to be able to see…because he knew once what it was like to be blind.
Angels will never know what it is to be redeemed by the body and blood of the Son of God.

2. If God is totally Sovereign and brings to Him those whom He will, where does that leave everybody else?
This is a huge question. We will never grasp how God brings His children to Himself and yet never violates their free will (and of course on the other hand, hardens people’s hearts). However, as C.S. Lewis puts it, if we are worried that we might be left outside, the most common sense thing to do would be to get inside.

3. If God causes evil to come about, how is He not held responsible for it?

We must accept that God does indeed cause evil to come about. As Grudem points out, “the most evil deed of all history, the crucifixion of Christ, was ordained by God – not just the fact that it would occur, but also all the individual actions connected with it.”[2] However, as Jesus says in Luke’s gospel, “It is impossible that no offences should come, but woe to him through whom they do come.” And so it is he by whom the offences come that will be judged for them. If we are to trace the reason for Jesus’ death back through the Bible, ultimately it is for the salvation of man, the need for which came about through the fall of Adam.
So what will we say? Indeed that God brings about all purposes according to His will, through the actions of His creatures and creation. However, it is the creatures that are held responsible as they choose to do these things of their own free will.
Any kind of all-encompassing solution to this essay is impossible but let’s just say that when we are in heaven, we will understand with absolute clarity the methods which God used to bring us there and it will suddenly dawn on us that no, we couldn’t have done it better ourselves. We will be glad for this fact because the very essence of goodness is defined by our God and thankfully not by us. In the meantime, let’s not get discouraged by not understanding everything about our Father. Rather take joy from the fact that we will spend eternity finding out more and more of Him who saved us and so it is nice to think that we haven’t exhausted our knowledge of Him already!
[1] Which is more commonly known as ‘evil’ or ‘bad’. (For the purposes of this essay, I shall use the word ‘evil’ when referring to the antonym of ‘good’ as I think ‘bad’ has lost some weight lately)
[2] Grudem, Wayne, Bible Doctrine, 1999, Intervarsity Press, Great Britain, p. 148