If I Were God
In her novel The Member of the Wedding, Carson McCullers paints this scene where the 12 year old F. Jasmine, her cousin John Henry, and household help Berenice are playing a game late in the day. As it neared twilight, “they would sometimes begin to criticize the Creator. They would judge the work of God and mention the ways how they would improve the world.” Each of them had their own version of an improved world.
The world of Berenice Brown was “round and just and reasonable.” All human beings would have the same skin colour, light brown, with blue eyes and black hair. There would be no war. “No stiff corpses hanging from the Europe trees and no Jews murdered anywhere.” There would be no starvation and no poverty. And her beloved first husband, Ludie Freeman, would still be alive.
While few of us might make a game out of it or say it quite so openly, it’s easy to fall into this way of thinking. It’s easy to start second-guessing God and the way he has ordained things in this world. We see injustice, we see pain, we see tragedy, and we think: “If I were God, I don’t think I’d have planned it this way.”
Someone once said, “I sometimes think that if I were God, I would do things much differently. But then I also remember that God is infinitely wise, and so if I were God I would be doing things exactly the same way.” That’s true. If you had the infinite wisdom that God does, you would organize things exactly the way he has.
God has a wise and perfect plan. It doesn’t always make sense to us. But that’s because we’re just weak creatures and he’s the powerful Creator. As creatures, we have a limited perspective. We have a limited capacity to see and understand. We’re also limited to what God chooses to reveal to us.
A couple of years ago I was on the tiny island of Sabu in Indonesia. I went to this little shop where they weave these tapestries called ikat. The lady was working on a new one on her weaving loom. On the one side of it, you could see that it was being turned into something beautiful. But on the other side, this tapestry looked like just a messy tangle of threads. That’s what our lives can be like. From God’s perspective, he’s making something beautiful and good. From our perspective, it looks messy and tangled. Repentance means that we distrust our perspective and instead take the word of the Weaver. He tells us he’s wise and knows what he’s doing.
The greatest illustration of this truth is the cross. Satan thought he had defeated God by having Jesus hang on that accursed cross. Evil men too thought they’d won the day. But little did any of them realize that God was so much wiser. Little did they realize how God was more powerful. In his wisdom and power, God’s purposes came to pass. Jesus endured hell in our place and paid for all our sins. He defeated evil and he smashed the skull of the serpent. God took the greatest evil the world has ever seen and he wisely turned it for our good. Jesus was completely innocent. He didn’t deserve to suffer at all. But God took his suffering and wisely worked it out so it became something infinitely valuable.
You may be tempted to play the “If I were God” game and question the almighty God’s wise purposes. Maybe not right now, but maybe in the future. Something tragic could come your way. If it does, remember Jesus. Remember the cross. At the cross, we see the forgiveness of all our doubts and questions, but we also see the answer. The answer is: God is wise and he knows what he’s doing, so trust him. Your Father loves you so much that he gave his only Son for you, now why would you think that he would forsake you?
