I love the controversy that surrounded Tim Tebow – I just hate what his fan do with his success. It is irresponsible and un-Biblical.
I have said before that I respect Tim and that he does not think God helps the Broncos win football games.
Why I love Tim: He works incredibly hard, has an amazing energy, lives out his faith, and serves orphans. This guy is incredible!
Why I hate his success: If you are in the NFL, you are gifted. Every player is extraordinarily talented … and I think that those talents come for God. I would prefer if we said that every player was blessed by God – some acknowledge it and some are quite vocal about.
The assertion that God blesses one player more than another is where I run into the problem: that God is picking and choosing this person over that one – and interfering in this moment but not that one is a view of God that is irresponsible and indefensible.
I will go as far as to say that it is somewhere between superstition and missing the entire point of Jesus’ life and message. This certainly is not a Christian view of God.
Last week, my partner at Homebrewed – Tripp had a blog posted by Rachel Held Evans where he said that God was not omnipotent and that the future is not determined. In the TNT podcast that followed that, Tripp and I talk about the line of reasoning that some people took in not only their objection to Tripp’s note but came to the defense of an omnipotent conception of God . Some people just came out and said “the book of Job shows that God is omnipotent”. This is a terrifying sentence to hear from a Christian.
There are three things about Job that need to be clear:
- It is not a newspaper report. It is a dramatic presentation (broken into distinct acts).
- That God rewards those who do right and love God and punishes those who disobey and turn away from God … is exactly what the book of Job is written against. That is against the narrative of Job’s life story at the beginning and against what God says at the end.
- Christians believe that Jesus lived a perfect life – and was brutally murdered. I see that as the Death of Job’s God. That old concept of God died on the Cross.
So the Bible doesn’t teach this view of God and the history of the world does not reflect this view. God does not reward those who are faithful and put down those who are evil. The evil prosper and the righteous suffer as much as everyone under that evil.
We have to stop with this superstitious system of rewards and benefits that treats God like God as some sort of cosmic Gum-ball Machine. It is extremely hurtful and insulting. The part that baffles me is how prominent the view is among evangelicals … who make bold claims about being based on the Bible and ‘being Biblical’.
This view of the interfering God who doles out blessing to ‘His’ favorites is a relic of the past that we must outgrow.
This antiquated, superstitious view needs to die on the Cross so that the God revealed in Christ can be resurrected for our time.
… at least that’s my opinion.
Originally posted at Homebrewed Christianity.
Bo Sanders: Public Theology 
January 21, 2012 at 5:38 am
You packed a lot of things into this “opinion!”
If I understand you correctly you assert three things about the book of Job that argue against the idea that God is omnipotent. One fact is true, two are mistaken and none really teach that God is not omnipotent.
First, you said that it is not a newspaper report, but that it is a dramatic presentation broken into different acts. That’s true, but it doesn’t speak for or against the issue of omnipotence. I just read Job last week and when God turns the questioning around and begins to question Job, God portrays self as one who is indeed in control. God depicts self as in control of weather, wildlife and the cosmos. God refers to self as Almighty.
God’s self-acclamations are not necessarily the same as the Calvinistic, deterministic, omnipotence which Tripp was really arguing against but these attributes are not weakness by any stretch. Nor is God portraying self in Job in any way that Jesus or we should be ashamed of there.
Second, you said that the book is written exactly against the idea that God rewards those who do right and punishes those who disobey and turn away from God. You mistakenly overstated the point of the book. The book actually seems to confirm the idea that God blesses the righteous, and that God punishes the wicked. But it also tells us that suffering also comes to the righteous, and that that suffering can also be part of God’s plan.
What the book argues exactly against is the conclusion that people make that if someone is suffering then that one must have angered God, in other words it argues exactly against the idea that suffering must be interpreted as a punishment from God. Only that idea is argued against, exactly, in the book.
Again, to say it another way, when God finally speaks in the book of Job the divine narrative, the way in which God reveals self to Job, actually seems to be supporting the idea that God is Almighty. The divine narrative also seems to support that God is all wise. Neither of these attributes of God are repudiated by Christ or the early church.
Third, you say that Christians see on the cross a Jesus who lived a perfect life and was brutally murdered. But that is only a portion of what Christians see happening on the cross. The first Christians who preached about the cross indeed held the “Jews” responsible, saying that they were indeed guilty of sin in executing Jesus. In that way it could be seen as a murder. But they also affirmed that it was God’s very plan for the redemption of humankind. (And of course the NT adds that Jesus voluntarily laid down his life and that for us all! In that way we are all guilty of murder.)
You say that you interpret the death of Jesus as the death of Job’s God. I think that is a very clever, novel, misleading and false interpretation of the cross event.
The first Christians never portrayed the Father as the one who died but rather the Son. The gospels, and the Acts show us the following: Jesus’ death fulfilled his Father’s will; when he died he committed his spirit to the Father and then he breathed his last; he rose from the dead and he later aascended to the Father; he sent Holy Spirit to the first Christians from the Father, and finally the first Christians talked about Jesus reigning with the Father.
The writers of the NT took pains to show that each aspect of the Christ event; the birth, death, resurrection and ascension were anticipated in the OT so that they could claim a God-ordained continuity with the OT and with the God of the OT. The resurrection, finally, was a vindication that God, the God of Job and the rest of the OT was indeed with, for and in Christ.
Furthermore, the fact that the early Christians preserved the phrase “Hallelujah” in their worship shows that they did not see the God of Job as dead but rather quite alive and worthy of constant praise. (You know the “ja” in the phrase speaks to the personal, covenant name of the God of Israel, Y… .)
They also continued to use the term “almighty” which speaks to God’s unsurpassed power.
Furthermore, the very name of Jesus himself gives praise to Job’s God, that Y… is Savior.
In short, the cross event does not vilify Job’s God and declare God dead, rather, it glorifies Job’s God.
We’ve dialogued about this “Job’s God is dead” thing before and I just don’t see that it is consistent with how God has revealed self throughout the history of Scripture.
The more you press the issue, the more of a Calvinist I become and I know that is not an outcome you or I enjoy. So how could you explain it differently?
Now back to Tebow, I think Job is probably a poor example of what might be happening with Tim Tebow. I think better examples are David, the judges and the apostles who were anointed with superior skill and understanding by Holy Spirit.
In this age that sort of anointing should be seen more often not less! It could be interpreted as an indication that Jesus is indeed reigning.
You said that all the NFL players are talented, gifted from God. But the term anointing speaks to the idea that some are gifted to a greater God-given extent. This is perfectly consistent with both the OT and the NT uses of the word. So I’m a little confused why you insist that this is not a Christian view of God.
Nowhere does Jesus or God or the NT say that the measure of anointing will be the same for all people or that the gifts will be the same for all people.
Let’s for a moment ignore the concept of anointing. If we take for granted that, as you said, all NFL players are talented and their talent is from God. No one asserts that all NFL players are equally talented. Not everyone gets into the NFL in the first place so some have more “God-given” football talent and are, therefore, better than others. If their talents are God-given, then isn’t God giving more natural football talent to some than to others?
I suspect that your objection is not really to the idea that God intervenes but rather to the fact that we cannot always see how God is intervening. Why is it that God seems to intervene in powerful ways in Tebow’s life but not intervening in other more important areas of our human condition and existence? But that question can be asked whether God is powerful or weak. And no answer would be completely satisfying.
Job’s interlocutors were criticized for presuming to say that God was not with him when in fact, God was. Perhaps we are guilty of the same thing, presuming to say that God is not with TT in a special way?
January 22, 2012 at 6:20 am
Thank you so much for writing these responses. It really helps me to see how you are processing this and where we are missing each other. Your sincerity is apparent, you intensity come through but…
There are 3 keys areas where you are missing the point:
1) You are assuming that the Hebrew word that is translated into English as ‘Almighty’ is the same as the Latin phrase ‘omni-potent’. That is simplistic thinking and is hugely limiting your ability to interact with the idea. You say ‘ the Old Testament in the Bible says ‘almighty’ and that means God is omnipotent.‘ But omnipotence comes with a whole bunch of baggage and assumptions that are not even considered in the Hebrew testament. [advice from a friend: if you think to yourself ‘but there is this passage in the Bible that uses this word and completely overturns this huge concept…’ stop and ask yourself “what else could be going on? … since he probably already knows about that verse”]
2) I wish that you could see that the Death of Job’s god is not the death of God … but of that old concept of God. A) it might be because you want to keep that concept of God alive B) but don’t say things like ‘actually it was the son who died and the NT writers went way out of their way to say so.‘ Yeah – I know. That is not what I am saying. I get that the son died (!) we all do. Its the conception that I am concerned with.
[advice from a friend: if you ever feel yourself saying ‘I need to state this really obvious thing – like that the Son died and not God’ … stop and think about what else might be on the table.]
3) The project here is “navigating between the everyday and theology”. Between is the key word. So I am attempting to translate and interpret in our day what the saints in the 3rd and 16th centuries believed in their day. It is silly then for you to just come back and tell me what folks in the 3rd and 16th century believed. I already know that. I am attempting to do in our day, what they did in their day. We are faithful not when we repeat what they said verbatim (rote) but speak to our day what they spoke to their day. I am translating, you are simply repeating. I am interpreting, you are parroting.
[advice from a friend: I know what folks in the 3rd & 16th centuries believed. But we live after Copernicus, Darwin, Freud … Auswitch and Hiroshima, Marx and the internet. I am speaking to my time (everyday) what they spoke to theirs (theology). It requires translation and interpretation. if you think to yourself “I am going to tell him what people in the past believed and that will settle the matter.” Stop and ask yourself ‘why doesn’t he believe that anymore?’ ]
February 7, 2012 at 10:41 pm
Just a note, I’m NOT assuming that almighty automatically means “omnipotent” in the Greek sense. But when you glean all that God is revealing about self in the Scriptures particularly when the word almighty is used, you get a concept that is a lot more powerful than I’m hearing from you and your interlocutors.
The problem I have with the death of the old concept of God is that God revealed true things about self in the book of Job. To say that concept is now dead is to say, “That revelation about me isn’t true anymore.” I don’t believe Scripture teaches this about God’s self revelation. God does say things like, “I’m not going to do such and such anymore,” but that is different. Those are statements that God’s behavior will change but not that God’s nature has changed.
I believe that God’s revelation throughout Scripture is reliable. God elaborates and expounds throughout history but doesn’t contradict.
So for me, if God intervenes with powerful anointings to individuals in the OT and then God says that it will be more so in the time after the NT, then I cannot adopt the theory that “God doesn’t do that to Tebow,” etc.
If God knows the future with certainty in the OT and NT I can’t adopt a theory that God can’t know the future.
I think that the Process Theology that would capture God within time and space and in creation doesn’t adequately account for God’s self-revelation as transcendent. Job’s God is particularly annoying here because of the way God is revealed in that book.
I’m sorry if my style is annoying to you. But from the start this has been described a journey. And you have made lots of turns that seem to me to be misguided and it is hard for me to follow.
[Note to a friend, when you make unqualified “God is not…” or “God does not…” statements without any qualification then some people will disagree with you. If they do they might include a verse or theologian who helped them understand where they are coming from. If you would prefer just a “I disagree” without any justification, I can do that, but would you really understand where I am coming from or where I am going?]