[Tension & Renewal - II]
Too many preacher types have abused the line, “God is in control.” Just stop saying it, please. That phrase is one of those rare religious artifacts that gets a get-out-jail-free card. And the jail, of course, is the interrogation of critical thinking. It just doesn’t hold up.
I’ve never met someone that experienced renewal in response to that message.
Never heard a conversion story. Never a healing. Never inspiration. Never reconciliation.
What I have seen, though, is everything staying the same. I wonder if “God is in control” is shorthand for, “God is in control, so I don’t need to do a thing.”
If God is in control, what’s our part?
The problem is NOT that we have the wrong phrase, and if I can replace it with a better one (and a better theology), then it can be helpful; the problem is that we think in the middle of hardship we must speak at all. (And when we do, we show our “spiritual cards.”) Even more basic than this problem, however, is the problem that we have too few people that have fully experienced the hardships of this life because they’ve remained on the surface, floating on denial about just how out of control the waters really are.
“God is in control” is just a coping mechanism for hardship, and it really says, “I’m unwilling to face up to the chaos, pain, or grief right in front of me.
Ditch the cliches. A truly inspiring (in-spire = indwelled-by-spirit) message is this: “The whole thing is indeed *out of control* but I’m here with you.”
