Ben Gatrelle

I tend to ignore those email chain letters that circulate the internet telling me I need to forward this to 10 people and I will have good luck or, that God will bless me. Then there are the funny pictures, the cute kids, animals, inspiring sunsets, wonders of the world, etc, etc, etc. We all have that one friend that spends waaayy too much time forwarding email.

Recently an email showed up in my inbox with photographic proof that God is in control (it claimed) and it suggested I forward this to all my friends and family. Picture #1 shows the broken guard rail, the truck facing the opposite direction but right side up, across what appears to be a culvert and ditch. The driver we are told walked away with only a few bruises and scratches.

Then we scroll down and see picture #2 of the same truck but from a position further back. Now we see that the truck didn't just jump a little ditch, but a deep ravine of several hundred feet and landed on a narrow flat space not much bigger than the truck itself. The caption for this picture reads, "If this guy didn't believe in GOD before, do you suppose he believes now? Share this. Email your family and friends. Let this be a reminder to all of us, GOD is in control!" Maybe some of you received this email too.

My cynical nature makes me ask is this really proof that God is in control? I wonder. If this driver had crashed and burned at the bottom of the ravine would people have been spreading emails around the internet saying "This proves there is no God." or "Look at the mangled truck at the bottom of the ravine, God sure is in control."

The fact of the matter is the Bible tells us blessed are those who believe without seeing. God does exist and God is in control, but somebody flipping their truck over a ravine and walking away with just some scratches is not proof one way or the other. In fact the Bible says that the rain falls on the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45) and that time and chance happen to all people (Ecclesiastes 9:11). The wicked prosper, evil goes unpunished, bad things happen to good people, that's the way the world works.

The psalmist writes in Psalm 73 that when he saw it he wondered where God was in all of this. After all isn't God righteous, isn't he just, isn't it his job to make sure that the wicked don't prosper from their wickedness? But then he saw their end and remembered that this world is temporary, that the eternal is what matters, that their destruction comes in a moment. He says that all of this life is like a dream that one day they will wake from and then they will receive the rewards of their deeds. In the terror of their destruction this life will seem like a momentary dream. Jesus reiterates this is Matthew 10:28 when he reminds his disciples not to fear the one who can kill your body (wicked people) but to fear the one who can kill you then throw you into eternal hell (the righteous God).

Personally I think that emails and attitudes like this where we Christians say, wow look at how this guy was miraculously saved, gives people more reason to question, why does evil happen. I mean if God is in control why doesn't he save everybody. If God loved this person so much that he saved him, then why didn't he save the children in the school bus accident, or the hurricane victims, or the flood, or cancer, or whatever. Does God not love me enough to have spared my son who died, or my daughter, or my wife, or husband?

Was God intervening in the life of this driver? Maybe. Do I personally think it was God? My natural inclination is to say no. But it might have been. Does God have some plan for this guy's life, and so spared him? Maybe.

My grandfather became a preacher because his oldest son, at the age of 13, was accidentally shot and killed. My grandfather's testimony was that he was running from the call of God on his life, and this event caused him to turn his life over to God and become a preacher. Would there have been an email going around saying, look at this 13 year old boy's death! Isn't God in control! But the fact of the matter is that whether God caused, allowed, or purposed for this to happen, he was in control. Because of the death of his son my grandfather became a preacher and his younger son, my dad, followed in his steps and became a preacher too. How many lives have been changed and brought closer to God because a 13 year old boy died back in 1950?

God is in control.

Act 17:26-27 "God has made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us."