The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb, “I, the LORD, am the maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by Myself and spreading out the earth all alone,” Isaiah 44:24
Maker of All Things – Most of us don’t really believe the verse in Isaiah. We give intellectual assent to the verse but in our hearts we can’t quite accept that fact that God is the maker of all things. We are really dualists. That means we really operate as though the world is a battlefield between two equally powerful entities – God and the devil. We really operate as though the devil has his own creative powers, using them to bring evil into the world. We are really devotees of the Superman theory of life; that Jesus is on God’s side fighting against the forces of darkness.
But we are wrong. Our pathetic theology gives the devil and his dark angels far more credit and power than they are due. The devil is not a god. He is a deceiver. He disguises himself as a god. He seduces his victims. But in the end, Yahweh, the God of the Bible, is the Lord, “and there is no other” (Isaiah 45:5). Dualism is a lie. Even the devil exists only because of God’s permissive will. The devil has no power at all except what it is temporally granted to him in his rebellion. That might be why he is so angry. No matter what he does to injure the Lord, he cannot win in the end.
Isaiah’s revelation helps set our minds in order. The good, the bad and the ugly all derive their existence ultimately from God. The evil in your life is not random and accidental, and it is not the independent nefarious invention of the devil. It is entirely within the Lord’s control. That’s why Job’s response is the right one: “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job knew that God is ‘oseh kol (maker of all things), no matter how we categorize them.
Human beings have a very difficult time with verses like this one. We want a god who fits our parameters of goodness. We don’t understand when bad things happen to good people. We prefer the explanation, “The devil did it.” But that is not what the Bible says. The Bible makes no attempt to explain God’s actions to us. Understanding God is not the objective here. Obedience, voluntary submission and acceptance are the Biblical objectives. What pleases God is not the quest to know but rather the decision to obey.
Take this “radical renunciation of dualism” for what it means. David did. “All of my times are in Your hand.” Life and all that’s in it comes to us from the hand of the Lord. Can you praise His choices for you? Can you thank Him for the good, the bad and the ugly?
