Believing the Invisible

We are all tempted to be practical deists. The deists were the poster children for god-of-the-gaps theology. Because they wanted the universe to make sense, but didn’t want to have to answer to the living God, they posited a creator god (for how else could we have gotten here?). He, however, after creating the universe, took a walk, never to return. God explains the universe, but is not active in it. If He’s watching at all, it is from a distance, and with a deep indifference.

Practical Deism

A practical deist isn’t someone affirming deism but who also is handy with tools. Rather it is someone who would never affirm such a doctrine but lives as if that doctrine were true. He is a deist in practice if not confession. And that’s where we come in. We who are Reformed confess with our fathers this- What are God’s works of providence? God’s works of providence are, His most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing all His creatures and all their actions (Westminster Shorter Catechism 11). But we act as though all His creatures, great and small, and all their actions are somehow outside His control. We too often treat answered prayer as a vaguely embarrassing pseudo-charismatic event. God, we seem to believe, may be Lord of space and time, but is an absentee Lord.

Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled

The proof is in the worry. Don’t get me wrong- the doctrine of God’s providence doesn’t mean that unpleasant, or horrific events will not come to pass. Worry, however, isn’t the understandable fear that something terrible might happen. It is the foolish fear that things outside His sovereign plan might happen. Worry is the implicit denial of the promise of God in Romans 8:28, that all things, all things, work together for good for those who love the Lord, who are called according to His purpose.

Living By Faith

The solution is to cease living by sight. All that we see is real enough. The actions of wicked men, at the abortion mill, in the middle east, the ravages of disease, are all real as well, having genuine causal power. They bring things to pass. But each of them is but a secondary cause, a tool in the hand of the One who governs all the creatures and all their actions. He is sovereign over men and over disease, and always brings His sovereign will to pass. Indeed such is how we have been saved. He brought to pass the greatest evil ever, and by it redeemed our souls. See Acts 2:23.

Author and Star

But even here we can still be stuck in our deism. His sovereignty doesn’t merely mean He is the one who wrote the full story of history, who numbered our days before there were days, who planned the descent of every hair falling from my head and then sat back to watch it play out. The glorious, though invisible truth is that He wrote Himself into the story. He who created space and time, who is above space and time also enters into space and time.

Take Comfort

The king’s heart is in His hand. And so is mine. Great and small, the good Lord is at work in them all. He is here and He is not inactive. Be of good cheer. For though He is risen, though He is seated at the right hand of the Father, though He is exalted, having received all authority in heaven and on earth, lo He is with us always. Whether we see it, sense it, feel it, believe it, or not.