When Bad Things Happen

Written in the morning; Tragedy in Boston in the afternoon...

I was essentially told yesterday that I don't believe in God because my assertion was that, even though God is omniscient and knows every outcome, God does not necessarily know the choices we are going to make at any given moment. Free will creates and maintains a constant level of uncertainty and potential chaos within creation.

My reasoning is this: you and I can be sitting in a room together. There are an infinite number of things that I can do and say (or not do or say) to you and you to me. God, in His omniscience, knows the outcome of all of those possibilities; He knows where they will lead; He knows which are good, which are bad, which are the best for me and for you, and which are not so good for either of us. But God may not know what you and I will choose to do or say (or not do or say) until it is done. I see this because God has decided to never violate our free will, and the best way to keep that promise/decision is for God to limit His knowledge of our free will. Just because God is all-powerful and all-knowing doesn't mean God cannot and does not put checks or limits on His knowledge and power.

So the two of us are in the room together, and you can suddenly pick up a chair and club me to death with it. Now God is aware that this is a possibility and is aware of what all the outcomes may be, but because of free will cannot stop it from happening (not because God does not have the power, but because that's part of the deal of creation). God does not want that outcome, and God tries to make sure that possibility is not the one chosen. For instance, Cain had the possibility of not killing Abel, and God was aware of that possibility because God tries to talk Cain out of it. But Cain uses his free will to kill his brother. Cain made that choice! God didn't make it for him, and even though God clearly saw that as a possibility, God also so that there was a possibility for Cain NOT to kill Abel, or else God wouldn't have offered Cain the counsel that He does.

For me, and again, I have a whole history of being wrong about stuff, making God omniscient in a way that he knows everything and still does it--that God knows what Satan will do before Satan does it and still makes Satan anyway; or that God knows what Hitler will do, but still makes Hitler; or that God knows that Adam and Eve will cause untold misery for thousands of years because they couldn't keep their hands off of a piece of fruit, but then makes everything anyway, MAKES GOD RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERY BAD THING THAT EVER HAPPENED AND EVER WILL HAPPEN. I am unwilling to do that--and yes, that is a theological choice on my part, not necessarily a theological reality.

Now, of course I see the limits of what I am saying, but all descriptions and understandings of God are limited. I do not claim to know all things about God--I don't even know all things about me, and I've been living with me for as long as I can remember. Any image of God that I am unwilling to tweak or adjust or give up is not who God is, but an idol I have constructed in my mind--and if nothing else, God is the Great Iconoclast that smashes idols.

So what are your thoughts? And I don't mean ripping a verse or two out of context here and there to prove me wrong. Let's just accept that I know I'm wrong and just deal with the concept, not in being smarter than me--that's not very hard. What do you think about the overall concept, which is a version of what is called Process Theology--a theology I did not like very much while in seminary, but now clearly am willing to adapt in my old age?