Life & Work Magazine
Life & Work Magazine


2 mins

What Does God Do?

Einstein, so the story goes, gave a lecture. Behind him the blackboard was full of his equations. A student put up his hand.

‘Yes?’ said Einstein.

‘Professor, I can think of four reasons why that theory is wrong.’ Einstein smiled and wagged his finger. ‘You only need one,’ he said. Similarly I need only one example, out of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of daily deaths or maimings in news items on television flooding into our living rooms to show that God, no longer, since the ascension of Jesus Christ performs miracles independently of us humans to protect us in matters of physical safety. I choose the example some years ago of an eight-year-old boy near Blackpool who was struck by lightning and killed as he attended football practice.

God does not intervene directly. So let us stop pretending that He does. God is interested in Goodness only. Evidently God decided that such miracles were no longer necessary because we had been given the perfect example of Goodness to follow.

The question arises, ‘So what does God do?’ I think the answer is that He strengthens good-wills wherever they occur. He cannot strengthen a non-existent will and He might not strengthen some wills that seem good to us. He alone determines whether a will is worth strengthening. In this way He helps Goodness to triumph. All that is a matter of faith.

These two points about what God doesn’t do and what He does are fundamental. They affect the majority of preaching. In particular, they should form the basic structure of prayers of intercession.

According to the five (linguists have determined that there were five) early writers in the bible, God did indeed perform miracles in phase one, carrot and stick ones to encourage people towards Goodness. Then such miracles ceased in the book of Job, phase two. Local miracles abounded in phase three which was Jesus’ time on Earth. Now it’s up to us, our wills strengthened by God when He approves, in phase four.

God knows that we value physical safety highly. He also knows that in many cases of our dealing with it Goodness comes to the fore, sometimes the ultimate sacrificial Goodness. So He is not uninterested, just disinterested, for He values spiritual safety much more. Indeed, instances in the bible referring to God’s care for us use physical safety as a metaphor for spiritual safety.

Above all, accept that we Christians do not have a monopoly on Goodness. I have never heard that said from any pulpit. What an omission! Understand that what pleases God is people of good will, regardless of belief provided that they believe in Goodness, which is God whether they realise that or not.

This article appears in the November 2023 Issue of Life and Work

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This article appears in the November 2023 Issue of Life and Work