What can God do? ...

Friday, Oct 12, 2012. Discussing healing in the bible … one key basic question is: what can God do? And another question in this framework: what does God want? What is the power of the living God?

Almighty God and Natural Laws …

We need to address the contrast between an almighty God and natural laws. Our world is governed by natural laws. Nature and our daily activities do not take place in a purely random environment. In fact, the role of stochasticity is not at all clear, when we talk about physics or biology, about social science or cognition. Nature is governed by natural laws.

Mankind has had a tremendous success by exploring natural laws. These laws are partly very simple, like the law that physical masses attract each other in a way that the force decays like r^2 with distance. But some of the laws are also quite complex. When we want to describe chemical bondage between two atoms in detail, we need to solve a differential equation, where electrons are described by a probability density around the nuclei.

We need natural laws, since without such laws we could not plan or think. We use structures like “If … then” all the time. We set up our days by this type of planning. “Go to office … Then use the computer to write a letter. … Then take the phone and call a customer … ”. We use the reliability of nature to plan and to be active. If nature would not be governed by laws, we would be completely lost, and life would not be possible - at least I do not know anyone who could describe an alternative world without natural laws.

Can God change everything? …

What is the role of an almighty God in a world which is governed by natural laws? The question is old, and people have thought about his role as the “first mover” … with the idea that since then he must have been quite bored and out of work. Honestly, saying that God is just the first mover and nothing else is more on the level of redefining the word God to be used instead of “initial conditions”, in a reductionist world view.

The biblical view into God's role is completely different. He is the creator, but he is also there, around his creation, above his creation, beyond his creation and in his creation. The apostle Paul talked about this in his Sermon in Athens: “‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’” (Acts 17) And even more, we are told that nothing is impossible to God. He is the Lord of any natural law, any time. He can change things. He can go with the natural laws and use them, and he can go against the natural laws and just change facts as he likes. In Mark 10 it is recorded: “27Jesus looked at them and said, With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.”

It is good to know that God can change everything. Then, we can trust him and put our life into his hands. He will create good things out of this trust and guide us on a good path! (Roland Potthast) ... more texts