How Big is Your God?

O LORD, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath.
For your arrows have pierced me, and your hand has come down upon me.
Because of your wrath there is no health in my body; my bones have no soundness because of my sin. – Psalm 38:1-3 (NIV)

The Psalms can be a great source of comfort. But sometimes the Psalms confuse us with their in-your-face nature. Raw human emotion and overt displays of feelings of the writers can make the American mind uncomfortable. The writer has problems in his life. He characterized his life by rebuking, disciplining piercing and loss of health. Where does he lay the blame for his condition? He blames God for his condition. He understands God to be in control of all things, even the bad things he receives.

Many people believe God to be good. He brings good things into our lives. To protect the good God, they believe that bad things come from some other source. This kind of thought comes from an attempt to make God ‘nice’ or to excuse God for bad things that happen. How can a good god allow bad things to happen?

With this thinking, we run into problems when we read something like Psalm 38. The writer clearly blames his bad condition on God. This is the natural conclusion if God is all-powerful. All things come from God, not just good things. You can play semantics and say that God simply allows bad in the world, but the fact remains that an all-powerful God allowing bad to happen is the same as bad coming from God himself.

I would rather deal with the problem of bad things coming from an all-powerful God, than with a good God that cannot act in any way that He wants in any circumstance. I find comfort in the fact that God is in control and nothing in my life is outside of His ability to control.