I believe that God respects peoples decision. Second Kings dhows us that the king violated the laws of God, the people suffered; when the king obeyed God’s laws, the people prospered. The Lord gives us clear guidance, but if we choose to ignore or disobey it, He allows the consequence of our decision to correct us. Consequences are great teachers.
I believe this is the correct answer, but I’ve never heard it satisfyingly extended to non-human-caused suffering. The most I hear is “viruses and cancer and hurricanes and dementia exist because adam and eve ate the apple”, and I really feel like a reasonable response to that is: why were those things a consequence? They don’t follow causally, which to me means it was a choice made by God. Why did he make viruses? Why do our minds break? Why do our pets get sick?
I don't think we can draw a straight line from Eve to cancer and hurricanes, especially since I believe the story of Adam and Eve is meant to be a non-literal representation of humanity's propensity to choose our own way rather than God's. And since we all choose our own way to some extent (some more than others), the world and everything in it are decaying--our bodies included.
I think you’d enjoy Thomas J Oord. He discusses this very topic in his book Death of omnipotence. He doesn’t believe God is all powerful, but rather all loving which is why he can’t just over power and over rule everything, everyone, and every situation. It’s not that he chooses to withhold his power. It’s that he can’t do anything unloving, like go against our free will to make decisions. Anyways, it’s an interesting concept and something to make you think!
Tom is great and has become a friend! I've read a bunch of his stuff and we end up diverging a little bit in how we try to explain it, but I completely agree with his proposition that love is God's central characteristic. I'm grateful for him and his work.
This post really resonated with me Zach! My Bible study group just finished studying through The Sermon on the Mount (your series and the Bible Project series played prominent roles!), and the way Jesus ends the Sermon seems to be exactly what you're talking about. There are two ways/paths/roads you can choose to take, one leads to life, he's not talking about heaven, but the kind of Spirit-empowered life he describes in the Sermon and lives out in his own life; and one that leads to destruction, not what we think of as hell, but ruin, pain, and the destruction of shalom. There are two kinds of trees to be seen, one that produces good fruit which leads to right relationships and flourishing life for all, the Fruit of the Spirit, and one that produces rotten fruit, the antithesis of the Fruit of the Spirit, oppression, greed, hate, the devaluing of people and flourishing life for few. And there are two houses one can build, one built on the solid foundation of the way of Jesus; love, compassion, justice, generosity, peace, which will stand because it is Spirit-empowered and leads to God's shalom, and one that is built on the crumbling foundation of selfishness, greed, power-seeking, and oppression which leads to chaos and the destruction of shalom. If God has chosen to "rule and reign" in his creation THROUGH image-bearing humanity (Genesis 1 and 2), then these choices are of paramount importance and they have consequences, as we see throughout the biblical story. Thank you for your voice and your encouragement. You are a voice I can trust to always point me toward the Way of Jesus!
My Friend, you speak my mind on this. The old, old saw applies. "We are God's hands and God's voice." If we fail to follow the Spirit's lead in all things, the fault is with us. Because God always offers us the grace and the gifts to do what needs to be done.
This is a very interesting breakdown on the subject of free-will. I do think this is a valid point. The only question I would have regarding God being all powerful is not why does he let people do bad things to other people(this is the free-will part although the people being hurt did not choose the consequences of others actions), but if God is all powerful and can use that power to create why does he allow people/children especially, to die of diseases like cancer. If he is all powerful and chooses to not only heal said humans but allows them to become sick to begin with where is his goodness and compassion?
It's a fair question. I think God causing any human behavior (making someone do good or preventing someone from doing bad) would be a violation of how God has setup the world--how God let's us all choose.
Zach...great article as always. It reminded me of a period of time when I needed certainty the most and came across a book about God's sovereignty. I was unlearned and naive, and didn't realize there were different types of thought within the Christian church. This was pure Calvinism, but I didn't know that. In this book, every single thing that happens in only through God's perfect will, so even horrible tragedies had a specific purpose...whether only happened because God suddenly allowed a raindrop, etc. It actually made me feel safer for awhile. But it was a trick of the mind. It's so weird to think about that now.
I've read books like that too. In fact, I believed them for awhile, but that all changed when I had to counsel people going through some of the most difficult things imaginable. At that point, it became untenable to tell people "God caused this" because I just didn't believe it anymore.
I applaud your logic and reasoning. Thank you my brother in Christ. I always appreciate your insight and wisdom and share it as best as I can. A true “Shalom” to you.
Thank you for this insight, it's always nice to hear perspectives on our agency in this world, because its always a struggle to square.
I cannot help but take great umbrage with the excerpt you shared of Brian Zahnd, however. That notion that we are solely responsible for morality and of Christian exceptionalism comes off at best painfully pessimistic on human nature, and myopic and racist at worse. There is such a variety of beliefs around the world, many older than Christianity, and it is absurd to state that only ours teaches compassion and morality. At our best and as individuals, we are agents for good certainly, but so often when Christianity has manifested as institutional power, from the crusades 1200 years ago to the modern American state, faith has been wielded as a club for oppression and consolidation, and as a shield against retribution. I cannot know from the excerpt whether any of this is addressed, or nuance given to these beliefs, but it's disappointing to take his world view at face value.
I hear your pushback, but it's important to note that Zahnd is contrasting early forms of pagan religion (which frequently centered worship on things like human sacrifice to appease gods, infanticide, temple prostitution and sex slavery, etc.) with Christianity. Judaism (which Christianity comes out of), Islam, Buddhism, and others have also contributed to goodness in the world.
I write often about the failures of institutional Christianity, and we must be honest about that, but we also have to be honest about the good parts too. Christianity has produced both Ebenezer Baptist Church and Westboro Baptist Church. Modern Christians have a choice to make between these two paths and I'm encouraging us to choose the path of Jesus.
Thank you for your response! I understand that and agree that we we've done a lot of good, it just struck me wrong that it was such a sweeping statement (as I am prone to prickling at) and seemingly so rooted in the lens of Europe and the near east, especially when pagan so often means any and all other religions. When his narrative is Christianity bringing morality to the masses, I can't help but hear it echoing so closely every historical argument for European empire and colony. When our current state is such that it is, I think its important that actions should speak louder than any proclamation of virtue.
As to the present, I can only choose the right path as often as possible, and to acknowledge others who are and always have been in the vocation of good-doing.
I hadn't originally read Zahnd's quote the way you took it, but I can definitely understand your concern after a re-read. I have not the read book either. I can vouch that we do not believe that only Christians can do good things in the world (which sounds crazy to me as I type it but I know a lot of people who believe this!), and that we are attempting to separate ourselves as much as humanly possible from empire, colonialism, domination, etc.
Thanks for your thoughtful responses! They are welcomed and appreciated here.
These are great points and I really appreciate you bringing them up. We have to push back on supremacy of all kinds, including Christian supremacy, anytime we can. Thanks, ChantzA!
Zach - I really like your point about “subverting” worldly power. The idea of helping to mend the world is also a reflection of God’s creativity I believe. Takes so much more to put the works back together than to simply burn it all down.
Man, I was all in until the Zahnd quote. None of that is true historically. We see consistently throughout human history examples of care and compassion, long before Christian colonialist supremacy fueled exceptionalism. Think about how archeologists say they see evidence of caring for broken bones and how female lineage of grandmothers displays generations of care, of trinkets and tokens of love, of ruins and tombs and art and music and stories from pre/nonChristian cultures. Think about indigenous people throughout the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania, the Pacific Islands and on down to other cultures and religions today who have no connect or interest in mimicking the Christians who caused so much damage to their country and people. Over and over, the real history gets cruel and bloody when the Christian colonialists arrive. It's bafflingly ahistorical someone in 2025 would still use this thinking as a tool and ignore so much historical fact, not to mention antisemitism against our own historical roots and context as a religion. Nothing was "entirely new" about compassion. He throws around the word "history" here while repeating conservative evangelical talking points that are one step away from calling nonChristian historical people "savages." Imagine thinking there was no relief for the poor before the Jesus followers came along in the first century or later! This is why we get laughed out of academia, btw. Perhaps there is something out of context here, but this excerpt is coming off as stunningly ignorant. Yes, the modern era's familiar forms of those institutions were founded in their current form by Christians (and note how many women had to fight the church's patriarchy to make them happen. Often the biggest opponents were and are still the Christian powerholders). But it's a classic Western white Christian mistake to think an institutional history is a conceptual one. As if there was no "ethical worldview" or charitable practices and then following that up solely with extremely Western white guy examples of Voltaire and Nietzsche (??) as if those are actual modern religious trendsetters who left a devoted following. 😵💫 It's not really a mystery why Zahnd can't find others when Christian colonialist supremacy wiped out and displaced so many societies! We surely know why there are not huge enduring institutions of other religions all over American cities, right? And that secular institutions are necessarily nonreligious for a reason?
Please reconsider including quotes from authors manipulating history in such a propagandized way. This isn't like you. I know you know all of this. We can call it imago Dei or prevenient grace or the Holy Spirit not being limited to one religion or Rohr's Universal Christ, but the Zahnd way of thinking is NOT it. Inject some women, queer theology, Native theology, BIPOC theology, global perspectives, Holy Envy, and beyond into those bookshelves and we're going to have to confront the falsehoods of old rhetoric like this.
Hey Jenna - thanks for the pushback and I completely agree that Christians didn’t invent compassion. Christianity came out of Judaism and the ethical concerns found in it were first found in Torah.
Like I mentioned in another comment, the context of the quote is Zahnd contrasting specific early forms of pagan religion in the Near East (which frequently centered worship on things like human sacrifice to appease gods, infanticide, temple prostitution and sex slavery, etc.) with early Christianity. Of course followers of Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, non-religious people have been purveyors of goodness in the world too.
I write often about the failures of institutional Christianity, and we must be honest about that, but we also have to be honest about the good parts too. Christianity has produced both Ebenezer Baptist Church and Westboro Baptist Church. Modern Christians have a choice to make between these two paths and I'm encouraging us to choose the path of Jesus.
I removed the out-of-context part of the quote and included a note at the end. We must be people committed to pushing back against supremacy of all kinds, including Christian supremacy, anytime we can. Thanks again for pointing this out and pushing back. I truly appreciate it!
Thanks. Seems like his claims are pretty broad and definitive that there is no way to develop any of this without being a Christian? Even if that is only true for a specific culture in a specific era of history, I'd definitely be curious to hear an antiquities scholar comment on whether Greeks and Romans had discovered the concept of compassion and charity, but that's not my expertise so *shrug I have been considering writing on how the God of the Christian Nationalists is a lot more like Zeus and co, though. It's outside of my expertise, but staying within the lanes of religious critiques and not humanitarian ones, there's definitely a solid point there about who and what we're really worshiping when our God is petty, vengeful, punishing, patriarchal, selfish, etc. in contrast to Jesus. I just think Zahd is presenting this in a much less charitable way to nonChristian populations as a whole conceptually than you intend to when he speaks of what is and isn't possible, and bringing in Voltaire and Nietzsche and the French Revolution as if those are the pinnacle of Near East paganism?? 🫠
I believe that God respects peoples decision. Second Kings dhows us that the king violated the laws of God, the people suffered; when the king obeyed God’s laws, the people prospered. The Lord gives us clear guidance, but if we choose to ignore or disobey it, He allows the consequence of our decision to correct us. Consequences are great teachers.
Consequences are the best teachers indeed.
I believe this is the correct answer, but I’ve never heard it satisfyingly extended to non-human-caused suffering. The most I hear is “viruses and cancer and hurricanes and dementia exist because adam and eve ate the apple”, and I really feel like a reasonable response to that is: why were those things a consequence? They don’t follow causally, which to me means it was a choice made by God. Why did he make viruses? Why do our minds break? Why do our pets get sick?
I don't think we can draw a straight line from Eve to cancer and hurricanes, especially since I believe the story of Adam and Eve is meant to be a non-literal representation of humanity's propensity to choose our own way rather than God's. And since we all choose our own way to some extent (some more than others), the world and everything in it are decaying--our bodies included.
I struggle with this, too, Ryan.
Yes... that gift of freedom to choose? Its as terrifying as it is awesome...
Agreed.
I think you’d enjoy Thomas J Oord. He discusses this very topic in his book Death of omnipotence. He doesn’t believe God is all powerful, but rather all loving which is why he can’t just over power and over rule everything, everyone, and every situation. It’s not that he chooses to withhold his power. It’s that he can’t do anything unloving, like go against our free will to make decisions. Anyways, it’s an interesting concept and something to make you think!
Tom is great and has become a friend! I've read a bunch of his stuff and we end up diverging a little bit in how we try to explain it, but I completely agree with his proposition that love is God's central characteristic. I'm grateful for him and his work.
This post really resonated with me Zach! My Bible study group just finished studying through The Sermon on the Mount (your series and the Bible Project series played prominent roles!), and the way Jesus ends the Sermon seems to be exactly what you're talking about. There are two ways/paths/roads you can choose to take, one leads to life, he's not talking about heaven, but the kind of Spirit-empowered life he describes in the Sermon and lives out in his own life; and one that leads to destruction, not what we think of as hell, but ruin, pain, and the destruction of shalom. There are two kinds of trees to be seen, one that produces good fruit which leads to right relationships and flourishing life for all, the Fruit of the Spirit, and one that produces rotten fruit, the antithesis of the Fruit of the Spirit, oppression, greed, hate, the devaluing of people and flourishing life for few. And there are two houses one can build, one built on the solid foundation of the way of Jesus; love, compassion, justice, generosity, peace, which will stand because it is Spirit-empowered and leads to God's shalom, and one that is built on the crumbling foundation of selfishness, greed, power-seeking, and oppression which leads to chaos and the destruction of shalom. If God has chosen to "rule and reign" in his creation THROUGH image-bearing humanity (Genesis 1 and 2), then these choices are of paramount importance and they have consequences, as we see throughout the biblical story. Thank you for your voice and your encouragement. You are a voice I can trust to always point me toward the Way of Jesus!
This is SO good, Amy! I love how diligent you and your Bible study group are with your exploration of Scripture and the Way of Jesus. It inspires me!
My Friend, you speak my mind on this. The old, old saw applies. "We are God's hands and God's voice." If we fail to follow the Spirit's lead in all things, the fault is with us. Because God always offers us the grace and the gifts to do what needs to be done.
This is a very interesting breakdown on the subject of free-will. I do think this is a valid point. The only question I would have regarding God being all powerful is not why does he let people do bad things to other people(this is the free-will part although the people being hurt did not choose the consequences of others actions), but if God is all powerful and can use that power to create why does he allow people/children especially, to die of diseases like cancer. If he is all powerful and chooses to not only heal said humans but allows them to become sick to begin with where is his goodness and compassion?
It's a fair question. I think God causing any human behavior (making someone do good or preventing someone from doing bad) would be a violation of how God has setup the world--how God let's us all choose.
Powerful!!! Thank you Zack
So good/ thanks Zach! Self reliant power breaks… God reliant power fixes.
Zach...great article as always. It reminded me of a period of time when I needed certainty the most and came across a book about God's sovereignty. I was unlearned and naive, and didn't realize there were different types of thought within the Christian church. This was pure Calvinism, but I didn't know that. In this book, every single thing that happens in only through God's perfect will, so even horrible tragedies had a specific purpose...whether only happened because God suddenly allowed a raindrop, etc. It actually made me feel safer for awhile. But it was a trick of the mind. It's so weird to think about that now.
I've read books like that too. In fact, I believed them for awhile, but that all changed when I had to counsel people going through some of the most difficult things imaginable. At that point, it became untenable to tell people "God caused this" because I just didn't believe it anymore.
Me too.
I applaud your logic and reasoning. Thank you my brother in Christ. I always appreciate your insight and wisdom and share it as best as I can. A true “Shalom” to you.
Thanks so much, Kathleen!
Of course I enjoy your posts!
Thank you for this insight, it's always nice to hear perspectives on our agency in this world, because its always a struggle to square.
I cannot help but take great umbrage with the excerpt you shared of Brian Zahnd, however. That notion that we are solely responsible for morality and of Christian exceptionalism comes off at best painfully pessimistic on human nature, and myopic and racist at worse. There is such a variety of beliefs around the world, many older than Christianity, and it is absurd to state that only ours teaches compassion and morality. At our best and as individuals, we are agents for good certainly, but so often when Christianity has manifested as institutional power, from the crusades 1200 years ago to the modern American state, faith has been wielded as a club for oppression and consolidation, and as a shield against retribution. I cannot know from the excerpt whether any of this is addressed, or nuance given to these beliefs, but it's disappointing to take his world view at face value.
I hear your pushback, but it's important to note that Zahnd is contrasting early forms of pagan religion (which frequently centered worship on things like human sacrifice to appease gods, infanticide, temple prostitution and sex slavery, etc.) with Christianity. Judaism (which Christianity comes out of), Islam, Buddhism, and others have also contributed to goodness in the world.
I write often about the failures of institutional Christianity, and we must be honest about that, but we also have to be honest about the good parts too. Christianity has produced both Ebenezer Baptist Church and Westboro Baptist Church. Modern Christians have a choice to make between these two paths and I'm encouraging us to choose the path of Jesus.
Thank you for your response! I understand that and agree that we we've done a lot of good, it just struck me wrong that it was such a sweeping statement (as I am prone to prickling at) and seemingly so rooted in the lens of Europe and the near east, especially when pagan so often means any and all other religions. When his narrative is Christianity bringing morality to the masses, I can't help but hear it echoing so closely every historical argument for European empire and colony. When our current state is such that it is, I think its important that actions should speak louder than any proclamation of virtue.
As to the present, I can only choose the right path as often as possible, and to acknowledge others who are and always have been in the vocation of good-doing.
I hadn't originally read Zahnd's quote the way you took it, but I can definitely understand your concern after a re-read. I have not the read book either. I can vouch that we do not believe that only Christians can do good things in the world (which sounds crazy to me as I type it but I know a lot of people who believe this!), and that we are attempting to separate ourselves as much as humanly possible from empire, colonialism, domination, etc.
Thanks for your thoughtful responses! They are welcomed and appreciated here.
These are great points and I really appreciate you bringing them up. We have to push back on supremacy of all kinds, including Christian supremacy, anytime we can. Thanks, ChantzA!
We and God are one and therefore must be the ones to do the intervening
Thanks Zach, you explain it well
Zach - I really like your point about “subverting” worldly power. The idea of helping to mend the world is also a reflection of God’s creativity I believe. Takes so much more to put the works back together than to simply burn it all down.
Man, I was all in until the Zahnd quote. None of that is true historically. We see consistently throughout human history examples of care and compassion, long before Christian colonialist supremacy fueled exceptionalism. Think about how archeologists say they see evidence of caring for broken bones and how female lineage of grandmothers displays generations of care, of trinkets and tokens of love, of ruins and tombs and art and music and stories from pre/nonChristian cultures. Think about indigenous people throughout the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania, the Pacific Islands and on down to other cultures and religions today who have no connect or interest in mimicking the Christians who caused so much damage to their country and people. Over and over, the real history gets cruel and bloody when the Christian colonialists arrive. It's bafflingly ahistorical someone in 2025 would still use this thinking as a tool and ignore so much historical fact, not to mention antisemitism against our own historical roots and context as a religion. Nothing was "entirely new" about compassion. He throws around the word "history" here while repeating conservative evangelical talking points that are one step away from calling nonChristian historical people "savages." Imagine thinking there was no relief for the poor before the Jesus followers came along in the first century or later! This is why we get laughed out of academia, btw. Perhaps there is something out of context here, but this excerpt is coming off as stunningly ignorant. Yes, the modern era's familiar forms of those institutions were founded in their current form by Christians (and note how many women had to fight the church's patriarchy to make them happen. Often the biggest opponents were and are still the Christian powerholders). But it's a classic Western white Christian mistake to think an institutional history is a conceptual one. As if there was no "ethical worldview" or charitable practices and then following that up solely with extremely Western white guy examples of Voltaire and Nietzsche (??) as if those are actual modern religious trendsetters who left a devoted following. 😵💫 It's not really a mystery why Zahnd can't find others when Christian colonialist supremacy wiped out and displaced so many societies! We surely know why there are not huge enduring institutions of other religions all over American cities, right? And that secular institutions are necessarily nonreligious for a reason?
Please reconsider including quotes from authors manipulating history in such a propagandized way. This isn't like you. I know you know all of this. We can call it imago Dei or prevenient grace or the Holy Spirit not being limited to one religion or Rohr's Universal Christ, but the Zahnd way of thinking is NOT it. Inject some women, queer theology, Native theology, BIPOC theology, global perspectives, Holy Envy, and beyond into those bookshelves and we're going to have to confront the falsehoods of old rhetoric like this.
Hey Jenna - thanks for the pushback and I completely agree that Christians didn’t invent compassion. Christianity came out of Judaism and the ethical concerns found in it were first found in Torah.
Like I mentioned in another comment, the context of the quote is Zahnd contrasting specific early forms of pagan religion in the Near East (which frequently centered worship on things like human sacrifice to appease gods, infanticide, temple prostitution and sex slavery, etc.) with early Christianity. Of course followers of Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, non-religious people have been purveyors of goodness in the world too.
I write often about the failures of institutional Christianity, and we must be honest about that, but we also have to be honest about the good parts too. Christianity has produced both Ebenezer Baptist Church and Westboro Baptist Church. Modern Christians have a choice to make between these two paths and I'm encouraging us to choose the path of Jesus.
I removed the out-of-context part of the quote and included a note at the end. We must be people committed to pushing back against supremacy of all kinds, including Christian supremacy, anytime we can. Thanks again for pointing this out and pushing back. I truly appreciate it!
Thanks. Seems like his claims are pretty broad and definitive that there is no way to develop any of this without being a Christian? Even if that is only true for a specific culture in a specific era of history, I'd definitely be curious to hear an antiquities scholar comment on whether Greeks and Romans had discovered the concept of compassion and charity, but that's not my expertise so *shrug I have been considering writing on how the God of the Christian Nationalists is a lot more like Zeus and co, though. It's outside of my expertise, but staying within the lanes of religious critiques and not humanitarian ones, there's definitely a solid point there about who and what we're really worshiping when our God is petty, vengeful, punishing, patriarchal, selfish, etc. in contrast to Jesus. I just think Zahd is presenting this in a much less charitable way to nonChristian populations as a whole conceptually than you intend to when he speaks of what is and isn't possible, and bringing in Voltaire and Nietzsche and the French Revolution as if those are the pinnacle of Near East paganism?? 🫠