Who's Side Is God Really On?

 

As I watch from a distance what is happening in the world this week, I can’t help but think about how virtually every person of faith involved believes “God is on our side.”  Those who closely follow the Christian Bible will even quote Psalm 56:9 to you to plead their case.

The people of Ukraine who are being invaded believe they are the victims and that God is on their side.

Many of the Russian leaders and military believe that what they are doing is the right thing and that God is on their side.

Those of us in North America who are organizing fundraisers to help those displaced by this war believe we are doing God’s work and God is on our side.

But this leads me to the question of who’s side is God really on? 

Where do all of the thoughts and prayers go?  God is supposedly hearing the prayers of folks on all sides of this who once again, believe they are in the right and God is on their side.

I tend to see these situations in one of two potential ways. 

If one believes in a divine plan and that God has the ability to stop anything from happening at any time, then one has to believe that God is choosing to let this happen. 

God is choosing for people’s homes to be blown up and for people to die. 

God is choosing to separate families at borders who are simply trying to get to safety. 

God is choosing to have any man aged 18-60 fight a war they are not prepared or trained for while leaving their family behind. 

God is choosing this as part of an overarching plan or narrative or perhaps some sort of divine test.

There was a time that I thought this way but I just can’t take that mindset anymore.  Everything we are taught about God through Jesus tells us that God is loving and desires no wars.  God wants to be with us.

This leads me to the second way which is the idea that God Can’t singlehandedly stop any of this.

War between nations is not God’s design; it is humans who have created that.  In a desire to gain more power and influence on this tiny blue dot in our universe, powerful men have spent human history killing others to take what they have.  I don’t believe that this is in any way God’s plan. 

I believe (aided by the work of Thomas Jay Oord) that God is just as heartbroken as we are watching the events of this past week.  God can’t stop this but I believe that God is there with those suffering (on both sides) and trying to bring love into the situation in any way possible.  I believe that God is using her influence to put the right people in the right places as much as she can and I believe that she is constantly working everywhere. 

To be honest, I have no ideas where the thoughts and prayers fit into all of this because I don’t believe that God has a magic threshold of requests before he will act in whatever way he can. 

What I do think is that God is watching and weeping along with the world right now and I truly believe that they don’t have a side that they’re on.  They’re on the side of Love and want to see it transform our human hearts.  One day, I hope that humans can learn to feel the same way.