Providence: Not Deism, Pantheism or Karma

When it comes to the Providence of the Living God there are different worldviews that when you talk to people you hear them articulating…

One of these worldviews is summarised not so much in talking about Jesus, but more in talking about a god, and people believe that this god exists, but is not involved in this world; he is separate from this world. Historically that has been called Deism, and has been very popular since the days of the Enlightenment in the 18^th century.

But there’s also an opposing worldview which is, nonetheless, just as unhelpful, which is the idea that there is a god in everything, or even that everything is god.

But the Bible says “no, we don’t just talk about a god with a small g. We talk about the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God the Father Almighty. But we don’t say that the Lord Jesus is separate from everything, and, on the other hand, we also don’t say that Lord Jesus is everything, or that all creation is the Lord Jesus.

No, the correct answer is what we see here: the Lord, who became man, is intimately involved with creation, both in obvious and less obvious ways. That intimate involvement with all creation is what we’re talking about when we talk about Providence.  

There’s another error which I prevalent too…

It’s Karma. And it was one that the disciples had fallen for in John 9— “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Again, the answer to why things happen—especially why bad things happen—is not to look at us, but to look at God. He has his purposes!