All Powerful, All Knowing and Everywhere?

I once had a friend ask me point blank, “If God is all powerful, all knowing, and everywhere, then how can you serve a God that permits evil?”

I’m sure my response was clumsy and awkward and having something to do with free will, but the question stuck with me. At first, I thought it was one of those questions we would learn when we got to heaven (more on heaven later). But the more I read holy scripture, the more wrestled with the premise of the question.

Why do we think God is all powerful, all knowing, and everywhere? Or rather, why do we think that God is defined by these markers? At the center of God’s being, what makes us think that God isn’t defined by something else?

In An Unsettling God, Walter Brueggemann observes that the character that defines God in the Old Testament is relationship. Over and over again, God creates partnerships. God partners with Creation. God partners with Israel. God parters with humanity, nations, and drama. At God’s heart, our God is a God who is in relationship with the things around godself. And these relationships are not superficial. These relationships are deep. Just look at Exodus 32, or Genesis 32, or Genesis 18. In each story, Moses, Jacob, and Abraham (respectively) each negotiate with God, challenge God, and ask God to do something. And God responds.

This is why prayer is so significant. Because when we pray, God listens.

As for God’s power, or God’s knowing, or God’s presence, sure, you could use these observations to describe God, but they don’t really describe God. They don’t get to what God really is. When Christians talk about God, we are not talking about the Greek or Roman gods. We are talking about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And this God is different from all our expectations. This God became incarnate, and was born in cave with the poorest of the poor and said it was good. This God is with us and for us. This God cannot be contained. And before we get into philosophical debates, we need to make sure that which god we are talking about - the God of the Bible or some other distorted image of God.

an introduction of sorts

On one hand, youth ministries have failed the Church. They have created sub-pockets of Christian culture that have not been christian. They have been entertaining. They have been formative. They have tried to be faithful and have at least established some form of moral therapeutic deism. But often, this American experiment has failed. We only need to look at the decline of participation within churches to warrant this claim.

On the other hand, the Church has also failed its youth. Or rather, mainstream Christianity has set aside the role of forming the next generation and handed its responsibility to education systems that have not been trained to cultivate curiosity, critical thinking, or respect for religious perspectives.



In other words, youth ministries are a mess, but no more so than our churches. And contemporary culture has not given much helping.



So what are we supposed to do?



This blog is an attempt to help wade through the mess and reconstruct a way of looking at the world that will help youth understand Christianity and hopefully teach what it means to be faithful. This blog is primarily for youth workers, parents, grand parents, and others that deeply care for our next generation of Christians. And it is my hope that it will help. It might, however, sound more like deconstruction than construction at times. And I think this process is necessary to some extent because we all have to unlearn some bad habits.



However, if you are looking for a blog that will help your church find things that are engaging for people going through adolescence, there will be some of that too. It won't always. But there are some great resources out there that I hope to bring them to your attention.

As a foretaste of what is to come, the first resource I would suggest is the Fuller Theological Seminary Podcasts found on iTunes U. There is a lecture by Dr. Ellen Charry entitled "Psychological Theology" (it can be found in the Faith & Psychology Integration Symposium). And it describes the tension present between the Church and Psychotherapy. This is an important relationship that needs careful attention by youth workers, since youth ministry does deal, intentionally or unintentionally, with the psychological health of our students. Formal train would obviously be preferred, but that has not been a realistic expectation for youth workers in the field.

Going back to Charry's work, what I find most helpful is way she challenges the very foundation of the way I think about things. She states, “The entire individuation moment practiced in youth ministries are completely antithetical to Christian Theology.” And I think she's right. If youth ministries are about helping people independently find who they are, then youth workers are not doing the work of Jesus. Because it is our responsibility to help our students to realize that they are God's chosen people, created and loved eternally and unconditionally.



Who that God is will be the subject of the next post.