Edwinology’s Lab: The man who got angry at God after his China visa was rejected last November
Our heart goes out to all who have lost their loved ones around the world and those in Ghana whose businesses have been hit by the virus.
It is interesting how Edwinology’s Lab is coming out of a self-imposed quarantine after globe-trotters are now being asked to self-isolate.
E-Lab intends, for the next couple of days, to write about coronavirus, the virus that is exposing a lot of other viruses like political ideologies and faulty theologies. Your fake scientist here does not believe in a long write up, so he will break them down in a series as follows.
- Some church faulty theology
- Capitalism
- Why our national prayers can be patronising God
- We are no longer busy
- How political ideology has impacted the church’s theology
- How specialization at work is killing our worship in church
E-lab hesitates to write about the church because people generally hesitate to write an essay on ‘Myself’. And when I say the church, I must be understood to be excluding those who are always in the news about consultation fees, women, sex and cars.
The mere mention of their names chips away even some of my own serious outlook on the subject of church.
In more recent years, E-Lab is deeply concerned about mainstream churches even as Christ has been more deeply concerned about my own level of devotion.
In this sense, the great benefit of coronavirus is that any theology that does not emphasise the sovereignty of God has been dealt a mortal blow.
There is a great de-emphasis on God’s sovereignty, especially in charismatic circles. It is frightening. Our dear friends in charismatic churches ought to understand we mean well, and that this problem is found in several other denominations–protestant, and I dare say neo-orthodox. I mention the charismatics because although Ghana is a sunny country; the north is special.
Back to my point; there is a name-it-, claim-it Christianity that has crossed the line of faith into fantasy.
Now all the Christians who vented angrily at God for getting their visa application to study in Italy or China turned down have no choice, but to give thanks to God even for the shameless faithlessness in failing to see God’s big picture because we were fixated with a narrow verse of scripture.
Christians, it appears, no longer want God to be God, we want to be God’s God. And you see it in our desperately crass inability to accept suffering and their deep dread of poverty as something a Christian ought never to suffer.
Then the reply to this is that it depends on your faith. If you believe in suffering or poverty, allow those who believe in happiness and wealth to be, they say.
That reply, effectively, is saying that children must get what they want, it depends on their tears. No wonder our children are as wayward as our theology.
By the grace of God alone, E-Lab has come to understand that the only thing God thinks about is his glory, the way a good man is concerned with his reputation. He engineered salvation because all had fallen “short of his glory” not because some had fallen short of money.
He, therefore, thinks about us because he is thinking about his glory, he loves us for reasons entirely out of ourselves, and fully in his glorious attribute of love.
When David asked God ‘who am I and what is my name that you do such good to me?’, it was such a moving, humble, contrite question to which God’s simple answer would have simply been, ‘oh David, don’t be silly.
We now this know because God was thinking about Jesus when he was thinking about David. How to secure a line through which the Messiah would come. And it came through David.
At the risk of turning this into a sermon, you should see that as far as coronavirus is concerned, God is thinking about his glory. And his glory isn’t always healing. It also disciplines, it is also the correction of poor theology, repentance, a re-aligning of your priorities, learning dependence, Christ-likeness.
God didn’t ask the devil to kill Jesus, but we are all here in the faith because what the enemy planned for evil, God purposed for our good and so allowed it.
We can discover more of his good purposes, if we can stop screaming and sit down this Sunday with a Bible alone.
After all, there is no church to go to now as we understand it. And with a thrill of excitement, E-Lab cannot help, but say, that too is good.