Is God Random?

Prior to becoming a believer, I had this notion in my head that God was random in some of His acts.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks like this.

I’ve had a chance to cross swords with my friend Mike Cluzel last night during a conversation among friends. It was not deliberate of course. The conversation just naturally went in that direction.

Mike proposed that God uses randomness as a tool. He explained that God, being a good and just God, could not voluntarily inflict pain and suffering on His creations. So He uses a system of randomness to randomly choose which person to inflict pain and suffering upon.

Riding on his thoughts, I tried to visualize for the group what he meant.

Imagine God holding a pair of dice: one with the name of every single human being on the planet, and the other with every single type of suffering. Whenever God decrees that suffering must exist for one reason or another, He throws these two dice, and whosever name comes up on one die is inflicted with the suffering that comes up on the other die.

In a way, it makes sense because this “exonerates” God from the act of inflicting the punishment Himself.

But I told Mike that I had a problem with this thinking.

My Bible tells me that God is not random.

God is the beginning and the end. He created all things and thus knows all things. There is nothing that He cannot know.

I explained to Mike that randomness, by its very nature contradicts God, for if God relies on randomness, it means that God Himself is subordinate to randomness.

And our Bible is very clear that there is nothing greater than God.

I know that I sound like some cocky student recently graduated from a school of apologetics, but hear me out for a little bit.

Speaking on a personal level, I find it unacceptable that my God who requires that I put all of my faith upon Him, has to rely on something arbitrary to determine certain events or outcomes in my life.

It would mean that ALL of my suffering is randomly inflicted, and that they do not serve any other purpose other than for me to suffer, and for God to be free from the responsibility of inflicting that suffering.

It just doesn’t make sense.

Let me try and put it this way.

As a martial artist, I am taught about pain. Pain is important, because it tells us when something is wrong. It tells us if we’re pushing ourselves too hard, or if we got hit with a really devastating blow and would have to either back away, or give up a match.

Pain is useful because it tells us we have reached our limits.

Once the limits have been set, it then gives us an opportunity to try and overcome those limits.

In other words, pain serves a purpose. It is not some random phenomenon that occurs out of the blue.

There is always a reason for pain.

Suffering for me acts the same way. We suffer because God wants us to realize something.

More often than not, He wants us to know that we’ve reached our limits as human beings, and that we should focus on trying to overcome those limits.

I sincerely believe that this is the way of all meaningful growth.

Now this is where it gets a little tricky.

What if God causes another person important to us to suffer? What if God decides to take away that person?

I would imagine that all of us at one point, will experience this.

We would all eventually be faced with the reality that God does take away life.

And then we would be left with the question: WHY?

Why my son? My daughter? My mother? My father? My wife? My husband? My friend?

Why God?

This is where faith comes in.

If we say we believe in a God that can resurrect the dead, and that this same God is good, merciful and loving beyond our comprehension, then we have to take it on faith that God knows what He is doing when He takes a loved one away.

Unfortunately for us, there is absolutely no way we can be sure of this in this lifetime.

God in His wisdom simply decided that it was not for us to know.

Moses recounts the covenantal relationship of God with the Hebrews in the book of Deuteronomy and concludes that:

The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law. - (Deuteronomy 29:29 NIV)

We cannot know everything. But there are some things which have been given us to know.

We know that we have a Book which tells us that God exists, and that He is a just, loving, and merciful God.

We know that He has set down rules for us to follow while in this life. We also know that these rules are NOT random or arbitrary, but serve a greater purpose.

We know that the rules are meant for our own good.

If we claim we do NOT know these things, then maybe it’s time for us to go back to this Book and check for ourselves what we do and do not know about God.

Otherwise, we’ll all be roaming around in the dark without a light or compass to tell us which way to go.

And that my dear family and friends is a travesty. Nay, it is a sin.

May God bless you all this weekend!