Lie: I’m in control of my life.
Truth: God is in control of your life.
You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality. — Ayn Rand
In the fantasy film Bruce Almighty, Bruce, a TV reporter whose ambition is to make anchor, takes out his aggression against God when he’s passed over for the job as news anchor. Foolishly he decides to contend with the Almighty thinking that he’d do a better job. Surprisingly God takes him up on the offer and temporarily transfers his powers to Bruce. After taking some liberties, Bruce quickly realizes he’s in way over his head. It’s a fun morality tale with a love-twist. If only this lie could be made that plain.
We humans actually have very little control over our lives, and I’m even talking to you who appear to be very much ‘in control.’ Granted, we have some control, within limits: we make choices about what to wear, eat, think, where to go and not go, live and not live, how to do things, whether sloppily, neatly, whether to be faithful to our spouses, or not, and so on.
That sounds like a lot, yes? But hold on. We can do those things if we are not constrained in some way. Here are the constraints with veto power:
We have ‘control’ depending on:
- what family we’re born into
- what education we’ll get
- what time period in history we’re born into
- what kind of climate we live in
- what nationality we are
- whether we have a disability or not
- whether we’re a genius or not
- whether our brain, heart, liver, lungs, stomach, or any bodily organ continues to function normally or not
- whether our friend, cousin, neighbor, co-worker or anyone else treats us well or not
I could go on.
The fact is we function within a limited bandwidth of life and time and space which could be revoked at any time. Of course this space of ‘freedom’ is an absolutely wondrous thing, but we too easily imagine ourselves in control of it.
Another aspect of our illusory control are our habits, addictions, our ‘warp-age.’ We all have a history and a set of baggage that comes with our lives. Perhaps you were abused, hungry, love-starved, nagged. Did you live in a war zone or a sleepy suburb, or were you fed six hours of TV per day? Or did you grow up in a family full of love, learning and laughter? Regardless of your environment, that upbringing shaped you, bent you and gave you a worldview with a limited set of choices. Other choices outside of that box would never even occur to you.
Then there’s the matter of sin. Sin also warps us, demeans us, animalizes us and tends to inflate our own ego and importance, therefore limiting and focusing our choices. This all happens without our being aware of it.
The truth is that God is in control. He alone reserves absolute authority and the power to exercise it. He alone decides who lives and who dies, who is rich and who is poor, who is smart and who is not. The good thing is that he is good and loves us, and although we suffer, he allows that suffering, but only insofar as to coax us to be like him.
God is in control of your life — he is in charge of you. He is Lord and that’s a good thing. You really don’t want that kind of control anyway.