GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY OR CHANCE?

1 SAMUEL 6:8–9

Take the ark of the Lord and put it on the cart, and in a chest beside it put the gold objects you are sending back to him as a guilt offering. Send it on its way, but keep watching it. If it goes up to its own territory, toward Beth Shemesh, then the Lord has brought this great disaster on us. But if it does not, then we will know that it was not his hand that struck us and that it happened to us by chance

(1 Samuel 6:8–9).

The Philistines were a religious people: They worshiped gods, especially the god Dagon. They were also superstitious. But underneath their religious and superstitious rituals was a profound practical commitment to atheism. They actually believed it was possible for events to take place by chance.

I spoke once with a man who teaches the philosophy and history of science in the graduate school of a major Ivy League university. He told me he believed the universe was created by chance. I asked him how the universe could have been created by chance, since chance can do nothing.

Chance Does Not Exist

He was puzzled, so I asked him, “What is chance?” After all, how much power does chance have in the world? We flip a coin and say the chances are 50–50 it will come up tails, but how much influence is exerted by chance in how that coin turns up? We cannot see with the naked eye all the things that influence that coin. We may not know whether it started out heads or tails. We don’t know how much force was exerted on the coin when it was flipped. We don’t know how much influence air currents may have on it, and how much the angle of the floor may influence how it bounces. But these are the influences that determine whether it comes up heads or tails.

Since we don’t know, we say the outcome is “chancy.” But in fact, is chance a force? No. Does chance exist? No. Chance is merely a mathematical concept which has no “being.” Therefore, to believe in chance as an ultimate cause is to believe in “nothing” as an ultimate cause, and a belief in “nothing” is atheism.

If God does not control all things, “nothing” does.

CORAM DEO

During the next several days, test your vocabulary to see how frequently you attribute the work of God to “chance,” “luck,” or “Mother Nature.” What other common expressions should you, as a Christian, avoid; and what words (like providence) can replace them?

For further study: Proverbs 16:9, 33; Matthew 10:29–31

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