I’m growing increasingly amused by the argument that no one believes in what the Sovereigntists call hyper-Calvinism and what I call omniderigence or an uber control freak concept of God. I attended a friend’s church this morning, and the sermon was devoted to explaining the question why bad things happen. In the specific example with which it began today, why God would “call home” a young minister in a plane crash on the way to the land to which he’d been called to minister, for which he’d spent a good part of his short life training.
What was particularly interesting is that the pastor used terminology very similar to that which I use in describing my own doubts regarding the notion that God orchestrates evil for our benefit, although the pastor used the tanalogy of a play’s producer instead of a puppet master. The base concept, of course, was precisely as I’ve described it in the past. When he read from Job and then pointed out the similarity of the description of Satan roaming about the earth to the verse where he is pictured roaming about the earth as a devouring lion, I felt like calling out: dude, there’s the answer to your question. The young preacher didn’t get called home, he was devoured by the lion! Hence the concept of a spiritual war – there are casualties even if our weapons aren’t physical, some of the enemy’s are.
Now, we’ve hashed and rehashed this out here before, and no doubt we will again, but I am not trying to beat a dead horse here in stating that I do not subscribe to omniderigent theory; everyone knows that. The point is that, contrary to the assertion, omniderigent beliefs are commonplace among modern Christians, quite possibly more common than proper Calvinist theology.