Laying Hold of His Willingness
Numbers 16:41–48
"The next day the whole Israelite community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. “You have killed the LORD’s people,” they said. But when the assembly gathered in opposition to Moses and Aaron and turned toward the tent of meeting, suddenly the cloud covered it and the glory of the LORD appeared. Then Moses and Aaron went to the front of the tent of meeting, and the LORD said to Moses, “Get away from this assembly so I can put an end to them at once.” And they fell facedown. Then Moses said to Aaron, “Take your censer and put incense in it, along with burning coals from the altar, and hurry to the assembly to make atonement for them. Wrath has come out from the LORD; the plague has started.” So Aaron did as Moses said, and ran into the midst of the assembly. The plague had already started among the people, but Aaron offered the incense and made atonement for them. He stood between the living and the dead, and the plague stopped."
Like the Israelites we are prone to grumbling and complaining, especially when we think we are justified in our anger even towards God. This reminds me of the attitude of some skeptics when offering the problem of evil it is usually with a righteous indignation against God, that they want to make it appear that they are emotionally justified in thinking God is a heartless dictator who enjoys seeing us suffer. This attitude is captured in a 2014 pop song called "Prayer in C" which, the first time I read the lyrics I interpreted it, in a nutshell, as the writer blaming God ("C" for Christ, "Yah" for YHVH) for being absent. I get annoyed at such and I see it all the time online, there's this prideful virtue signalling that presents itself to rival God as the judge of the earth (Gen 18:25). Former cold-case detective J. Warner Wallace explains ultimately the problem of evil is a problem of limited understanding. There are many facets of the problem of evil, there is the emotional and the intellectual and within the intellectual there is the logical and the evidential/probabilistic, there is also the distinction between moral and natural evil. These facets have each its own set of issues. At the heart of it as I see it in how most people generally express it, it is a problem of pride —of the dangerous thinking we know better than God but we end up simply putting words together meaninglessly like proposing to have our cake and eat it too. Wallace writes "as mere humans, we lack sufficient data about the causes we might attribute to free agency or the causal connection between reasonable explanations for evil. It's also impossible for us to know with certainty what future good might result from a present evil or to know the motives a Divine Being might have in bringing about a particular action." We sometimes feel this way too when we come to difficult events recorded in the bible, when God seemed to harsh and skeptics will readily point you to those verses such as Joshua's conquest, and this one, etc. To me this is when humble faith comes in, to trust that God, Who is the Author of Life, knows what He is doing and we just do what we can as humans to help alleviate others' pain. This humility with respect to the problem of suffering is expressed by a 19th century French Dominican priest, Jacques Marie Louis Monsabre: "If God would concede me His omnipotence for 24 hours, you would see how many changes I would make in the world. But if He gave me His wisdom too, I would probably leave things as they are." The prophet Habbakuk, lamenting at the judgment of Israel as he sees the chariots and armies of the Chaldeans sweeping across the region expresses this trust as well: "But the LORD is in His holy Temple. Let all the earth be silent before Him (Hab 2:20)." In the end, it is a posture of reverence. I suspect, people need to learn more and be enamoured by the person of Jesus Christ; the picture of Aaron standing in the midst of a plagued people with his censer burning (v. 47), this is a semi-efficacious reference to Christ the sole mediator between God and humanity (I Tim 2:5), between the living and the dead (v. 48), and we can help standing in the same chasm between belief and unbelief by partnering with the Holy Spirit in faithful real prayer in Christ's name which isn't blaming God, nor overcoming God's reluctance but laying hold of His willingness (Luther).
"The next day the whole Israelite community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. “You have killed the LORD’s people,” they said. But when the assembly gathered in opposition to Moses and Aaron and turned toward the tent of meeting, suddenly the cloud covered it and the glory of the LORD appeared. Then Moses and Aaron went to the front of the tent of meeting, and the LORD said to Moses, “Get away from this assembly so I can put an end to them at once.” And they fell facedown. Then Moses said to Aaron, “Take your censer and put incense in it, along with burning coals from the altar, and hurry to the assembly to make atonement for them. Wrath has come out from the LORD; the plague has started.” So Aaron did as Moses said, and ran into the midst of the assembly. The plague had already started among the people, but Aaron offered the incense and made atonement for them. He stood between the living and the dead, and the plague stopped."
Like the Israelites we are prone to grumbling and complaining, especially when we think we are justified in our anger even towards God. This reminds me of the attitude of some skeptics when offering the problem of evil it is usually with a righteous indignation against God, that they want to make it appear that they are emotionally justified in thinking God is a heartless dictator who enjoys seeing us suffer. This attitude is captured in a 2014 pop song called "Prayer in C" which, the first time I read the lyrics I interpreted it, in a nutshell, as the writer blaming God ("C" for Christ, "Yah" for YHVH) for being absent. I get annoyed at such and I see it all the time online, there's this prideful virtue signalling that presents itself to rival God as the judge of the earth (Gen 18:25). Former cold-case detective J. Warner Wallace explains ultimately the problem of evil is a problem of limited understanding. There are many facets of the problem of evil, there is the emotional and the intellectual and within the intellectual there is the logical and the evidential/probabilistic, there is also the distinction between moral and natural evil. These facets have each its own set of issues. At the heart of it as I see it in how most people generally express it, it is a problem of pride —of the dangerous thinking we know better than God but we end up simply putting words together meaninglessly like proposing to have our cake and eat it too. Wallace writes "as mere humans, we lack sufficient data about the causes we might attribute to free agency or the causal connection between reasonable explanations for evil. It's also impossible for us to know with certainty what future good might result from a present evil or to know the motives a Divine Being might have in bringing about a particular action." We sometimes feel this way too when we come to difficult events recorded in the bible, when God seemed to harsh and skeptics will readily point you to those verses such as Joshua's conquest, and this one, etc. To me this is when humble faith comes in, to trust that God, Who is the Author of Life, knows what He is doing and we just do what we can as humans to help alleviate others' pain. This humility with respect to the problem of suffering is expressed by a 19th century French Dominican priest, Jacques Marie Louis Monsabre: "If God would concede me His omnipotence for 24 hours, you would see how many changes I would make in the world. But if He gave me His wisdom too, I would probably leave things as they are." The prophet Habbakuk, lamenting at the judgment of Israel as he sees the chariots and armies of the Chaldeans sweeping across the region expresses this trust as well: "But the LORD is in His holy Temple. Let all the earth be silent before Him (Hab 2:20)." In the end, it is a posture of reverence. I suspect, people need to learn more and be enamoured by the person of Jesus Christ; the picture of Aaron standing in the midst of a plagued people with his censer burning (v. 47), this is a semi-efficacious reference to Christ the sole mediator between God and humanity (I Tim 2:5), between the living and the dead (v. 48), and we can help standing in the same chasm between belief and unbelief by partnering with the Holy Spirit in faithful real prayer in Christ's name which isn't blaming God, nor overcoming God's reluctance but laying hold of His willingness (Luther).
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