God and Kidney Stones
By Clifford Chalmers Cain
Amipotence means that God does not cause or permit our suffering but identifies with us in it.
The invitation to share these thoughts came in the midst of my experiencing kidney stones, three rounds of affliction that women friends describe as comparable to childbirth, or even greater pain! This description proved accurate: The discomfort in the renal area of my lower back was without question the most intense affliction I have ever tolerated.
Did God “send” these kidney stones as a punishment for my personal sins? Although I concede that “everyone sins and falls short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), are my three, kidney stone attacks a divine retribution for my particular shortcomings? Upon review, although I was not “perfect” during the time period before the stones, I cannot recall any heinous act on my part or my failing to provide a crucial action warranted by a situation that would deserve such pain and suffering.
But could God be teaching me a lesson through the kidney stones? Is there a moral precept to be learned? Perhaps my impatience was being judged? Or maybe my urologist’s previous reminders to drink more water should have been more conscientiously heeded? Still, maybe I needed to become increasingly aware of my dependence on others—in this case doctors, technicians, pharmacists, and caregivers?
However, any such lesson would have been thoroughly learned through just one bout of kidney stones. I got the message right away that I would be needing the expertise, compassion, care, and service of others. In fact, I realized this before the first of the three kidney stone attacks.
Or is God not nice but nasty? Could God be a Cosmic Sadist who gets pleasure from my displeasure? The Christian God whose chief attribute is agapé love could be a concept that is both mistaken and delusional. We humans would like God to be kind and merciful and loving, but that does not make God so.
Maybe these kidney stones are a test? Perhaps they are a trial of my faith. Despite the pain and suffering, will I maintain my belief in God and in God’s essential goodness and God’s power to maintain that goodness in actions that only “appear” to be not-so-good for me?
It could be that God’s motives are impenetrably mysterious. Perhaps it is simply impossible for a mere mortal to understand what God does and why God does it. After all, the prophetic book of Isaiah reminds us humans that “our thoughts are not God’s thoughts, and our ways are not God’s ways” (55:8-9). As a result, it is wasted time, wasted mental machinations, and wasted breath to raise such questions about God’s intentions. Instead, I need to “trust and obey,” as the old hymn says. [1]
I grew up never doubting God’s power. Everything—every thing—that happened was caused by God and stood in accordance with God’s will. This perspective provided assurance that the seemingly most meaningless of experiences ultimately held purpose and meaning.
In the sixteenth century time of Reformer John Calvin, he witnessed five major outbreaks of the bubonic plague. [2] Partially to account for this widespread and deadly pestilence, Calvin accented God’s power, an omnipotence that was responsible for everything that happened. Calvin would have smiled with how “Calvinist” I had become on this theological point. God controlled everything, God was the Author of all events, and this God’s ways remained inscrutable.
But the price I paid in emphasizing so much God’s unlimited, relentless, and irresistible power was that God did not seem to be so much of a nice and loving deity at times (or a lot of the time). The impact of terrible things was no longer mitigated by supposed divine assurance that all fit into a master plan that God had imposed and that all would one day make sense when we died and went to be with God in the afterlife. “Now we see in a mirror, but then face-to-face. Now we know in-part, then we shall fully know.” (I Corinthians 13:12).
Did God really “cause” my kidney stones? Did God send tragedy on parents with a newborn who suffers from SIDS (all right when tucked-in, but dead the next morning)? Did God arrange a traffic accident involving a DUI vehicle? Was God the cause of breast cancer in my friend? Or renal cancer in a friend who is a prolific author? Or prostate cancer in a colleague? Or polio in an older colleague before the Salk vaccine? Did God cause the death of a British physics Nobel Laureate acquaintance through COVID-19? Or the deaths of one-third to one-half of the population (as many as 50 million persons) of Europe because of the Black Death?
Of course, a prevalent position in contemporary theology has been the notion of a self-limiting God. In this view, God has unlimited power and could in theory do anything God wanted; however, God has freely and voluntarily chosen to limit God’s power so that genuine human freedom can be exercised and so that natural laws can run their course unabated. As a result, poor choices on the part of human beings can lead to suffering: A person chooses not to eat in healthy ways, so consequently that individual has medical problems. He elects to be a scoundrel in relationships and ends up losing many of them. She sees herself as unattractive and not thin enough, so desperately thinks that eating disorders will rectify the situation.
And God does not interfere in the operation of “natural laws.” Subsequently, if a child falls from a third-floor balcony, gravity will impact that child and will fall to death or suffer substantial injury. If persons contract diseases, they may result in possible debilitating or lethal outcomes.
However, if things proceed to such a point or descend to such a level that unspeakable levels of pain and suffering result, why did God not renege on God’s decision not to intrude and instead prevent things from becoming so bad or so deadly? After all, God had the power to do so if God chose to use God’s power to avert, to mitigate, to reverse, or to suspend.
So, although this point-of-view preserves human freedom and honors the laws of nature, it leaves open the question of God’s goodness, God’s love, and God’s willingness to intercede in human’s behalf. By contrast, the Bible frequently points to divine intervention into the scheme of things. When a stubborn Pharaoh refuses to “let the people go,” God enters into the situation and sends ten plagues, the last of which is especially convincing to royal recalcitrance (Exodus 7-12). When the Israelites are battling the Amorites, God alters the course of nature, and the sun does not set so that the Israelites can have the victory (Joshua 10:12-13). When Good Friday occurs (though God could have prevented it in the first place in this theological schematic), God intervenes, and Sunday morning awakens to resurrection.
But where was such divine intervention into the Holocaust? In the bubonic plague? In the killing of Ukrainians by Russians and of Russians by Ukrainians? In the genocide in Rwanda by Hutus mutilating Tutsis and moderate Hutus? In the murder of civilians by Hamas and by Israelis in Gaza?
What happened to divine goodness if God had the power to intercede, but elected not to do so? Where is divine love if God either caused—or -permitted—tragic events to occur? How is the love of God shown in a suicide if God had the power to interject God’s preference that this should and would not occur.
Theologian Jürgen Moltmann makes the point that potentia absoluta has characterized the “picture” we have of God especially since the Reformation.[3] God had/has the “absolute power” to do whatever God elects. Thus, all is under divine control. In fact, this notion of God’s unlimited power became the most notable of divine characteristics. For God to be God, God had to be God the Almighty (“almighty” in the sense of “omnipotent”).
By contrast, Scripture seems to point to God’s love as the prime divine characteristic. Colossians 1 proclaims that “Christ is the image of the invisible God…in him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (verses 15, 19). The most often quoted New Testament passage declares, “For God so loved the world that God sent God’s only Son” (John 3:16). And I John states that “God is love” (4:8, 16).
Thomas Jay Oord coined the word “amipotence” as a substitute for “omnipotence” as the dominant feature of God’s nature.[4] Therefore, divine love comes before divine power. Christian theology, to be Christian, necessarily looks at God through the person and ministry of Jesus. The Gospel accounts describe Jesus as the Son of God born in weakness in a manger, inclusive of marginalized persons such as women, tax collectors, and Samaritans—in short, the ostracized and excluded of his society and his time. Through love, Jesus sacrificed for others (“Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” —John 15:13).
Of course, while this is a disassociation from the most recent, traditional pattern of thinking about God by emphasizing divine omnipotence, it seems more in-line with the dominant characteristic of God in the Bible as love and with the central figure, Jesus of Nazareth, who loves without hesitation and without restriction and debarment.
Human experience understands human love in its strength and commitment and resilience, its willingness to give and to sacrifice. Of course, humans cannot fully speak of God in merely human terms: There cannot be a 1:1 unilateral relationship in our language because God is God, and human expression cannot exhaust or totally encompass the reality and otherness of God. However, humans can speak of God using symbolic language. In symbolic or analogical language, this means that God’s love is somewhat like human love. So, we can cautiously and creatively apply human concepts and understandings of love to God’s love.
Therefore, because in human love both parties are affected, we may assume that God is affected. And just as human love is responsive, we may conclude that God’s love is responsive. And just as human love does not set out to be unkind and cause harm, so God’s love means that God does not, cannot, intend unkind things to us nor coerce our compliance to God’s will. In this sense, God is limited by God’s very nature—God does not limit God’s self, God’s nature is just what it is (loving).
This means that, during every day and in each moment, God shares what God lovingly prefers for the world (God’s will). In each instant of our lives, God lures us toward what is best (most loving, most healthy, most moral, most beautiful, most beneficial) for us (and for others). Divine love penetrates every person, every situation, and everywhere.
God, of course, cannot guarantee that we will respond positively to those choices God has made for us and lured us for their consideration. It’s not that God could make things confirm to what God prefers and chooses not to do so. It’s that God’s activity is in providing the option, not in ensuring the outcome.
Therefore, God can genuinely “shed symbolic tears” because God identifies with the hard knocks of our life. How could God shed tears with us/for us if it had been God’s desire and God’s plan for us to suffer these?
As a result, my kidney stones were not caused by God. They were not permitted by God. Instead, God responded to my situation with divine love and divine presence. This sense of solidarity supported and encouraged me. And God’s amipotence drew-in family and friends to help take care of me. And for all of that, I am grateful.
Bio: Clifford Chalmers Cain is Harrod-C.S. Lewis Professor of Religious Studies Emeritus at Westminster College of Missouri. The holder of a doctorate in theology and a doctorate in science, Dr. Cain’s clergy ordination is recognized in three Protestant denominations. His most recent books deal with the conversation between theology and science and the intersection of religion and ecology.
OORD’S DRABBLE* RESPONSE
Cliff Cain uses his kidney stones to explore God‘s relationship to suffering. It’s a perfect way to explore the typical responses to evil. But Cliff uses his story to come to an atypical conclusion. He concludes that God does not have absolute power and cannot control. The amipotent God shares power with those God loves, and God loves everyone and everything. This uncontrolling God cannot guarantee that we respond positively to the power and choices God gives. But God responds to our suffering with love and presence, encouraging us and others to take a role in overcoming evil with good.
Note: For more on God’s uncontrolling love and therapy, see this essay.
* A drabble is an essay exactly 100 words in length.
[1]. “Trust and Obey,” John Sammis and Daniel B. Towner, 1887.
[2]. Morgan Lee, “Epidemic Tore Through John Calvin’s Geneva Five Times” (Christianity Today, April 17, 2020).
[3]. Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology (London, SCM, 1973/2001); Jan Muis, “Rethinking the Creative Power of God” (Pretoria, South Africa: HTS Theological Studies, Vol. 72, No. 4, 2016).
[4]. Thomas Jay Oord, The Death of Omnipotence and the Birth of Amipotence (Nampa, ID: SacraSage Press, 2023), 119-130.