Where is God…?
Tracy L. Tucker
Locating an amipotent God in the heartbreak of our suffering and our grief allows us to lean into a hopeful expression of faith.
Thanatology is the scientific study of death, and the practices associated with it, including the study of the needs of the terminally ill and their families. Whether an unanticipated death of one’s child or grandchild, or the more reasoned expectation of the passing of an elderly relative, death touches each one of us. And ultimately, we all approach our own final breath. As a Hospice Chaplain I am daily embedded in a cultural mix of feelings and concepts aimed at making sense of death. This also involves making sense of life in the experience of death. Those living in the shadow of terminal illness often find themselves living the tension of making sense of the senselessness of death. In this essay we will briefly explore how we might talk about an amipotent God in the face of death and dying.
Persons of faith often seem to draw a connection between the life and death cycle and their higher source or cause. This is also true for those not holding to a faith, who have inclinations about some higher source or cause. For simplicity’s sake, let’s call that source “God.” From where does the pain of death originate? For many people in grief the response to that question is tied to God. God, who is creator, is in control of all that is created with a grand organizational plan and knowledge of all outcomes. This assumption lies at the foundation of much of the existential pain of death. Ultimately, either directly, or by proxy God is behind the pain of loss.
Some would argue that God is not a direct cause, God has simply decided not to act. Or God could act, but God’s goal is at play, and a necessary outcome is a particular bad outcome for some persons. Some would say that God has a higher vision of creation and when that vision is frustrated, there are natural outcomes and even though God could change the outcomes, God’s commitment to free-will keeps God from “stepping in” to fix it.
And of course, there are yet those who are so committed to the idea of an all-knowing, all-powerful, image of God that all events, experiences, good or bad are the direct outcome of the divine will. God is thought to be at the helm of history and has driven, and will continue to drive, all things.
The words we speak disclose where we fall on the continuum of God’s direct involvement in history and all that happens. For example, we might consider platitudes employed when speaking of someone’s death, or even the process of dying.
“Well, God knows best.”
“I guess God needed an extra angel.”
“Everything happens for a reason.”
“We have to trust that God knows what he is doing.”
“God works all things together for good.”
“God never puts more on us than we can take.”[1]
Using statements like these seems to betray our own inability to experience the pain of loss. It’s as though we need a fall guy to establish as responsible for the loss we feel. Such statements, well-meaning as we intend for them to be, can lead to very unhelpful and unsatisfying conclusions about God and God’s role in death and dying. A grief-stricken parent might be justified with their expressed sentiment, “If God is the source of my pain, why would I want to have anything to do with him?” Perhaps our language speaks more about us than about God.
We need to question why we cling to the idea that God is all-knowing and all-powerful. Maybe we should start by recognizing the influence of the ancient Greeks upon today’s culture. Like many of the early Christians, our thinking is shaped by the teachings of Plato, Aristotle, and the Gnostics, among many others. Out of this philosophical pantheon came the notion that there must be an ultimate source of all knowledge. That source would be the highest form of authority, and there could be none other. Since Christian tradition recognizes God as that authority, then surely God has complete knowledge.
Unfortunately, it seems that the knowledge of God was assumed to include even knowledge outside of the ongoing stream of history. Simply, a God with perfect knowledge not only knows all that is, but also all that will be. Logically this is an extreme and unreasonable leap. Yet somehow this line of “reasoning” gained traction among many Christian thinkers across the ages. The tragedy of this line of thought is that when this understanding of God prevails, we are left with very limited options. God has knowledge of all that has been, is, and will be, and therefore is culpable or impotent.
Could a loving God who sees the pending pain or suffering of my loved one simply allow it to continue when that God could have prevented it? Is that really the action of a loving God? To suggest that God has a plan that includes suffering is to suggest the God could not come up with a better plan than that, or that suffering is not that significant to God. Again, this begs the question about God’s level of love. To suggest that God has included suffering to accomplish a greater good, is to suggest that the greater good only applies to the greater good of some while it includes the suffering of another. Again, this is not an act of divine love.
The other element of this Greek influence is the need for God to be all-powerful in the sense in which it is generally espoused. If God is all-powerful (omnipotent) in the general sense of being in control of all things and able to determine all outcomes, then why is there so much pain and evil present? Is God ambivalent? Has God lost interest or fallen asleep? To restate the statement above, a loving God who knows about the pain and the suffering and has the power to act, but chooses not to, is an evil God. Perhaps some lesser instances of evil may be more understandable. Meanwhile, events like the Holocaust, American lynchings of black men, women, and children, leave us with a heightened sense of dissatisfaction with the idea of a God who is all-powerful and yet declared to be loving. A teenaged girl who had knelt next to her lifeless mother will struggle with reconciling the preacher’s sermonizing about a God of love with a plan that included this tragic death. Shouldn’t there be a better way to talk about death, dying, and God?
Consider the idea of a God of amipotence—rather than omnipotence. Thomas Jay Oord developed this term as he was writing on his understanding of Jesus’ “kenosis” from the New Testament letter to the Philippians (Chapter 2). Oord reasoned that Jesus’ life reveals that God is self-giving as an aspect of God’s nature. Love is not a choice for God, it is God’s nature. “God must self-give and others-empower because it is God’s nature to do so.” Oord concludes that as a necessary result of God’s loving nature, God cannot be controlling. To control is not love. God necessarily loves all creatures and all things simply because it is God’s nature to love. Amipotence marks God’s love as the source of God’s power or God’s ability to influence people, animals, nature, the cosmos.
So, what might an amipotent God be like? Oord insists that the “God of uncontrolling love acts moment by moment and exerts causal influence upon all. God acts first as a cause in every moment of every creature’s life. Creatures feel this influence, even when they are not conscious of it. There is no time when, and no location where, God is not present and influencing.”[2] God does not, nor can God, singlehandedly prevent evil, yet God is at all times diligently exerting all possible influence on creatures and creation to move all toward the greatest possible sense of well-being. God is not a crystal ball or oracle who can be accessed to absolutely know the future, nor a cosmic generator from whom absolute power and energy might be harnessed.
How freeing it might feel for a grieving parent to recognize that in fact God did not have foreknowledge of the accident which brought upon their grief. That the carelessness of another person resulted in conditions and circumstances or experiences which were not part of a divinely orchestrated plan. God had a very different hope for their child’s future and, in fact, grieves with those parents at the loss of what otherwise might have been. God was involved doing all that could be done to influence all the actors in that tragic drama.
Rather than a disinterested third-party, an amipotent God can be understood as one who shares in the pain of loss. Where is God when I’m hurting? God is sitting in the pain, hurting as much or more than I am. My sense of loss is God’s sense of loss. The questions I have are already being felt, and perhaps asked, by the God who identifies with my pain.
In contrast to a deterministic God who knows for certain all evil and does not prevent it when that God could have, a God who is essentially loving and not controlling is one that can be understood as loving. People in grief, struggling with their pending death, or the death of someone they love, will likely find a greater sense of solace or perhaps even peace as they understand God to be a partner in their grief rather than the author of that grief.
Bio: Tracy L. Tucker serves as a Chaplain for Community Hospice in Jacksonville Florida, following 30 years in parish ministry. He earned his MDiv from Nazarene Theological Seminary and is completing his ThD through Northwind Theological Seminary. Tracy is a Board Certified Chaplain through the Association of Professional Chaplains with a Certification in Thanatology through the Association for Death Education and Counseling.
OORD’S DRABBLE* RESPONSE
Tracy Tucker explores the connection between God’s supposed omnipotence and the scientific understanding of death. With extensive experience alongside the dying and their loved ones, Tracy regularly hears common theological explanations—most of which fall short. These explanations often imply a God who is distant or unloving, largely because they assume divine omnipotence. Tracy challenges that assumption, inviting us to consider God as amipotent instead. Viewing God’s love as uncontrolling allows grieving individuals to see that God did not plan, cause, or even permit the death they face. Instead, God is present in suffering, working in all possible ways toward some sense of well-being.
For more on Oord’s view on why we should understand God’s power in light of love, see this article.
* A drabble is an essay exactly 100 words in length.
[1]. The Qur’an 2:286. In contrast to popular Christian thought his statement doesn’t appear in the Christian scriptures.
[2]. Thomas Jay Oord, Pluriform Love: An Open and Relational Theology of Well-Being (USA: SacraSage Press, 2022), 169.