The Necessity Of Invention

Westminster Shorter Catechism Q7 asks:

Q. 7. What are the decrees of God?
A. The decrees of God are, his eternal purpose, according to the counsel of his will, whereby, for his own glory, he hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass

– Westminster Shorter Catechism

Basically this means that God does whatever comports with His own eternal purpose and doesn’t ask a mother’s son of us what we think. Never does He take advice, ask anyone how to be God or what to do with His power. He declares the end from the beginning, and then proceeds to bring the end about through a series of unlikely events that makes tracing the path of a butterfly look as predictable as a road trip across Kansas.

And to this doctrine we heartily ascent, and marvel at His sovereignty over all of life. That is, until He chooses to put us into a tight spot and all of those glorious doctrines that mist around in our head hit the cold light of reality, where they must condense into a few drops of faith. It can be unpleasant.

In the midst of these trials a Christian remembers what the Bible teaches, that God is sovereign over circumstances and His arm is not too short to ransom. By his grace, we will conquer the anxiety and walk forward in faith that God will deliver us, which may not always look like we intended, but trust that His plan for the outcome is in line with His eternal decree. In other words, we look for His provision in the moment as we wrestle with the trial.

However, we often forget that God is up to other things, things in the present that need to get ironed out so our posterity can have smoother sailing and the Kingdom of God can be inched forward one tiny victory at a time.

Just so we may have something to grasp on to, imagine a man who has been given the task of repairing a crumbling bridge abutment holding up a busy overpass spanning a large highway. And let us imagine the man is a Christian working for a dysfunctional municipality, where the organization tree looks more like a bramble patch, and the city coffers are thirsty for tax revenue. There is infighting amongst his team, incompetent subcontractors, and he reports to numerous middle managers who all avoid responsibility like a toddler avoids a bath.

This man has the immediate problem of navigating all politics, office gossip and slothful movements present in the city sectors. He prays that God will help him in this trial, trusts in His sovereignty over his situation, and acts in a manner worthy of the Gospel. He anticipates victory in his relationships with the end result of the bridge abutment being fixed and city life improved. At the end, regardless of what is holding up that bridge, he has grown in his trust in the Lord and God was glorified in the sight of his coworkers.

But there is another aspect at work here. Perhaps precisely because his environment is so toxic, or because the infrastructure of the bridge was so deplorably built, or the traffic patters so chaotic, he not only is personally sanctified by the experience but has a vision for how the project can be improved for posterity. Maybe he makes suggestions which reorganize the befuddled managers to function with solidarity, develops a new system for diverting traffic to mitigate congestion during construction, or, if sufficiently provoked, even an entirely new, more durable material for bridge construction. While persevering under trial which produced character and strengthens faith, he also is making life better in some small way for all those who come after him. 

And it isn’t obvious that this is not what God is doing all the time when we encounter various trials. The story of history is the story of the anticipation, revelation, expansion and consummation of the Kingdom of God, and the expansion happens one victory at a time, not only by beating back the spiritual forces of darkness, but also the technological, biological, agricultural, and plain old cultural improvement which comes through inventing new ways to love our neighbor.

What this means is when we are navigating trials in our lives, if we have our wits about us, we can think of not only how to press into the Lord in faith, but in what ways we can manhandle our environment to make the future of everyone better, smoother, and happier. You know, leaving it better than the way we found it.

Maybe God has decreed that a man’s father suffer from the slow senility of Alzheimer’s, and grow equally in his love for God as his hatred the dreaded disease, so much that he goes ahead and cures it. Necessity is the mother of invention, as Plato said. Perhaps in God’s eyes, trials are the necessity for invention.