There's a French film directed by Jaco Van Dormael, The Brand New Testament (Le tout nouveau testament) in which God appears as a bad-tempered, vindictive, sweary, unkempt middle-aged man who delights in finding new ways to torment human beings. The scene in which he sits at his computer making up new laws – dropped bread always falls jam side down, the other queue always moves faster – is killingly funny.
Not remotely funny is the case of Ian Paterson, convicted last week of 17 counts of wounding with intent and three counts of unlawful wounding involving 10 patients. Paterson was a surgeon who conducted breast operations. Many of them were unnecessary. Others were botched or ineffective and left his victims in permanent pain or with life-changing injuries. He lied to and manipulated patients and NHS managers failed to stop him. Health secretary Jeremy Hunt has promised an enquiry if the Tories are returned at the election; it's hard to see a Labour health secretary doing otherwise. Paterson was described as having a 'God complex' and 'playing God'.
We know, in context, exactly what that means. He assumed an absolute right over his patients' futures. He was free, he believed, to treat them however he wanted. The power of life and death was in his hands, and he used it, as far as we know, without pity or remorse.
This image of God as an uncaring manipulator of human destiny is as old as human history. Shakespeare's Earl of Gloucester says in King Lear: 'As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods; they kill us for their sport.' Thomas Hardy outraged Victorian England with the closing lines of Tess of the D'Urbervilles, saying of the death of his tragic heroine: '"Justice" was done, and the President of the Immortals (in Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess.' The reference is to the Greek tragedian, who also portrayed human beings as being the gods' playthings.
This sense of being the hapless victims of divine whimsy is built in to the human psyche. Things happen to us that we don't understand and can't control. We look for someone to blame. If it's God, or the gods, it's somehow more bearable.
At one level, this is true. If we can believe that God's purpose for us is ultimately to bless, it might help us cope with the bad things more easily. 'And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose,' Paul tells the Romans (8:28). It's a precious thought, and we believe it.
Where this goes wrong is when we make God the author of evil as well as good. There's a warped view of God's sovereignty that makes him responsible for everything that happens in the world. Your husband or child dies? God planned it. You lose your job? That's him too.
A video on The Gospel Coalition's website puts it like this: 'What does it mean to be sorrowful, yet always rejoicing? Must a father with a cancer diagnosis be glad he may not live to walk his daughter down the aisle? If God controls everything, it means he has ordained even our suffering. Should this doctrine comfort us or infuriate us?' Its answer is pretty clear from the piece's title: 'Why 'God Didn't Ordain That Tragedy' Is Terrible News'.
But it's the idea that God ordains this or that tragedy that's terrible news. It makes him like the deity in The Brand New Testament, gleefully thinking of new ways to plague us. All human beings can do in the face of tragedy is submit to God's righteous judgment; after all, he's God.
When we play up this theology we're allowing the world to present God as just the sort of uncaring, manipulative being assumed in that description of Ian Paterson, or in Lear or Tess. Free will is an illusion: what we really are is victims, and all we can do is learn to accept it – to be 'glad', as TGC's piece puts it.
There's another way of looking at tragedy, and another way of looking at God. He does not will people harm. His sovereignty does not mean he controls everything. That he chooses not to intervene to stop tragedy is undeniable, but that's a long way from saying he actively inflicts it.
And people are genuinely free. God does not have a God complex. He doesn't act to frustrate us or torment us. He allows us to act even when what we do is bad for us or other people. His involvement in our lives is loving, generous and grace-full. It is Jesus-like.
Somehow we've allowed the expression 'playing God' to become a negative one, used when someone interferes in the natural order of things and causes harm. But if we really played God, we would come alongside people in need, help them through their pain and help them to grow, not leave them broken under the irresistible power of divine wrath.
Follow Mark Woods on Twitter: @RevMarkWoods
