Salesian Literature

Chapter 7  :  We are to bow to, not pry into, the ways of God’s providence

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The human mind is too dull for overmuch delving into the why and wherefore of God’s will without becoming puzzled by problems, tying oneself into a thousand knots which it cannot unravel.

 

Our boldness is ever goading us into discovering why God gives more opportunities to some than to others; why he did not do in Tyre and Sidon, where they would have been turned to good account, the miracles done in Corozain and Bethsaida (cf. Mt. 11:21); why, after all, he inspires this man, rather than that one, to love him.

 

To nearly all our questions about the ways of providence in leading men to charity, to eternal salvation, the Holy Spirit has provided an answer to somewhere in the Scriptures.  Occasionally, all the same, he warns us against irreverence: God’s will claims our worship whatever it proposes, decrees, allows or prevents.  After all, he is the supreme, absolutely impartial judge, no call, then, for him to reveal his reasons – it is enough that he declares he has them.  If we are bound in charity to respect, to accept as impartial, the decisions of a supreme court composed of corruptible human judges – ignorant though we may be of the evidence – surely we ought to bow our heads in loving reverence to the impartiality of God’s supreme providence, infinitely just and good!

 

We can find the reason why God rejected the Jews – to take one example – in a thousand places in Scripture.  Anyone who quietly studies chapters 9, 10 and 11 of the epistle to the Romans will clearly see that the Jewish people’s rejection was no capricious decision of God’s will.  But it is not for the human mind to pry into God’s motives; ours only to reverence his decrees, lovingly wonder at their justice, their impartiality, and wonderingly love what is inscrutable, beyond our ken.  That is why the saintly apostle brought his long discussion to an end with the exclamation: How deep is the mine of God’s wisdom, of his knowledge: how inscrutable are his judgement, how undiscoverable his ways!  Who has ever understood the Lord’s thoughts, or been his counsellor? (Rom. 11:33-34).

 

In other words, God always acts wisely – form knowledge, from sure principles; but since we have not been consulted, since his judgements and intentions are infinitely beyond our grasp, we are to revere his decrees as being utterly impartial.  We are not to concern ourselves with why he made them; this he keeps to himself as his secret, to keep our minds in their place – reverent and humble.

 

We sometimes come across twins, one of whom robust and lusty, is baptized, while the other dies at birth before it can be reborn into eternal life; so one of them inherits heaven, but the other is dispossessed.  Why such dissimilar results from an identical birth?  We could say, of course, that God’s providence does not usually disturb the laws of nature: since one of the twins was too feeble to survive the hazards of delivery, and as God did not intervene to check the course of nature, it died before it could be baptized; the other, being stronger, lived.

 

A very sound answer, to be sure! But if we took St. Paul’s advice, we should waste no time over the problem, however good our solution, for God has many better ones in store for us in heaven.  “then,” says St. Augustine, “it will be a secret no longer, why this one was chosen rather than that, for the same purpose was at work in both cases; or why miracles were done where people were not going to find faith, instead of where others might have repented.”

 

Elsewhere, discussing the question, ‘Why does God leave one person in wickedness, and rescue another?’ – the same saint has this to say: “We cannot understand, nor have we any right to ask, why God saves this man, but not that one.  Enough to know that it is due to him we stand up at all; and that, if we fall, it is not his fault.”  And one more: “It is God’s secret, utterly beyond the natural capacity of the human mind – mine, at last!”

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