Is God a Choice?

In Bruce Feiler's book Abraham, a Mullah, when asked to explain how God could have allowed the murder of six million Jews, replied that the Jews must have done something terrible to deserve such punishment from God. Certain Muslim victims of the tsunami expressed a similar view, except that this time they were the ones God was punishing for sinfulness. So there we have one view of God: all knowing, all powerful, totally in control.  Aharon Appelfeld in a New York Times op ed piece, presents a different view of God's relationship to the same event. Appelfeld writes "A doctor, from a religious background, who survived [the holocaust], and who sailed to Israel with us in June 1946, told us,'We didn't see God when we expected him, so we have no choice but to do what he was supposed to do; we will protect the weak, we will love, we will comfort. From now on the responsibility is all ours.'" [Emphasis is mine.] So that is the choice: Where does responsibility lie: with us or with God? Are we partners or aren't we?

In the Organization Workshop on Creating Partnership, one of the relationships we study is that between TOP and BOTTOM - boss to subordinate, team leader to team member, parent to child, and so forth - and isn't the prototypical TOP/BOTTOM relationship  that between God and the rest of us?  In the big picture of life, just as it is in the smaller picture of organization, the question is: Who is in charge? Organizationally, this is what happens - not always, not for everyone, but with great regularity: We fall out of partnership; responsibility lies with TOP and not with BOTTOM; TOP is responsible for whatever happens - good or bad - and BOTTOM is not responsible. BOTTOM is the passive recipient of whatever TOP provides, blessings and curses. And when things go badly, there's always TOP to blame.

Appelfeld's doctor paints a different picture of the TOP/BOTTOM relationship, one that is  as empowering theologically as it is organizationally. He sees us as being in partnership with God; maybe, in fact, we are now the senior partners. From now on the responsibility is all ours. God may have created it all, but it is now up to us, as partners, to continue the creation.

So there is the choice: Either God is the boss, and our role is to submit to his authority; or we are partners in the ongoing creation. Since it's a choice, for me, whether theologically or organizationally, I choose partnership.

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[Dale Richardson]

Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you. St. Augustine