Question: In light of recent events in the Africa and the Middle East, what causes God to intervene/not intervene (from a human perspective) in earthly affairs? Inquiring minds (like mine) are wondering.
Answer: Yeah, there’s a lot of difficult stuff going on right now that can be hard to wrap our minds around. Here’s how I’ve come to process such events (long post warning):
Greg Boyd has a principle called “semiautonomous power,” which he defines like this: “when God gives someone divine power, he genuinely gives it to them. To one degree or another, he places his divine power under the control of their own power. I refer to this as semiautonomous power because, while the power itself does not exist independently of God, the way it is used is, to one degree or another, up to the agent it is given to, not God.” (Boyd, Gregory A. The Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Interpreting the Old Testament’s Violent Portraits of God in Light of the Cross. Vol. 2, Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 2017, p. 1196. See all of chapter 25 for further thoughts.)
So Elijah, for example, can call down fire from heaven, which he uses to burn up three armies that want to talk to him. Clearly, this was the wrong use of that power because the Angel of the Lord eventually told him to just talk to them. Later, when the disciples want to mimic Elijah in this way, Jesus rebukes them for this kind of thinking. So it seems that Elijah takes Godly power and misuses/abuses it.
We could apply this to the spiritual realm as well. God delegated power and authority to some of the other spiritual beings of Heaven (Deut. 32:8). However, they took that power and authority and turned it against God (Dan. 10). They are still immortal beings who continue to carry their delegated power today, but, they will one day face judgment for it (Psalm 82) and lose their immortality (Matt. 25:41).
These are examples of spiritual/supernatural powers being misused. But let’s apply the same principle to our physical/natural powers being misused. God’s framework for earthly existence was to create humans, and then delegate to them power and authority over the whole earth. It’s not that God is “hands-off” regarding the earth, but the mission to cultivate it like he would is specifically a human mission. Since every human is made in the image of God, they have dominion over the earth, and each one chooses how to exercise their authority. We all know from experience that God does not just kill us when we use our authority the wrong way (or we’d all be dead), but he typically lets his framework continue forward.
But we do not get off the hook, for God is a just God. This is why the coming day of judgment is so important. In this age, God does not exert his omnipotence by stepping into every wrongful situation, but typically allows humans to walk in their power and authority. But in the age to come, he will exert his complete omnipotence and judge all people for how they used that power and authority in this age. No one is “off the hook.” Jesus speaks about the day of judgment as though there’s a bit of a spectrum as to how people will be judged for their sins. So even though great evil is happening right now, it’s not unaccounted for—God is paying attention. Repenting to Jesus now and getting our lives back on track with him and his goodness is our ticket to freedom.
Of course, God is not just waiting for the day of judgment to engage injustice. He does engage it now. I think his typical way of fighting injustice is to work through the humans who follow him. Christians are at the forefront of caring for the poor because they are a part of God’s rescue team for those who have faced injustice. Likewise, we prophetically rise against injustice where we see it and try to make things right, calling others with power and authority to recognize how they’re abusing it. In incredibly extreme circumstances, God may decide to exercise his omnipotence to bring an end to injustice (like the flood or Sodom and Gomorrah), but God does not like to judge as extremely as this, because it affects people it shouldn’t. For example, when he was going to bring about such judgment on Nineveh, he told Jonah he didn’t want to because thousands upon thousands of people living there didn’t deserve such judgment, despite how wicked the city was (Jonah 4:11).
But perhaps the most common way God engages in difficult scenarios in the here and now is in a mixture of spiritual and physical. For example, when a Christian stands up to injustice, they are often doing so out of the conviction and guidance of the Holy Spirit. Likewise, God may be having conversations in the background that we’re unaware of to orchestrate things to go a certain way on the earth. For example, in 1 Kings 22, God gave the angels the ultimatum that King Ahab needed to be ended. The angels then gave God some ideas as to how he could get rid of King Ahab. God implemented one of the angel’s ideas, which was then orchestrated through human effort on the earth when King Ahab was killed by a random arrow (the Bible’s point being that the arrow was not so random). To any given human, it would have looked like a random human thing, but God, angels, and humans all played a part in it. We don’t always get a peek behind the veil to know when things like this are happening, so we can’t build a systematic theology around it.
Alright, sorry for writing so much. Here’s the TLDR version:
1. God created the world and put power and authority over it in our hands. This causes good and bad things to happen, and we are not just vanquished by God when we choose bad.
2. When we choose to do bad, we are not getting away with it. If we manage to escape punishment in this life, we can be assured that we will face it in the next, unless we give ourselves to Jesus and truly repent right now and turn our lives around.
3. Within the framework God has created, he rarely exerts his omnipotence by stepping in and stopping something completely (though he can and does sometimes—I know stories where he supernaturally and omnipotently saved people). Instead, he typically works through his people or arranges things in the background that we can’t see.
All of this being said, theology is rarely loud enough to soothe us when raw pain is screaming at us. I do not mean to belittle what’s going on in the world right now or to belittle the great evil that people are enduring by trying to address such questions. Much of this I’m sure you’ve heard, but I hope the thoughts help nonetheless.
Jamin Bradley 
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