Puppet Master or Chess Master

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As a child, I was enamored by the few puppet shows I witnessed. The little figurines on stage appeared so real, so alive, and their graceful movements and humorous interactions left me transfixed. Of course, what I didn’t see were the invisible strings and hidden puppeteer meticulously controlling the entire scene. Though some may disagree, the metaphor of God as “puppet master” describes well a deterministic, omni-controlling conception of divine sovereignty. From this perspective, God exercises hands-on, exhaustive control over every detail of our existence, including both good and evil, “pulling the strings” (so to speak) of his marionettes on the stage of life. They appear to be acting on their own, but in reality their every move is directed by the puppeteer hidden from view. In other words, no matter how “free” we may consider ourselves to be, the omnipotent God is behind the scenes exercising absolute, unimpeded, and unabated control over every thought, action, word and circumstance of life. Absolutely nothing escapes God’s preordained, predetermined script that serves as his blueprint. As composer and conductor of all that transpires from the beginning to the end and over everything between, God ordains and orchestrates life on planet earth and throughout the universe down to the minutest details.

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I believe that an alternative and more biblical metaphor of God’s sovereignty is that of chess master. From this perspective, the beauty of the Creator’s supreme sovereignty is not seen in “pulling the strings” in every detail of our lives, but rather in the profoundly and majestically wise way in which he is able to fulfill his ultimate purposes for humanity and the cosmos all the while respecting the self-determining choices of both angelic and human beings. We would consider a chess player to be insecure to the degree that he needed to meticulously control every move of his opponent in order to win the match. To the contrary, a chess master’s confidence is derived from his ability to anticipate the possible and probable moves his opponent may make as well as his own responses to these moves. As A. W. Tozer so succinctly states: "Man's will is free, because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so."[i]

Indeed, there are certain non-negotiable aspects of God’s redemptive plan that are determined beforehand and are irrevocable and unchangeable. The divine Chess Master, however, takes into account not only the certainties of his redemptive plan, but also the incalculable number of probabilities and possibilities that are inherent to the dignity of self-determining human beings created as the image of God. Just as a world-class chess master wins to the degree that he is able to foresee and then outmaneuver the moves made by his opponent, our all-wise God is able to foresee and outmaneuver every decision and action by free moral agents so as to inevitably and most assuredly accomplish his eternal purposes (Ephesians 1:11).

Does such a perspective of God’s greatness diminish God’s sovereign power? Not at all! It rather exalts his sovereignty and matchless wisdom.[ii] The accomplishment of God’s sovereign purposes is no longer entirely dependent on determinative decrees that meticulously mandate every detail of human existence. It is rather dynamically but most assuredly accomplished through morally free agents who have the choice to willingly submit to the good intentions of their loving Creator. Yet in making this choice, God has not only made suffering possible, but he has also made it meaningful. Because of freedom, I can choose to trust God to work in such a way that evil and the consequent suffering it entails result in good in my life and in the lives of others (Romans 8:28).

[i] A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy, 118 (emphasis mine).

[ii] During the first four centuries of church history, it was the heretics, not the orthodox defenders of the faith, who held tenaciously to a meticulously omni-controlling view of God’s sovereignty. See Roger T. Forster and V. Paul Marston, God’s Strategy in Human History (Wheaton: Tyndale House, 1974), 243-287.

This blog is adapted from my recent book entitled Life with a Limp: Discovering God's Purpose in Your Pain (VidePress, 2022).