“Moral therapeutic deism.” After interviewing a large number of young adults who grew up in church, Christian Smith described their beliefs with those words. What did he mean? The consensus of the people surveyed was: God wants me to be good; God wants me to be happy; and God is nowhere around. The last part of it is key: where is God? What is he doing? Even those who acknowledge there is a God did not believe that he directly intervenes in human lives at all.
Isaiah had a different perspective. In a world with many idols and capricious deities, Isaiah observed that there is only One who is actually involved in the world. Myths and legends aside, Isaiah’s God, our God is the one who created the world, made us in his image, called Abraham to be a blessing to all people, parted the Red Sea and the Jordan River, empowered David to defeat Goliath and defeated the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel.
So when? When does God act and for whom? For those who wait for him. How well do you wait? Are you like me? I can be very impatient. The good news is our God acts on behalf of those who wait for him. It’s not just that he does something, but that he is inclined toward us. God wants to help us and to love us. He is on the move working for those who wait for him. So when you are tempted to take matters into your own hands: remember that He is working. As Paul put it in his letter to the Romans 8:28, “Since God is for us, who can be against us?” He literally quotes from Isaiah 64:4 in his letter to the Corinthians to say, “No one has seen the things God has prepared for those who love him, but he has revealed them to us by his Spirit.”