LOVE Can’t Do That
“God has it under control”
“It’s all part of God’s plan”
“God allowed it for a reason”
These phrases and many like them are in Christian songs and spoken regularly by Christians in an effort to comfort, assure, give hope or otherwise explain why bad things happen to good people. The belief that God is the supreme creator leads many to think that God is also the supreme controller. In this post, I want to slow down and consider the implications of these beliefs in relation to the foundational nature of God, which I believe is LOVE.
It is human nature to want to find a reason why things happen, because to believe that life is just a random sequence of events leaves us without hope in anything. Every person who has ever lived has experienced events that were seemingly meaningless and beyond their control. If only we could control all the circumstances in our lives, perhaps we could avoid pain and suffering.
When tragedy strikes, Christians often say that God could have stopped it but chose not to. If God is in control, then why doesn’t God stop such things from happening? What does that imply about God’s character?
Perhaps we are asking the wrong question. When we ask whether God could have stopped a tragedy, we assume that God’s role is to control the world and the people in it. But what if our understanding of God is mistaken? The God we imagine may be very different from the God whose essential nature is love. If asking “Could God stop, change, or heal this?” leads us in the wrong direction, what question should we be asking instead?
If you’ve read my book LOVE Theology or the posts in this blog you’ll know that my foundational belief is that God is LOVE. God’s love isn’t balanced against God’s justice as we imagine the blindfolded woman holding the scales of justice. No, love determines what justice looks like. God is not loving sometimes and executing justice at other times – God is always loving and always wanting our best. Love can do nothing else.
However, there are things that love cannot do. Love cannot force itself on others. Notice that I said ‘cannot‘ instead of ‘will not‘. Will not implies a chosen restriction, whereas cannot means the inability to do something.
God can’t rewind the past. No matter how powerful we believe God to be, we instinctively know that once an event has happened, nothing and no one, including God can undo that moment in time. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that there are things that God cannot do as we already know this from the Bible. For instance, God cannot lie (Titus 1:2), cannot deny Himself (2 Timothy 2:13), cannot be tempted by evil (James 1:13), and cannot act contrary to His own nature. These are not weaknesses but expressions of God’s character. Love, too, has characteristics that define what it can and cannot do.
God journeys with us, not ahead of us
Love by definition, does not exert control over others. Love is always self-giving. This is a very significant point that is often overlooked. I believe that God journeys with us, not ahead of us. We don’t follow a prescribed path with predestined outcomes, we walk into the future with God alongside us. As I’ve said elsewhere, “All paths may not lead to God, but God is on all paths.”
I like to use the analogy of a 2D map that shows all the possible paths to a given destination. We move from one side of the map to the other—from birth to death—choosing at each intersection which path to take. God can see all the possible routes and knows how to respond to every change in direction, but does not coerce us at each step, instead He walks with us. If our path was predestined, then we are locked into an outcome and there is no free will, however love gives us the freedom to choose each step.
If we believe that God won’t directly intervene then we are faced with the belief that God could have but chose not to. Followed to its logical conclusion, this belief means that God condones violence, sickness and disease. To make the point even sharper, when a mass-shooting occurs in a school, God could have stopped it, but chose not to save the children who were killed. This God deliberately and willingly does not stop evil from happening.
If we believe that God can’t directly intervene then we see a God who grieves with us in tragedy, one who shares our sorrow and feels our pain. God cannot override our free will because that is not how love works. It’s not that evil is more powerful than God, but that love honours our good and bad choices, our willingness to live for ourselves or for others.
You may have noticed that I used the word ‘directly’ in each of the two previous paragraphs in relation to God’s intervention. This was done deliberately to indicate that God has ways to intervene that are indirect, specifically through us, His creation. The Bible says that we are God’s hands and feet, we are God’s physical presence in this world. It is through our actions (or lack of) that God is able to move in our lives and the lives of all people. When we respond to love, we will act lovingly – this is how the Kingdom of Heaven is advanced on earth.
Advancing the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth
As I draw this post to a close, it is worth considering how God’s presence does influence creation. A loving God cannot be a remote deity who winds the clock of creation and sets it running with no further interaction. Love cannot stop loving, cannot stop giving, cannot stop engaging. The question that remains is how does a loving God continually influence and give to creation without coercion?
Genesis 1:27 says that humanity is made in God’s image; we are able to experience and share God’s essential character – Love. We move through this world as physical beings, carrying the free will to love God’s creation. To hold back from loving, is to limit the expansive increase of the Kingdom of Heaven. When we extend love to those around us, we express God’s love and shalom to His creation. In doing so, we fulfill our role as ambassadors of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Further reading
LOVE Theology: Seeing God Through the Lens of Love
by Brian Hight
God Can’t: How to Believe in God and Love after Tragedy, Abuse, and Other Evils
by Thomas Jay Oord
Faith should be lived out in practice
- LOVE Can’t Do That - 13 June 2026
- Even The Elect Will Be Deceived - 28 March 2026
- In Christ Daily – Day 3 - 2 November 2025