Murphy's Law is Bad Theology

There's a phrase so common in our culture that it rolls off the tongue before I even notice I'm saying it. "Of course that happened." Sometimes with an eye roll or a huff or a whip of my arms, and sometimes just a laugh. What I'm really doing is invoking Murphy's Law, the idea that if something can go wrong, it will, and that the universe has it out for me personally.

The problem is that's terrible theology, and I have to stop.

When I say "of course this would happen" with that tone in my voice, I am, even if I don't mean to, lodging a complaint against the God of the universe. What that phrase assumes, when you pull it apart, is either that God is not in control of what just happened or that I am owed a better outcome than the one I received. It assumes a God who is absent or inattentive, and it assumes a version of me that deserves something. Both of those are wrong, and the second one is the more dangerous error. I am a broken sinner. My existence at all is grace, extended first to my parents and passed to me. Nothing is owed.

The Westminster Confession puts it plainly: God upholds, directs, disposes, and governs all creatures and all things. Not most things. Not the big things. All things. That includes the thing that just made me throw my arms up. There is no category of event that falls outside his governance, which means Murphy's Law is not just bad luck talk. It is a functional denial of providence.

Paul found a version of this error on full display in Athens, where people were so eager to cover every divine base that they'd built an altar to a god they didn't even know, because they couldn't conceive of a God actually sovereign over everything. The God Paul introduced them to doesn't have bad days, doesn't get surprised, and is not distributing outcomes any of us have earned.

So when things go sideways, the honest question is not "of course, right?" It's what does God intend here, and what does it cost me to receive it with open hands instead of a complaint? That posture doesn't come naturally. It has to be built, repeated, and chosen again every time the thing goes wrong that you didn't want to go wrong.

Gratefulness is not a feeling you wait on. It's the only honest response to the reality that the God who holds the seas back and knows the names of the stars is willing to hear from me at all.

Pastor James Ford at Remnant RVA preached a sharp and grounded message on Paul at Athens that pushed me toward this. Worth your time. Listen here.

Sheepdog