Am I a closet deist? I think I might be just a little bit. I struggle greatly with the question of how much control God exerts over the world He created.

A big part of me thinks most of the time that God created the natural world and all its many, many systems and now just pretty much lets things take care of themselves.

For example, humans have sex to create more humans. Whether or not a woman conceives is up to one, mighty sperm to break through the walls of her egg. God created all these individual components of the reproductive systems of both the male and the female. Now they do their thing. Conception is totally left up to nature, as are the myriad of other systems in our world, and only rarely does God intervene to change the course of nature (in order words perform a miracle). Why should He have to step in? He set the world up long, long ago, and now it’s running just fine on cruise control.

That’s one theory of mine.

But what if things are not like this? Perhaps God always guides the one sperm He wants to penetrate the egg, having a plan all along to create this one particular individual that He will watch and cheer for from his or her birth, all the way through life, up until the moment of death.

If a lion attacks a group of zebras, snagging a young one in its powerful jaws, is that Providence? Or is it just nature? Or is nature Providence? Does God will that the lion catch the zebra, or is He sitting high up in the stands in Heaven watching all the action take place? He knows what will happen of course, but does it happen because of the excellent programming He put into His world so long ago, or at that moment does He point and say, “That lion will catch that zebra right there”?

Is the world running off of God’s huge program, Universe 1.0, or is God actively calling the shots at each moment for each person?

Perhaps I’m asking too many irrelevant questions. We will never know the answers this side of Heaven, and maybe not even then.