The Wonderful Inefficiency of Yahweh

What if we gave God a performance review? It’s a preposterous idea, I know. “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God,” writes Paul in Romans 11. “How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” Yes, but let’s suspend reality for a moment and say we sat him down to evaluate his work. How would he fair in our assessment?

It’s easy to assume we’d give him the highest of scores. There’s no doubt in our minds that he would walk out of our office having received a glowing recommendation for a promotion (whatever that might be!) and a raise (not that he needs the money!). But would he really, though? Probably not. Not because he wouldn’t deserve a corner office, but because we would likely evaluate him on all the wrong criteria.

It’s easier to scoff at God than we think. The written comments we’d leave on his review would sound more like 2 Peter 3 than we’d care to admit: “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” Let’s face it. Sometimes we’re left staring at our watches, wondering why it’s taken so many millennia for God to carry out one plan (even if it is a plan to save the world). And don’t even get us started on the plans we think God should be putting at the top of his list.

God’s Inefficiency at Work

Enter the Exodus. While there’s no better full-length dramatization of God’s redemptive power in the Old Testament, there’s also no better demonstration of God’s utter disregard for efficiency. We saw it just this past Sunday:

When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near. For God said, “Lest the people change their minds when they see war and return to Egypt.” But God led the people around by the way of the wilderness toward the Red Sea. And the people of Israel went up out of the land of Egypt equipped for battle.
-Exodus 13:17-18

God went out of his way to be inefficient. Why? It wasn’t for lack of a direct route. There was a “near” option to get them to safety. It wasn’t because they were ill-prepared. He made sure they were “equipped for battle.” And it certainly wasn’t because God couldn’t keep them physically safe. Their protection through the plagues was evidence enough that he could.

This divine detour was to prevent his people from slipping back into slavery. Fear of the Philistines would make Israel want to find safety somewhere. And even though Yahweh was leading the way as a raging tower of fire and smoke, Pharaoh’s military might was not only all-too familiar, but all-too attractive as an alternative refuge from the Philistine army. Going back to Egypt would be quick and easy.

Prone to Pragmatism

It’s tragic how quickly the flesh makes us forget the cruelty of former masters. Temptation dresses up every false god so that it can masquerade in our mind as a perfectly functional savior. In the very next chapter of Exodus, God’s people start grumbling when they realize they’re in a pinch: 

Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.
-Exodus 14:11-12

Just like us today, God’s people then were prone to pragmatism. “Just do what works.” But when we assess life by looking for the quickest solution to the most immediate problem at hand, our love for expediency can lead us running into the arms of anything other than the one true God. It might be efficient, but trading potential slavery to one false god for definite slavery to another doesn’t score very high marks - at least when freedom in Christ is already ours, and becoming like Christ is our goal.

Missing What We Can’t See

God isn’t always efficient when working towards our Christlikeness, but he is absolutely effective. In Exodus 13, God’s lack of efficiency is out of an abundance of love. It’s a form of parental protection from what he knows his kids can’t handle. When they’re later left wandering in the wilderness for 40 years because of sin, it’s a form of fatherly discipline to fashion the hearts of his people. We could look back at Joseph’s years of suffering, forward to Israel’s exile into Babylon, or in the four centuries of silence between testaments and find that in every instance of waiting, God was working in what wasn’t seen to produce in his people an incomparable, eternal weight of glory.

We scoff at God when we second-guess his strategies:

• “Where is the promise of ___?”

• “It would have been better for us to ___ than to follow him here.”

• “Why hasn’t he made this person realize ___ yet?”

• “I’m doing my part to ___, but God’s not been showing up.”

• “Did God bring me to ___ just for ___ to happen?”

• “If only God would ___, then I could do ___.”

We’re welcome to wonder aloud to the Lord. But it’s one thing to wonder what God’s working on, and another to wonder why he never showed up for work in the first place. Our questions take an accusatory turn when they’re rising off the mental pages of a divine performance review that we’ve framed entirely around the wrong criteria. So what are we missing?

A Greater Work

“Do not overlook this one fact, beloved,” Peter writes in response to future scoffers, “that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” What we perceive as a million inefficiencies in the way Yahweh goes about his otherwise wonderful work are actually his chosen methods for maximizing his greatest work: salvation and sanctification that span space and time. And that’s a kind of work that we can’t always see.

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
-2 Corinthians 4:16-18

God works on his own time to produce what lasts for all time. Inefficiency isn’t the enemy of ministry. Waiting isn’t wasteful. Slowness isn’t stagnant. The Lord is always at work in ways unseen to produce what only he can. That doesn’t mean we’re not left wondering what he’s up to in the midst of ordinary life or extraordinary trials sometimes. But we can always be assured that he is working - and that he will finish what he started. “And I am sure of this,” Paul writes to the Philippians, “that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”

A Greater Worship

God’s inefficiencies may not always make sense, but they are wonderfully effective. May we trust his judgments more than our own. May we follow him even when it doesn’t feel pragmatic. And may our wondering lead us not to scoffing, but to an even greater sense of worship.

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

“For who has known the mind of the Lord,
    or who has been his counselor?”
“Or who has given a gift to him
    that he might be repaid?”

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
-Romans 11:33-36