"Well, I can't figure out God"
About this Quote
A televangelist admitting bafflement about God lands like a glitch in the machine. Oral Roberts built an empire on certainty: faith as a broadcastable product, healing as a promise you could tune in for, divine will rendered legible through testimony and fundraising goals. So when he says, "Well, I can't figure out God", the power is in the smallness. It's colloquial, even a little weary. No thunder, no doctrinal scaffolding - just a shrug in the face of the infinite.
The intent reads as pastoral recalibration. Roberts isn't denying belief; he's managing expectations. In a religious marketplace where leaders are rewarded for confident answers, admitting confusion can function as a strategic honesty: it keeps the mystery intact, protects God from being reduced to a vending machine, and inoculates the preacher against failed outcomes ("Why didn't I get healed?") by placing the divine beyond human accounting.
The subtext is also self-defense. Roberts spent decades narrating causality between faith, giving, and blessing. This sentence quietly unties that knot. If God can't be figured out, then no one - not even the man with the microphone and the studio lights - can be held responsible for God's apparent inconsistencies.
Context matters: 20th-century American revivalism thrived on spectacle and certainty, but it also had to answer modern disillusionment, medical reality, and public scrutiny. A brief confession of unknowing becomes a pressure valve. It humanizes the brand while smuggling in a more traditional theology: God as mystery, not algorithm.
The intent reads as pastoral recalibration. Roberts isn't denying belief; he's managing expectations. In a religious marketplace where leaders are rewarded for confident answers, admitting confusion can function as a strategic honesty: it keeps the mystery intact, protects God from being reduced to a vending machine, and inoculates the preacher against failed outcomes ("Why didn't I get healed?") by placing the divine beyond human accounting.
The subtext is also self-defense. Roberts spent decades narrating causality between faith, giving, and blessing. This sentence quietly unties that knot. If God can't be figured out, then no one - not even the man with the microphone and the studio lights - can be held responsible for God's apparent inconsistencies.
Context matters: 20th-century American revivalism thrived on spectacle and certainty, but it also had to answer modern disillusionment, medical reality, and public scrutiny. A brief confession of unknowing becomes a pressure valve. It humanizes the brand while smuggling in a more traditional theology: God as mystery, not algorithm.
Quote Details
| Topic | God |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Roberts, Oral. (2026, January 16). Well, I can't figure out God. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/well-i-cant-figure-out-god-115679/
Chicago Style
Roberts, Oral. "Well, I can't figure out God." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/well-i-cant-figure-out-god-115679/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Well, I can't figure out God." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/well-i-cant-figure-out-god-115679/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.
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