Everything happens for a reason?
After a productive day of writing, I arrived to our apartment to find a solemn mood among my wife and two sons. I had received a rejection letter from the Harvard Society of Fellows (where I was a Junior Fellow semi-finalist) in the morning mail. I didn’t realize how much I wanted that fellowship and losing it was hard to take. (I cried like a child who just lost his puppy.) Being considered was itself exciting but something inside me had become quite attached to the idea of spending three years doing independent scholarship in such a dreamy estate. Over the evening and this morning I have had heard several consolations and well-intended words of comfort. Despite the best of intentions, one of the consolations I found disturbing was this:
“Don’t worry Sam. Everything happens for a reason.”
It seems that many take this as a form of devotion or a practice of faith. People often expect that because I believe in God that I have an instant coping mechanism for dealing with disappointment and suffering in this maxim. But I do not. I find this rationalization to be a way to avoid, not embrace, the mystery of God. If we demand that God only act with (our) reasons, then, we can comfort ourselves with the confidence that is expressed in the hymn “Blessed Assurance.” And this hymn bothers me for the very same reasons.
Is God required to be reasonable? Who commands that requisite? Does God self-impose it or do I? What about Job or those who suffer by no fault of their own? Do we tell the homeless, the starving, and the Paschal Victim to not worry because, “everything happens for a reason”? Is the Passion rigged by the reasonability of the Resurrection or are they both quite strange and mysterious to us? No wonder so many find atheism as the only response to deep suffering.
The challenge I am faced with by not getting I want or what I feel that I deserve from hard work or alike is this: To simply accept that things are and God is. To accept, believe, and act with the the belief that God remains and is sufficient—even as I find little to no evidence of it. Does God truly suffice? Or does God require reasons to sustain its Godliness?
Did God determine my failure? Did I partly determine it through something I did or didn’t do? Or, is this just the sorrowful way of the world, the via dolorosa of being human? A way that is painful but pregnant with beauty and new life; or a reasonable way that makes sense and protects my heart from uncertainty?
In my own arrogant sorrow I am drawn away from some logical reason for it all and towards the absurd: the sufferings of those who suffer more in earnest than I do, with fewer reasons than I don’t have. To the Cross. To Kyle’s recent loss of a child. To my committee member who is in the hospital. To those whose burden is greater than mine. None greater than the Cross of Christ.
That Cross is not reasonable or rational, indeed it is absurd and ridiculous in the eyes of finite humanity. But my faith is pushed beyond the reasonable and into the excess that is Christ’s love that utterly saturates (and even causes?) my pain.
I am humbled by the sheer lack of reason or logic there is to be found. But hidden in that void of unreasonability is a God that is greater than any effort of the intellect or the imagination. It is the mysterious darkness that is God.
And this true God has no reasons that I could ever utter, understand, or imagine. This brings my heart great comfort and rest and real discomfort and restlessness.
Our hearts are restless… Let us not try to escape as peace is only possible within mystery.
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God is both truth and mystery. God is infinitely mysterious and infinitely reasonable. Jesus is the Word of the Father, i.e. the Logos, the Divine Mind that gives order to all things. God’s reasons are more often than not inaccessible to us.
In this post you seem to throw the baby out with the bathwater. (The baby being Truth). Sure, we can’t know everything. But there are lots of things we can know, and do know from reason and revelation (the latter exceeding the former).
I think I agree with the sentiment of your post: the phrase “everything happens for a reason” should not be thrown around lightly, because it’s not really true, at least as commonly understood. Some things happen for no reason because the world is Fallen. Saying that everything happens for a reason can add insult to injury to a person who has suffered great loss. God always has His reasons for His actions, but not everything that happens in the world is a direct result of God’s will.
We know this: God wills the good (which is Himself) for everyone. He has a reason for sustaining the universe in existence, even when awful things happen. So the phrase is true insofar as this means “everything happens for a reason”. I suppose therefore it is true to say that everything happens for the reason of freely given Love, which is the greatest Good from all-eternity. I do not think this is what is commonly expressed by the phrase “everything happens for a reason” – usually used to tell people to suck it up. So maybe we ought to be more precise, more careful than we are when we throw around such phrases, especially to those in the midst of great suffering.
Zach, thanks for the thoughtful reply. I suspect that I know less than you do about this, but I am sure that I am not giving up on Truth. I am simply admitting that Truth is mysterious to us. The Fact of things is a mystery, even more so is the Fact of God. The reasons that follow from such facts are not “reasonable” because they exceed reasonability, symbolism, and language, and enter into the realm of Truth that is excessive to our intellect. Admitting to and suffering mysteriously is a deep truth in itself, it speaks to the sufficiency of God’s excessively truthful and loving being.
Sam, I love the philosophical concept of alterity. I learned a miniscule amount of it here. This is my favorite site to read and express. John Irving wrote a book A Prayer for Owen Meaney that my daughter told me to read about 6 years ago. I am going to be 63 in about 4 months. I look back and see my roots of coal-miners on both sides of the family. I then see a genetic history of depression, fear and rage being the predisposed reaction of being born into this history due to being nothing and trying to become at least something to somebody. Graduating in ’65 with classmates expecting me to pitch for the Pirates after being invited to two camps gave me hope because I graduated 180 out of 220. Well, I was 5ft 8in tall and had an 80 mph fastball and no control. It is a long story and I will make it short. Every rejection and failure hurt deeply. Suicidal thoughts at 21. My friend punched me in the face to stop that. A friend in the military got me interested in psychology. Penn State followed along with Buddhism and a master’s degree. Social phobia prevented me from going further and getting positions that I knew I could do.
Working with children and adults diagnosed with mental illness at mental health clinics and making very little money while my wife and two children somehow managed to love me is a miracle in itself. I was shamed into running in ’78 by a friend and quit smoking. Private practice since ’91. God in 2005 and everything fell into place. He taught me to suffer and sent me rich and poor alike to see suffering from different angles. He taught me the language of suffering when he sent me those who have been told they have mental illness. He taught me their language of suffering.
As I look back with hindsight every failure and hurt was leading me to Him through Him and with Him even though I did not know it. He was freeing me of human understanding so I could search for the mystery of His Love and begin to see that the only thing I need is His Love.
Dying to self is painful and it never ceases as He seems to show me the darkness inside of me that needs His Light. I love the saints that He sends to my office and how they force me to give up my human understanding in order to understand their suffering in His language.
Is there a purpose? Only God knows.
I now see that everything was being used to form me in His image. I wish the process were complete. Yet, I don’t.
I just read recently what I have found to be a very wise response to the problematic of why bad things happen to good people. As humans, we simply do not have all that it takes to know why bad things happen. But, what we do find out is what kind of person we are during bad times. Bad times reflect us back to ourselves. While in the midst of difficulty, we may not be able, nor have the energy, to do much more than tough it out. But when we find ourselves in a quiet moment, difficulty gives us a moment through which we can consider what kind of person responded to the crisis, and is this the person we hope ourselves to be? I believe there is a learning curve in difficulty just like there is a learning curve in work, in loving and in life. Why should anyone expect that we somehow should know the RIGHT way to respond in crisis, difficulty or dissappointment? Life is about learning and growing and tough times are just one more example of this. I don’t think difficulty is a moral test, just another step on our journey to holiness, I would hope.
Good post, Sam.
Excellent post. The “everything happens for a reason” nonsense irritates me too. I hate hearing it at funerals. I heard it once at a funeral of a friend of a friend who had hung himself in his apartment. We don’t know the damage that hearing those words can do to a person. What kind of God do most north american Christians believe in, that they can say these things?
Behind the sentiment seems to be the idea that suffering isn’t authentically Christian. To a large extent, I think the public believes that. Sure, in the abstract people will remind themselves of martyrs and similar things, but it isn’t realized in the concrete. The other Sunday, we had a guest priest and he was frankly denigrating those that just show up. He basically claimed a proper Christian is a happy evangelist. In some cases though, just showing up is an incredible act of faith. To persist in suffering is an act of faith.
In some cases though, just showing up is an incredible act of faith.
Amen to that.
Fantastic post! I’ve been getting this statement so much & it bothers me. Really? God really wanted my little girl to suffer unjustly? I reject that. I DO believe, though, that God can always bring good out of evil situations “for those who love Him.” He is never limited by Evil. But Evil does exist & takes pleasure out of causing suffering & misery.
Some things happen for no reason because the world is Fallen.
I’d rather put it: Some things appear to happen for no reason because the world is fallen. Also, I’m very suspicious of the words like “reason” in a theological context.
As for coping mechanisms,… My favorite teacher reminds me to pray for others who experience pain like I do. When I don’t get a job interview, I pray for all the people looking for work. When someone I love dearly dies, I pray for all those left behind by death, abandonment or mental illness. I do not know why this helps me feel better, and my teacher has warned me that trying to “figure it out” undercuts the power of my prayer.
Sam, this is an almost beautiful remark: “Admitting to and suffering mysteriously is a deep truth in itself, it speaks to the sufficiency of God’s excessively truthful and loving being.” That’s some deep theology.
muennemann, I think that it is correct to say that some things happen for no reason because of Original Sin. Think of say, a tsunami. I don’t know what it means to say you are suspicious of the word reason in a theological context.
Some theologians say God does not understand sin, sin makes no sense to God. Sin is an aberration, a non-sense. There is no reason behind sin. Sin is in a sense the absence of reason. There is a reason for it: the Fall. But the Fall makes no sense and does not justify sin in any way. I think the meaning of Original Sin is that we are crazy, and we are crazy because we do things without reason, and things that are contrary to reason, and things that are totally meaningless.
I’m not sure this makes sense as a reply but I hope it may at least be food for thought.
Great post. It is totally unreasonable that God loves us but He does.
Zach:
“Reason” is a behavior which is a good and important part of being human. That does not, however, prove that “reasoning” takes center-stage in God’s action in this world as it does for educated modern people. It makes me squirm when I hear “reason” attributed to God as a way of explaining mysteries which (to me, at least) seem to go qualitatively deeper than my reason. Hence, my suspicion.
I agree that the Fall is a consequence of human reason but I think it’s a stretch to say that Bad Things wouldn’t happen absent the Fall. Following the example of the tsunami, I don’t believe the tsunami nor the human misery which followed occurred because of the Fall.
Taking this one step further, I don’t believe the “success” of the 9/11 attacks is attributable to our sinfulness. The fact that human beings would construct such attacks as 9/11, the Holocaust or nuclear weapons — that I attribute entirely to the Fall.
Reason would conclude that we are deserving of God’s love just as a child who runs into the street without knowing the danger deserves the love of the parent. It is the parent who must teach the child about danger when the child experiences danger. Punishment does not teach the child about danger because the second the parent punishes the child, that child becomes afraid of the parent. Suffering begins when the child is separated from the safety of the parent and the child begins to feel the fear of separation as an overwhelming sense of isolation and terror. In order to repair this damage to the developing child the parent must humble himself to show the child that he is willing to be the protector or savior the child needs rather than the narcissistic parent who demands that the child meet his neurotic desire for being special at the expense of the vulnerable and fearful child.
Humility requires that the great one protects the vulnerable one at the greatest price for the well-being of the vulnerable one.
muennemann, are you Catholic? In the previous two posts I was articulating the Catholic viewpoint on the sources and nature of evil. A Catholic cannot hold that Nature was imperfect before the Fall. Indeed, in the Catholic understanding, all of Nature was perfect before the Fall, including human beings. There was no suffering, no imperfection.
Additionally, I do not see where you see me articulating that “reasoning” takes center-stage in God’s action in this world. What do you mean by “center-stage”? I was trying to say is that the Mind of God is infinite Reason and Truth.
Ronald:
I like your God:human::parent:child analogy, and I agree with much of your comment, but I have difficulty accepting the first four words.
How can you support “Reason would conclude that…”? Reason is a human faculty which uses observation and intuition to derive “reasonable” expectations. My experience of love (and Love) goes far beyond reason or reasonableness, and my experience of God is infinitesimally limited by the span of my life. How can reason explain the infinite mystery of God’s Love?
In Darwinian terms, it makes sense that we humans would evolve an instinct to care for the genetic investment we make in our children. In legal terms, my wife and I were responsible for their welfare until they turned 18. In experiential terms, I love my children deeply, and do all I can to guide them and to protect them both from danger as well as from my own narcissistic impulses. That, however, doesn’t prove that my children “deserve” my love or God’s love. Love’s source is deeper than reason.
Zach: Sorry, I have been off-line. Carry on! I’ll get back to it tomorrow (I hope).
Muennemann, I used the word “reason” to speak the church’s language and reasoning that we can come to faith by “reason”. I hate the word reason because there is no “reasonableness” without constantly being open to the Mystery of Love. I did not return to the faith after 40 years of discarding it. I discarded it instinctively because I did not feel love being present in the mix of the reason of the faith being taught to me by unreasonable people. Now I know “they” thought and continue to think they have reason as a basis of their faith but without Love “reason” twists the faith into a massive hierarchical voluminous set of laws based on reason and rationalized as providing us with a loving direction. BS
That is my little rant about reason.
I left out something. I did not return to the faith because of reason or catechesis. I returned because of experiencing God’s Love.
Yes, Zack, I am a Catholic (sigh). Not a particularly orthodox Catholic, but that’s OK with me. I hope you’re OK with that as well.
When you wrote “Some theologians say God does not understand sin, sin makes no sense to God” I interpret “making sense” (or not) as reasoning behavior. I took this as an implied assertion that God’s behavior is “reasonable” and, therefore, that God seeks “reason” as opposed to the non-sense behavior of humans in a state of sin. I take this to imply (forgive me if I’ve put up a straw man here) that we can understand God and gain control over some of our sinfulness if we learn to reason as well as God does.
Coming back to Sam’s topic, I think it is human nature to look for ways to control painful experiences like rejection, even if all we have is the illusion of control. For some well-meaning people, “Everything happens for a reason” or the closely related “It is all part of God’s plan” may well be an attempt to help shore up Sam’s illusions so that he doesn’t threaten the well-wisher’s illusions as he comes to terms with his disappointment. The fact that Sam can say “simply accept that things are and God is” makes him pretty threatening in this regard.
How do you understand “before the Fall”? It it a historical time, a turning point in human development, a supernatural event, or something else?
Muennemann, I know you are asking Zack but I love the discussion on “The Fall”. If I remember correctly the word for knowledge used in the passage is da’at. One theologian related that word to sexual knowledge or it could just be knowledge. It could mean an awakening to human awareness of self and another within the context of primitive drives that can overwhelm the developing awareness of the human being as they begin to learn about the internal and external influences that stimulate how the physical brain will wire itself. Before self-awareness I think the old saying that ignorance is bliss applies. Suffering begins when desire becomes conscious as spiritual traditions teach. Desire and the frustration of fulfilling desire begins the suffering that influences gene expression and how we interpret internal and external stimuli.
The current interpretation of “The Fall” is, and I say this with certainty, a mistake and the result of an unconscious and unresolved history of shame and fear. This unconscious genetic history contaminates understanding and openness to love. It results in a sense of fear in human relationships and continues the history of desire and suffering.
You cried? For shame.