Does Everything Really Happen for a Reason?

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Writing in America Magazine, Eloise Blondiau describes author Kate Bowler’s view of life before being diagnosed with cancer.

“It was certainty, plain and simple, that God had a worthy plan for my life in which every setback would also be a step forward.”

After her diagnosis, Bowler appeared to give up on philosophizing, succumbing instead to a sort of desperation.

“Every day I prayed the same prayer: ‘God save me. Save me. Save me. Oh God, remember my baby boy. Remember my son and my husband before you return me to ashes. Before they walk this earth alone.’”

Her three questions, common to people going through personal crises: “Why?” “God, are you here?” and “What does this suffering mean?”

"God Needed an Angel"
What comments did she hear from others? “God is writing a better story;” or “God has a better plan;” or, perhaps worst of all, “God needed an angel,” Bowler adding, “because God is sadistic like that.” And, of course, “Everything happens for a reason.”

The implication of the last comment prompted Bowler to write a memoir called “Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved,” and to ask a fourth question: “If the faithful are rewarded with health, are the terminally ill not faithful enough?”

So, Bowler’s certainty about life gave way to her pleading “with a God of Maybe, who may or may not let me collect more years. It is a God I love, and a God that breaks my heart.”

Humans have always tried to answer Bowler’s questions. Why are some people seemingly untroubled, apparently having few difficulties, and I have cancer, or my marriage is breaking up, or I’ve lost my job or my child has died?

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Is God behind this? Have I done something to offend him/her? Should I have been a better person? How can I get on his/her good side so these horrible things don’t happen?

To be honest, we simply don’t know the answers to these questions. But many people believe the foundation of religion is finding a way to appease God. This was, after all, common in the Hebrew Bible and in the stories of the mythical gods of the ancient world.

We humans find it hard to accept that religion doesn’t offer certainty. God has intervened in human history, I believe, but he/she designed a world that is both beautiful and scary and one over which we have limited control and in which God seems reluctant to intervene. He/she hasn’t promised to make it different or even better. We’re expected to do that.

Many people look to the book of Job in the Hebrew Bible for answers to the problem of why bad things happen to good people.

The unknown author, who wrote the book between the 7^th and 5^th centuries before Christ, provides a story of a probably mythical Job who is faithful to God and has everything going for him before the rug is pulled out from under him, all part of God’s way of testing his faithfulness.

Punishment for Personal Wrongdoing?
Job’s friends say his plight is punishment for personal wrongdoing and he must repent. Job rejects this view and eventually appeals to God directly. But instead of explaining divine justice, God asks how Job can challenge a God who has done such wonders as creation of the world. Job apparently accepts this rebuke, and in an epilogue, God restores Job’s fortunes.

So does everything happen for a reason? Yes, but not necessarily in the sense that it’s all part of God’s plan. Our marriages break up because of bad choices or bad luck; we get sick and die because of disease or old age; we lose our jobs because of poor business decisions, poor performance or serendipity. That’s the way of the world.

You won’t find  a definitive answer about the question of human suffering in the Book of Job, but it is interesting, inspiring reading nonetheless. The message seems to be that we should trust God despite all our misgivings.

Religion, after all, doesn’t have all the answers, but it has many that matter the most.