I hate the phrase, "Everything happens for a reason." Somehow this overused phrase makes people
feel better about the fact that life is hard. But if you really stopped to
think about what it implies, it should make you feel even shittier than you
already did. If everything happens for a reason, if every horrible thing is
divinely ordained so that some good thing can happen, doesn’t that mean the God
we serve is a giant asshole in the sky just messing with your life? Can God make beauty from the ashes?
Absolutely. Can He speak to us in our valleys of despair? Often times He does.
Can Christ bring us peace beyond our pain and understanding? Yes. But that does not mean that the trials we go
through are purposed to bring us beauty, truth, and peace. God is almighty and can bring us out of bad
times in the most wonderful ways, but it does not mean the bad times had to be
ordained to receive the good.
If everything happens for a reason, then there should be a
reason babies die in their sleep, or in the arms of their parents moments after
birth.
If everything happens for a reason, then God ordains
marriages to break apart. Can there be
renewal and even prosperity after divorce? Yes, but God does not ordain
betrayal and divorce, that would simply go against His word.
If everything happens
for a reason then there is a reason for peoples' memories to be erased
by Alzheimer’s before they are even done making memories.
If everything happens for a reason, there is a reason that children die of cancer.
If everything happens for a reason, there has to be a plethora of reasons that this world is filled with vile monsters who prey
on children.
If everything happens for a reason there has to be a reason
a freak car accident kills 4 out of 5 members of a family.
There
would have to be a reason that teenagers and drug addicts accidentally get
pregnant and loving couples try continuously without success to conceive. There
would have to be a reason the courts aren't always right and innocents are imprisoned. There would
have to be a reason that evil sometimes prevails over righteousness. There
would have to be a real reason for people hurting people.
That’s the thing. The reason people hurt each other is
because we live in a fallen world. A beautiful, fallen, incredibly difficult to
understand world. God made us out of love; for love. To love Him. But real love
requires a choice and that choice requires free will and free will allows us to
be hurt by people.
Allows.
Not ordains.
God allows us to get hurt, because a world in which we can
get awfully, painfully, hurt, is a world where we can be hugely and wonderfully
loved. God does not force the hand of pain just so we can recover or learn a
lesson or even lean more fully on Him. That’s not love. God is not rooting for us to hurt each other
just so He can clean up the pieces. But He is there for us when we are on the
receiving end of that pain. God does not make a husband or wife hurt, betray,
and cheat on each other. He can try to
lead them back to truth, but He can’t force that either. Everything does not
happen for a reason. Sometimes people are shitty just because they are.
Sometimes babies die and sometimes life is incredibly unfair. There is no
reason for it.
But there is Jesus. Ready to hold you through it all. Ready to guide
you to abundant, peaceful pastures. Christ’s love is overwhelming, and answered
prayers for peace, strength, and a way out can take your breath away. But if He
could have spared us the pain, He would have. That’s why He took the pain of
the cross. Beauty can come from the
ashes of our pain. That’s how awesome our God is. But there is no comfort in
the false claim that horrible things happen for a reason.
Honestly, when
someone hears that my mother doesn't speak, that Alzheimer’s stole her voice
and her life and her family grieves for her in the same breathe that they
continue to care for her living body, the response everything happens for a
reason, isn't comforting. I cannot fathom a reason for this and we’re 6 years
in. I can’t even find a good lesson from this pain. I can find hope and peace
in Christ, but I would rather have found that hope and peace without having
to visit my mom in a nursing home. Platitudes, especially nonsensical ones, are
not comforting. In all honesty, one of the most comforting things I've heard,
is shit happens.
Because sometimes it does.
