Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.
~Charlotte Joko Beck
Things Just Happen
Along the Way
“Everything happens for a reason.”
Sorry, I don’t buy that. But I think I understand why we say it and why we want it to be true: because the alternative is even more scary—that sometimes things just happen, and there’s no reason for it.
Christians and non-Christians alike buy into this cultural folk theology. I have been at the scene of a tragic, or unexpected death, being with the family as they are in shock and grieving, and it makes no difference whether they are religious, whether they are “spiritual” or not—they say the same thing to each other for comfort: Everything happens for a reason.
I find it interesting that the concept is comforting, even though we never know the reason. God is under no more compulsion to explain Himself to us than He was to Job. So, knowing that there is a reason, but never knowing the reason…is comforting?
Apparently it brings back a sense of order into the midst of chaos, shock, trauma. Those are the times when everything feels out of order, times when one’s world is collapsing in on itself. We don’t have a clue what the reason is, but we are sure that there must be one. Otherwise the world—my world!—is truly out of control, if things like this can “just happen.”
I’ve heard families guess at the reasons.
“It was just their time.” Again, order. Their appointed, scheduled time had come. “When it’s your time, it’s your time, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” The authority and the structure of order. The one that really bothers me, however, is: “I guess God needed him in heaven more than we needed him here.” For what, for cryin’ out loud?! Heaven is heaven—it is paradise, and there is no evil there. God is in full reign there. What on earth would God need that person for in Heaven? God needs help running the place, and this was just the guy?
I think meaning comes into play more than anything. A reason gives meaning, and if we are going to suffer great loss, such shock and trauma, there damn well better be meaning behind it! It better stand for something. It better have a purpose other than making me miserable. Even if it is a reason I will never know in this life, the fact that there is a reason means there is meaning in what I am going through. I think that it why we choose to believe that everything happens for a reason. Reason assures us that there is meaning—even if we never know the meaning, either.
“I know there must be a reason. If I just knew what it was I could accept it.” I’m not sure that is an answer, either. We humans seem to have a talent for arguing with God for our own wants. I think that if God did tell us the reason, we’d likely not accept it. Or, since God’s ways are so far beyond our ways, if God did explain it to us, it would be so far above our heads that we would not have a clue what in the world He is talking about. It would give no comfort whatsoever. “What does that mean?” I haven’t a clue. It is beyond me.
We live in a Fallen World where some things tragically just happen. That is part of the falleness of this world. Part of the tragedy of the fallen state—some things just happen. Tornadoes are not guided, they just touch down and wreck havoc. Illness and disease is a part of living in a Fallen World. So are accidents, and what do we say about accidents? They just happen, right? But I do have to admit, sometimes it does seem as though things are purposely piling up on me. I talked with a woman who, having just won her third bout with cancer, is now probably going to have a leg amputated. She wondered what it was she had done that was so bad that God was punishing her. When I told her that I didn’t thing that God was punishing her, but that we live in a Fallen World where this happens, she pursed her lips and gave me a very disagreeing stare. Is it possible that even believing in a reason like being punished by God is more preferable than “just happens?”
Don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying that nothing happens for a reason. I’m not saying that God does not at times allow things for His own reasons, or that God does not sometimes cause things. I believe in those, too. I’ve read too much of it in the Bible not to believe it. But I also believe that we live in a Universe that contains uncertainty, unpredictability, and chaos. I think some things—not all things—but some things just happen.
When things just happen for no reason, I think the meaning is found in what God does with it in our lives. I talked about this last time. It the process of God’s healing of our heart and emotions that gives meaning to what otherwise would be meaningless. This is why, every time I’m around the bed of a deceased patient, gathered with the family, and I pray the prayer of committal, I always pray for God to be very close to the family; for the family to cling to one another, and to cling to God. For it is God’s process work of healing that brings meaning.
Leviticus 14 tells us that if a house has mold in it, the owners of the house must clean the house thoroughly, and then send for—of all things—the priest. The priest? Why would one send for the priest? Because it is only the priest that could declare the house as being “clean.” The point is this: no matter now “holy,” righteous, moral, upright or religious a family is, even their house gets mold and becomes “religiously unclean.” Why? Because even the holiest of persons experience the “fallout” of living in a Fallen World.
Disease. Accidents. Heart attacks. Fires. Tornadoes. Floods. These things can and often do just happen, and they are part of the fallout of living in a Fallen World. Recently I was with a family who’s loved one suddenly coded and died. It took them ninety minutes to make it to the hospital from the small town they lived in. I heard the doctor tell the family that she had no idea why it happened. The patient’s heart surgery had gone textbook perfect, all of the tests and scans showed that his heart was working beautifully, that there was no reason to expect anything but a complete and total recovery. “Sometimes these things just happen,” she told them, “and there’s no apparent reason for it. I’m sorry.” I talked with the wife afterwards. She was in her 80’s, and had been one of the Lord’s servants since her teenage years. So had her husband. “My husband woke up in heaven this morning,” she told me with a smile and tears in her eyes, “and I don’t think he cares at all what the reason was. I’m going to miss him terribly, but I know the Lord is in here,” she pointed to her heart. “and He will help me through this.”
We’ve all heard of black holes, the great, destructive vacuum cleaners of space. When a black hole appears, it sucks in anything and everything that gets caught in its gravitational pull, and rips it apart to the molecular level. That, my friends, is destruction. What we don’t hear about are the white holes at the other end. This is the exhaust vent of these monstrous vacuum cleaners. Whatever is sucked in by at the end of the black hole, its energy is then spewed out of the other end—the white hole—and that energy is reclaimed and processed back into the life of the Universe. Nothing is wasted, since everything in the Universe is basically made up of energy. Even the table that this laptop is sitting on is really vibrating, living energy, even though it seems dead and inert.
I think that even that which “just happens,” that which had no meaning, is still made up of energy, and that energy has an effect on us. It can pull us in and destroy us emotionally and spiritually, like a black hole, and we can choose to never get over the tragedy, the loss. I heard of a woman who lived through the Holocaust, and never recovered from it, no matter how much her daughter told her that she needed to. She took the chaos, the negative energy, and absorbed it, and it destroyed her spirit little by little. She carried it in her heart and soul and let it destroy her.
God “brings us through to the other side” of tragedy, of meaningless suffering, of that which tears our worlds and hearts apart. The presence of God Himself IS meaning. God makes all things new. He takes the destructive energy of that which is happens to us, and through His Holy Spirit, transforms it. Darkness. Death. Destruction. Chaos. That energy is transformed by His Presence in us, and He gives meaning through the transformative process of healing and renewal.
Renewal. A powerful word. But He’s a powerful God.
About two decades ago, one of my seminary professors said something that has always stayed with me…
Nothing can separate us from the love of God.
Not even meaningless suffering.
Your Fellow Traveler,
~Steve
**Note: I’m leaving on vacation Thursday, and will be gone through the first week of July. I’m going to Indiana to see our daughter, who is expecting our first grandchild. On July 2nd, my wife’s birthday, we will find out the gender. And I will be performing the wedding of my daughter’s best childhood friend. It’s going to be a great time. So I won’t be posting again around July 12th.
As of today, this blog has had 1,355 page views. Wow. Apparently I don’t know who a lot of you readers are. But thanks for reading! I greatly appreciate it.
~Steve
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