It is not rare or unusual to hear the statement, “Everything happens for a reason.” We might hear it or use it in response to a difficult situation like a job loss. On the surface, it is a simple statement, but not so simple if considered more carefully. What do we mean when we use it?
Everybody agrees that people need to be comforted, especially in difficulty. People need security. People need hope. Yes, to avoid despair, we need a positive outlook on tomorrow in the midst of trials today. “Everything happens for a reason,” can be an attempt at offering hope. But is it true, do we believe what we have implied? If not true, it is a delusion, a lie, a falsehood, and not really hopeful or helpful.
A sincere belief in something has no effect on its actual truth. Even sincerest belief, if not accurate, is just wishful thinking. Hope or reliance upon wishful thinking could be sadly misleading to someone in times of trouble. The litmus of a truth statement is simply its accuracy to reality. In other words, does the statement match reality? Believing in a village at the North Pole requires there be a village at the North Pole.
Let us return to the original statement, “Everything happens for a reason.” Firstly, it assumes a premise of an overarching reason, purpose or direction in everything. Built into this first assumption is a second assumption, namely that there is an intelligence which planned and purposed the reason. The third and also related assumption is a power to orchestrate events and situations to attain the “big” purpose. These three assumptions: intelligence, a plan and power to deliver the plan, is a partial description of God.
We will now look backwards in our thought process; begin with if there is no God. Without intelligence at the start, there cannot be a “big” reason or intention to life. Absent an intelligent designer, the world has come into existence without any direction or purpose. The existence or non-existence of God is fundamental to all that follows. There was only one beginning to life and the cosmos as we know it. One beginning, with only two distinctive possible mechanisms initiating the cosmos. It began with purpose or it began randomly. Intelligence verses blind and purposeless initiation of life. There is no middle ground to the beginning, only one event.
Let us consider a few common experiences about what we call life. Everyone wants and actually needs a purpose. Which came first, the purpose or our need for purpose? Can random result in such complementary entities? Next consider the “laws of nature,” from gravity to thermodynamics. Don’t laws suggest a lawmaker or designer at the beginning? Now consider DNA, is marvelous code and decoding mechanism. However, does not code require a code maker and a designer for the code reading apparatus? Morality is another example. Morality requires that some things actually be good and some things actually evil, not so with a random beginning. Random leaves only people with the loudest voice defining good. With only a random beginning, much of what we come to know and expect of life is unexplainable.
Our superficial thinking gives too much credit to random. We inadvertently expect it to be intelligent and have power to control. Careful thinking leads us to an involved intelligence, namely God.
We are rapidly approaching the Advent season. Historians would agree that Christ actually existed. The question is not his existence, but rather his divinity resulting in his resurrection. Despite the best efforts of the Roman Empire and the existing religious powers, his body was never found and his resurrection was never disproven. If everything happens for a reason, what was the reason for Jesus’s birth, crucifixion and resurrection? God does not waste events of life. 2000 years later we still recount the event of Christ’s birth. Don’t miss the God behind our often-wishful musing: “Everything happens for a reason.”