In reflecting on our Gospel passage last Sunday from Luke 13, I took issue with the popular thought that “everything happens for a reason”. It is true that some things, perhaps most, do happen because of an identifiable reason. For example, we know that people who smoke tend to get lung cancer, and that people who text while driving tend to get into auto accidents. But that is not always the case without fail. These things are probabilities rather than certainties.
Some things, bad things, happen without reason. Such was Jesus’ point in bringing up the victims of a tower that collapsed in ancient Jerusalem. While there might have been a wider cause, such as the greed or negligence of the builders, those who were killed did nothing to deserve their demise. They were innocent, and simply happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was all a horrible accident, and Jesus offers us no further explanation. We do not live in a tidy cause and effect world. The lottery of human experience and tragedy defy such easy answers.
Jesus confronts us with what we know to be true but seek to banish from our thoughts — the unthinkable can happen to any of us. None of us is truly safe, and the very uncertainty and capriciousness of life should give us both reason and opportunity to repent and cling to God more closely; “that among the chances and changes of this mortal life, our hearts may be surely fixed where true joys are to be found” as the Prayer Book prayer puts it.
We live in a fallen world, and because of that, some things happen for no reason at all. The issue I didn’t address Sunday is: Where is God in all of this? What do the chances and changes, the vicissitudes of life suggest to us about the power and will of God?
People have been trying to come to terms with why bad things happen to good people since the Book of Job. In it, Job demanded that God appear on the witness stand to explain the answer to “Why?’. When God does appear to Job, no answer is forthcoming. Instead, having heard from and seen God in the whirlwind, Job realizes he has bitten off a bit more than he is able to handle: “Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. .. My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42). When confronted with the presence and reality of God, Job learns that “Why?” might not be the most important question after all.
But what can we say? If God allows and does not explain the random hardships in life, where is God? My own response is that God is always at work redeeming. Not everything that happens happens for a reason, yet there is nothing that happens outside of God’s redemptive purpose and working. Several years ago I ran across a quote from Church Father Origen, talking about God’s providence. His is a different understanding of how God’s providence works, yet it seems appropriate for me to offer it to us again here:
“So we confess with a sure and immovable doctrine that he cares about mortal affairs and that nothing happens in heaven or earth apart from his providence. Note that we said nothing happens without his providence; not, without his will. For many things happen without his will; nothing without his providence. For providence is that by which he attends to and manages and makes provision for things that happen.”
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See you Sunday!
-Bill
