I’ll try to explain: It seems that there is an increasing tendency to try to understand why things happen. Well, okay, I know, there is nothing new in this. For ages people have struggled with trying to understand why things happen; it’s part of the human nature. Yet I do sense a different nuance; a different perspective: the motivation for asking this question lies not so much in a need to find a scape goat, to accuse someone, to express anger or guilt, shame, penance, or a deep need to understand the hurtful things that happen to us. Instead, it is more a reflection of a need to just understand why certain things happen in our lives, to understand what the purpose is for those things.
To exemplify, a lady was really struggling to understand why she had to be in a certain relationship. She was trying to understand what was the reason why God had her in that relationship; what she needed to learn in that abusive relationship she was just getting over.
So…I’m sitting on a chair next to her, and ask plainly: “…….., do you think that God wanted you enter and be in that abusive relationship so you can learn something?”
The response almost shocked me. The response I receive pointed to the one thing she felt she had learned during this toxic relationship: how to manage her finances. Yes, since she has always been bad at this, the only thing she could come up with in her need to understand the reason for this relationship was the one stated above.
I confess, it really made me sad. The immediate question that came to my mind was: Well, if God is responsible for bringing the worst situations in our lives, then what is left for the devil to do?
Now, please, don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that the respective relationship was from the devil. I don’t know that, and in fact, I don’t know many details of that relationship. As I conversed more, I realized that this person had quite a deterministic understanding of God and life; in other words, everything happens the way it does, because it was meant to happen so, so this explains a lot. Yet the same question challenges people who believe in free will, and free choice.
So this was just an example of how people seek to reason with the bad things that happen to them. God must have had a reason. God must have a purpose.
And I completely understand that, yes, ultimately nothing happens without God allowing it. But from here to almost forget that there is such thing as a devil, that there is such thing as an evil being existing outside of God, seeking constantly to bring distress and suffering, there is a great distance, I think.
And I wonder, on one hand: how many of the things that happen are perhaps neither from God, nor from the devil, but really just a consequence of our choices? We do have free choice, after all. So if, say, I make the choice to marry someone who turns out to be an abusive spouse, how fair is it that, as I suffer the consequences of my choice, I twist my mind around understanding what God wanted me learn from this relationship that maybe He never truly even wanted me in? Or, on the other hand, what if God’s reason is not always to straighten us, but simply to allow us to prove our character, our true and unwavering commitment to Him? Such as in the case of Job? Or Abraham? (I remember reading in Ellen White - Patriarchs and Prophets - I suppose, that God put Abraham to the hardest test ever endured by a human being – the sacrifice of his son, because Satan had accused Abraham of lack of faith when he lied to the pharaoh, so his character now needed to be proven).
It’s almost like we expect that if we have faith in God and place ourselves in His hands, everything should be good in our lives. But this cannot happen in a fallen world. In a fallen world, people hurt, and people are hurt. And no, it’s not fair (statement that is, in itself, a prof that we really know things are not supposed to be like this). Yet it happens to the innocent and perpetrator alike. I will not go into ethical discussion around this though. Not now at least.
All I wanted to say, I guess is that maybe there isn’t a reason to everything that happens in our lives we are supposed or expected to understand, even when we are loyal to God. How many Bible characters, people truly dedicated to God, suffered? Paul, James, John the Baptist, Elijah, Elisha, Jeremiah, John the Revelator, and the list can go on and on. Did God send suffering upon these? Well, truly, I don’t know, so I won’t say no. But neither can I say absolutely yes, nor agree with the idea that everything that happens is because God has a purpose to teach us something. Some things, I guess, are way beyond the possibility of our understanding at this time.
And neither am I saying that we must not ask the question, in whatever nuance it burdens our mind. We need to be who we are, and I know that God is big enough to deal with us. But I must say that I am becoming a bit sensitive to this need to understand the reason why every thing, big or little, happens. Or, in other words, the meaning behind everything (maybe just a different expression, which is/can be, in certain contexts, quite a synonym to purpose/reason). I am afraid that I have heard too many things that, I confess, I consider absurd to believe God brings our way for a purpose, and not in conformity with his character of love and mercy. And sometimes I think when people really need to find a reason, they will find one. I just don’t know if it is anywhere close to what God truly desired for them.
So, I know this is a tough topic, but I am growing a bit discouraged of hearing so much talk about how the bad things in our lives are God-given lessons (a really stunning thing to think of situations of rape, for example). Maybe, just maybe some of these times, the devil trembles in delight when his actions and doings are placed on God’s shoulders. Not to mention the risk of turning away from God when people disagree with the “lesson” or the “means to learn this lesson” God asked of them, of rebellion and backsliding. It happens, I am afraid, more often than I’d like to believe. And many times people turn away from God precisely following this path.
I do think that God brings the best out of anything though, even when He did not send that. I think He works with us and in us to keep our faith strong and to keep us close to Him even when, in our bad choices and hurtful situations sent by the devil, we put everything on His shoulders.
So, of course, I don’t have a solution. Nor have I found one clear in the Bible. But I just wanted to emphasize that not everything in our lives come from the same hand, even when we are truly committed to Him. Yet I am a firm believer that our commitment to Him is worth anything and everything. I believe that He suffers when we suffer; that He hurts with us in our pain, and that it pays to journey through this life towards an eternity when all we’ll wonder is why He chose to die for us rather than live without us…
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