In the past couple weeks, terrorists launched attacks in the Middle East killing hundreds, a deranged and hateful gunman shot and killed five police officers in Dallas not far from home, and a young man I barely knew, but who profoundly impacted me, passed away at a very early age. In the wake of tragedies like this, people, in an attempt to reassure themselves and others that our world is not governed by randomness, solemnly assert that “everything happens for a reason.” I have always found this phrase confusing and deeply troubling, especially in times of pain, especially now, but the comfort others have found in this phrase I have recently discovered in another, one that came to mind in what I consider to be a rare moment of clarity. See, at this point, I do not think that everything happens for a reason, but I do believe that there is are reasons in everything and, as you will see, there is quite a difference.
The phrase “everything happens for a reason” has two implications. The first is that there is a higher power - which I will from now on refer to as God – intentionally or systematically bringing about both beautiful and terrible events for particular purposes. And the second implication, which can only be understood if the context in which the phrase is uttered and the motivations and beliefs of those who utter it are taken into account, is that the purposes for which God brings about these events are ultimately good or just or right. It is in this second implication that people find comfort because it holds that tragedies do not occur in vain; that, for instance, the lives of the Dallas police officers were taken so that a certain good could come about, good that could not have been brought to the world if they hadn’t been killed.
The fact that the phrase states that everything happens for a reason is key to understanding the perspective I believe those who use the phrase have of God and of God’s purposes for bringing about tragedy. To them, God is administrative in that He strategically uses something bad to bring about something good, tit for tat, one for the other. Although some of these people arrogantly claim to know God’s reason for causing a tragedy, most believe that they cannot know the reason, but trust that God’s good is going to be brought about at some point in some manner or another. Either way, everyone who says this phrase and believes it appears to think that there is a singular reason for tragedy and that this singular reason is God’s alone as it is defined solely by His bringing about the good.
In my mind, the idea that God incites things like terrorist attacks, hate crimes, and overdoses to fulfill an agenda, even if that agenda is ultimately good in God’s eyes, is horrific, depressing and nonsensical. My rejection of this concept had lead me to reject God and even reject the idea of God in the past, but, since that time, I’ve realized that it is possible to find God in tragedies while still rejecting the notion that He is involved in their occurrence by adopting a more transcendent and less administrative perspective of God. Doing this has dramatically changed how I view and react to the tragedies I encounter in a wholly positive way.
I wholeheartedly believe that pain and suffering form and develop us much more than pleasure and happiness ever could. In times of struggle, we gain valuable insight about the world, others and, most often, ourselves. This insight governs our ever-changing perspectives of reality and leads us to decide what we want to be and how we want to be it. It is in this insight, this knowledge, and understanding that can only come from suffering, suffering that can only come from tragedy, where I believe God can be found. I do not think that God has any hand in the occurrence of terrorist attacks, shootings, diseases, or the any other tragedies for that matter, but I do think He resides in the lessons and meanings we find when faced with hardship and pain. I believe He is in the reasons we discover in these tragedies, reasons to change, reasons that grow and guide us. This is the same with the beautiful things that occur in our lives and the reasons we find in them as well.
And this is the point. Nothing happens for a reason, but there are reasons in everything. I would never wish for tragedy, but I wouldn’t be who I am today without it. What I have learned from my personal challenges and from the ones we all share as a society have molded the way I currently think and see the world. I can’t bring the victims of the terrorist attacks, the murdered police officers and the young man I spoke of earlier back to life, but I can find reasons in their passing. Reasons to empathize, to love, to try to understand, and to find and promote whatever good can come from what happened to them. I do not believe that God caused them to die, I do not believe there is any singular reason for each of the tragedies that took their lives, I believe that God is in the reasons, the reasons that are in everything.
