Everything Happens For a Reason

Feb 13 2018

Everything happens for a reason, we are reassured.

As if a well-ordered universe

and our place in it

were preordained;

justice prevailing,

benevolent fate

unfolding according to plan.

Except when I think of central planning

the workers' paradise comes to mind,

the proletariat rewarded

with purges 
and bread-lines

and death camps.

In other words, be careful what you wish for.

Perhaps this belief begins

with accepting our current state

as the natural order of things,

a variation on the human conceit

we occupy the centre

and our lives have consequence.

And then continues

with making sense of ourselves

by constructing a narrative

from back to front.

Which is both our blessing and our curse,

that we are born story-tellers

who can't help but connect the dots,

as if the forks in the road

we somehow chose

were meant to take us

exactly here.

Because otherwise

a cold indifferent universe

would seem unbearable,

spending every second

at the mercy of dumb luck;

neither masters of our own fate

nor beneficiaries of providence.

But this, too, is in our nature;

the end of the line

of millions of years

of unlikely survivors,

all fiercely willed

to carry on.

So we persevere, regardless,

seeking the solace of faith

a personal God.

Even when we feel abandoned.

Even when the universe

is so large

we feel as close to guess-work

as sub-atomic particles

     . . . and just as hard to fathom.

Even when the good suffer

and the bad prosper

and dishonour too often prevails.

When posterity forgets

and meaning ultimately fails.

When the mystery of death

unsettles our need to know,

spinning our fabulous tales

and never relinquishing hope.

As you can clearly tell from this rather bleak poem, I'm a nihilist, a devout atheist, and a determined rationalist.

I'm terribly leery of philosophical poems like this. But sometimes, it feels satisfying just to get it down: that is, writing more for myself than any hypothetical reader.

This poem began as I was listening to Terry Gross interview Kate Bowler on NPR's Fresh Air. Here, from the transcript, is her introduction:

Here's a few of the things my guest Kate Bowler doesn't want to hear about living with her incurable cancer: everything happens for a reason ...God is writing a better story ...Heaven is your true home ...God needs another angel. It's not that she's lacking in faith. She just wants to avoid trite life lessons. Bowler is an associate professor of the history of Christianity in North America at Duke Divinity School. Her new memoir, Everything Happens For A Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved, is about how her faith has affected the way she deals with cancer and how her cancer has affected her faith.

I am impressed that even though she became more cynical about such simplistic formulations as “everything happens for a reason”, she still sustained her faith. Despite contracting incurable cancer (I originally wrote “terminal”, but then thought better of it, since we're all technically “terminal”) at the cruel age of 35. Despite what would appear to be betrayal by her God. And despite the apparent randomness and unfairness of her fate. I neither begrudge nor judge her faith: life is hard; whatever gets you through is fine with me. That is, as long as religion remains a personal matter. Private belief is one thing; theocracy another.

The rationalization that “everything happens for a reason” has always driven me crazy. Its essential solipsism, for one: that is, the vanity of an ordered universe with us at the centre; its imagining of a personal God who, while keeping the vastness of creation on track, micromanages and monitors our every thought and action. How ironic this is, when most religions preach the virtue of humility.

A corollary of “everything happens for a reason” is the delusion that prayers are answered: the survivor who attributes his good fortune to prayer, forgetting that the dead – who are no longer here to remind us -- also prayed; the survivor who credits his faith and God's mercy, while forgetting the disturbing implication that those who died must have therefore been insufficiently devout or somehow unworthy.

In my kind of theology, prayer wouldn't be about supplication, anyway; it would be about praise and gratitude.

Yes, even an atheist is grateful. And because he acknowledges the mystery without concocting easy answers, perhaps his gratitude is that much more profound: instead of positing a soul, he is awed by the vast improbability of consciousness; instead of a magic wand waving creation into being, he is challenged to contemplate the complexity and wonder of nature.

And because he needs neither the fear of God nor the reward of heaven to choose to lead a moral life, his morality seems somehow more pure. So good behaviour is not motivated by punishment or some quid pro quo. Rather, it's a matter of personal righteousness; of understanding the obligations of community and interdependence; and of being the kind of person who lives with that sort of integrity, whether anyone – either mortal or divine – is looking on or not. (I'll leave for another time the argument that, if seen through the lens of evolutionary biology, free will may in fact have very little to do with either ethical behaviour or our understanding of morality.)

OK, that's quite enough ranting about religion and defending atheism. Not that I wouldn't love the solace of belief. Nihilism can be freeing; but also demoralizing. And atheism can be lonely, and offers no consolation when you struggle. It would be nice not to see the universe as cold and indifferent, and ourselves as insignificant. It would be nice to imagine that there is some kind of enduring meaning, and a purpose to things. It would be nice to believe that a personal god accompanied me through life. But in the interest of intellectual rigour – something that for me is of the highest value – I cannot submit to a belief simply on faith, or simply because it feels good. So I will continue to reject the notion that “everything happens for a reason”. And while Kate Bowler and I both now agree about this, I guess we'll continue to respectfully disagree about the rest.