Why I can’t believe everything happens for a reason…

Recently there has been a pile up of grief and sadness in my extended family. Marriages in crisis, impending deaths (yes, plural), relationships fractured, persons feeling lost, hurt, isolated, strained, etc. Being who I am, I am simultaneously a member of the family and the pastor for the family. To me, it’s no different than the lawyer in the family who gives legal counsel for free or the nurse in the family who listens, pokes, and prods to see if someone really needs to go to the doctor. I am a pastor and I might as well put my training to good use whenever and wherever I can, especially for the persons I love most.

So here we are, walking through this valley of the shadow of death (see Psalm 23), and I’m having deep conversations with loved ones – on the phone, in person, via text message and Facebook and e-mail. One of these beloved family members talks about how he deals with all of this is because he knows everything happens for a reason. He shares his experience of another family member who should have died a few times, but didn’t, and here we all are today.

I understand where he’s coming from, but I can’t agree. There are many days when I would like the world to be straight-forward, trusting that God’s purposes are being worked out according to God’s plan. But I just can’t. So I’ll write here, with a little more context, what I shared with my family member.

I just can’t believe that everything happens for a reason. Out of my experience, in my line of work, I get to walk alongside pain and death because those are often the places where people remember they need God the most. So I’ve seen the family that has nearly nothing because the system is broken. I’ve seen the children who have lost their parents because someone else chose to drink and drive. I’ve seen the baby who dies for no known reason. I’ve seen the child, parent, grandparent with cancer. And I can’t – don’t – WON’T believe that this is what God had in mind.

I believe God had in mind an idyllic paradise, something like what’s written in Genesis, a garden where we walked with God and talked with God, where the food was so bountiful that you just had to reach out your hand to take it, and we all lived in harmony – the people and the animals and the earth.

But I also believe that God gave us a generous portion of the imago Dei, and for me that looks like creativity and free will. So we used our free will, we made choices and screwed it up (sorry for not being gentler with that), and now here we all are – daughters and sons many generations removed dealing with the great snowball of corporate sin – the bad decisions and the hurtful actions and all the greater evils of leaving the right things left undone. So no one starts at 0 in life when it comes to good and evil; we all start in negative numbers because we all own this evil that is.

But I also believe that God is working mightily to bring about God’s purpose for creation. I don’t know why God created all this; I only know that the God I come to know through the Spirit as I read scripture is a God who will bear all kinds of pain to be in relationship with us. Jesus tells a story, a parable, about a father who forgives his sons who do all kinds of stupid stuff – one squandering his inheritance and distancing himself from his family, the other failing to really be in relationship even when he’s at home and then refusing to forgive his brother (see Luke 15). The father in the story runs to his son. He runs, rejoicing that there is the opportunity to be in relationship, to love one another again.

So God bears with us in our decision-making, even when it is obviously not what God would want for us. It’s like when my son decides to run full speed down the driveway and I hold my breath, hoping he doesn’t fall and split his lip or worse. I imagine God watching all of creation with bated breath, wanting to reach out to steady us, but at times holding back, knowing that we are created imago Dei, we have to make our own choices, our own mistakes, so that we can enter into the love of God of our own free will. That is how it means something.

And when we line up our lives with God’s hope for our lives, it doesn’t mean there won’t be pain and suffering. As Westley says in The Princess Bride, “Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” Even as good and faithful people, we are still going to be impacted by other people’s bad choices. We get to deal with that, too. But for us, as persons who believe in the love and grace of God through Jesus Christ and stand in the power of the Holy Spirit, we are those who are built on a solid foundation (see Luke 6). The winds come and howl about our ears, the rains come and we sway with the mighty current, the earth trembles and shakes everything we’ve built our life upon, but this one thing, this one relationship, can endure and never disappoint.

I feel all of this because I’m in the boat with my family, too. Even as I struggle to stand apart just a little bit, offering a listening ear, a loving heart, and very little advice, I feel every bit of it. And it’s so much harder, dearer, and awe-full because it is my own family. I tremble, shake, and cry, but keep leaning on the grace of God. While I don’t believe everything happens for a reason, I know God will make the best of it all, working with creation, with each and every one of us, until we are reconciled and made new (see Revelation 21:5). Glory be to God.

The Way Death Comes

Last Thursday I attended a conference clergywomen’s lunch. We were asked to break into small groups to discuss how we were observing a holy Lent and what our churches were doing to do the same, especially any neat ideas or innovations. Well, I can tell you the first is a giant fail for me this year. I shared that with the group with the offhand remark that Ash Wednesday is probably my least favorite day of the Christian year, except maybe Good Friday.

My clergy sisters seemed shocked. “Really? Why?” was the general follow-up. I don’t know. Who wants to be reminded of their mortality? And who really wants to walk to the cross? I know why we do it, I know it’s healthy, but I don’t have to like it.

I was surprised that my sentiments were so unusual. Do some people really love these holy days of remembering death? Maybe I was younger than usual when I realized the reality of mortality. I remember lying awake in bed as the shadows crept around the room, feeling utterly small and alone, knowing that one day my heart would stop, my breath would cease, and something of what it was to be me would no longer exist. That’s a scary thought for a child, and some of that remembered fear colors my thoughts on it even now.

Most of the time you don’t know it’s coming. Death, that is. Well, sure you know that it comes to everyone, but most of the time, it’s the last thing on my mind. At the Large Church Initiative in January, Mike Slaughter, pastor of Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church near Dayton, Ohio, said that he always tries to pretend that he has one year left to live and then live into the boldness that inspires. And that sounds good to me, on the surface, but if I really knew I only had a year to live, I think I’d be depressed for a good long while. I’d probably become rather me-focused, seeing as how I was the one who was going to die. But maybe not.

Recently I logged onto Caring Bridge, a great website that helps those with a medical issue keep friends and family updated without the continual barrage of phone calls. While I was there to read a church member’s page as he battles another round of leukemia, as I logged in, I was brought to my home page. Listed there was my page as well as the pages I’ve visited. My page is the one I created for my grandmother a little over 2 years ago. And because I’m a masochist, I guess, I clicked on the link and read it in chronological order.

My eyes teared up as I realized how deeply we didn’t know what we were in for. My grandmother, who had suffered for a long time with Alzheimer’s, had gone in to figure out what was going on with her stomach. I remember being frustrated since she couldn’t help us with this diagnosis – the cruel overarching disease prevented her from telling us simple details like where it hurt, when it had started, what the pains were like, did they come and go. So her family had to make their best guesses with medical advice.

We thought she was doing better after surgery. She was moved into a nursing home, set up with rehab exercises. I read my reassuring tone as I talk about a scrapbook project she is working on with a therapist. And then the next few entries detail the quick decline as one surgery led to another to repair things that had gone wrong. In a matter of days, she was gone.

My mother said afterward that if she had known what the eventual outcome would be, she wouldn’t have put my grandmother through so much. But there was no way for us to know. Death comes like that sometimes. It walks alongside of us, content to stay at arm’s length, until it is our turn. Sometimes it brushes across our shoulder by mistake and we shudder at the near miss, if we realize it. Or it claims someone dear to us and we cry out in distress.

I believe in God, but many times I wonder at the Christian doctrine of providence (see the post More Questions than Answers). Some people use it to say that if God’s protective hand is on you, no harm will come. Really?! Surely God did not abandon the early Christian martyrs or those who still die for their faith today. Some people say that a natural disaster or an illness is the fault of those afflicted because of their sinfulness. Really?! It couldn’t possibly be because we rape and ravage the earth such that paradise is showing the scars.

But I also know what it is to huddle in the bathroom, my arms around my infant son, as the sirens wail the warning that death is approaching from the clouds. And I prayed. O God, did I pray. I bargained and whispered and cried. But I don’t think that my prayers spared me or that God chose to turn the storm aside from my home. I just think it happened to work out that way. As I preached last week, God limits God’s own self for the sake of the free will and creativity of humanity, despite our proclivity for evil. While I’m still struggling with the story of Noah and the flood, I can see it more clearly in Jesus. God put limits on God’s self to show us the way, not force us.

Yesterday morning, a clergy sister and I discussed a church member’s passing. It was unusual in that he was very conscious just before it happened. She shared the gift it was to her to be able to ask him, “Are you at peace?” and offer any pastoral counsel he might desire. I thought about the funeral I led a little over a week ago, how I got to know the family and be alongside of them in a hard time, but how I felt guilty that the service lasted only around 30 minutes. Shouldn’t it take more time to honor a life? I know the family chose not to have much music and not share witnesses, since the grief was so fresh, but I felt that it was so little to offer. They hadn’t seen death coming, since she went into the hospital for one thing and was on her way to rehab before coming home. But death kept pace with her and claimed her from our sight.

I don’t like Ash Wednesday. I don’t like Good Friday. I don’t think I have to. But I take comfort, hope, and strength from the fact that God is alongside me, even as death counts my steps. And though my mortal strength shall fail and death shall try to claim me, I’ll sing on as I go to glory. Death, while not a welcome companion, has no final victory. That is God’s. Glory be.