From time to time, I struggle with a conflict between what I want to believe and how I respond to situations. It was an issue when I lived in a neighbourhood that included a relatively high proportion of economically marginalized people, and this economic status too often was accompanied by behaviours I couldn't stomach. All that high-minded left-of-centre thinking didn't apply when I heard people screaming at their children in the middle of the night: I wasn't inspired to change the situation, I just wanted to move.
This week, I'm struggling with the notion of charity. Not the kind that I can write off on my taxes, but the much more difficult sort that requires me to not have a hard heart. It's not charity if it's easy, and I'm not all that good at the open hand/open heart thing.
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I hear a lot of this everything happens for a reason thing. I don't believe that. When I say that, it's not for a lack of thought behind the statement, it's the result of a lot of consideration of the notion.
To me, to believe that everything happens for a reason would be a statement of faith that can't be reconciled within me. If everything happens for a reason, it must follow that there is some underlying reason - either as a mechanistic universe, or a theistic one. Reason implies cause, as in causal relationship.
I'm not going to subscribe to a mechanistic conceptualization, so that leaves the theistic one. Now, my version of that, by definition, implies fairness. I can't separate the concept of a God with a capital G from justice and charity. Thus, to accept this version of God and to couple that with the statement "everything happens for a reason" means, quite simply, that I'm trusting that the notion of "and the last shall be first" will come to pass. It's a just world hypothesis - good things happen to good people, your sins will come to haunt you, pay the piper, put it however you will. So when something bad happens - and bad things happen all the time - there's a reason for it, you're building up your points or it's a necessary bad step to get to the good thing that will result from it.
That, alone, I could accept - if it's just me we're talking about. I'm in enviable circumstances, I was born in a time and place and into a family and economic circumstances that have never left me wanting for anything significant. I, and those who I am in daily contact with, am a very, very small minority on this planet. Suffering and injustice are real, and I for one can't justify much of what there is out there with a larger cosmic reason. The only conceivable way would be to extend the "everything happens for a reason" statement to an afterlife - either we come back as something better or worse depending on our actions in the next one, or the kingdom of heaven is ours if we suffer on earth.
Is that just a judeo-christian ideal, the notion of a just world? I don't think it is, I don't think the world is a fair place - I don't think there's an underlying design which emphasizes fairness. I have received far more than my share of the resources and opportunities on this planet, and most of the time, I take it as my due. As does the vast majority of the people who populate my world.
I can accept that ours is not to reason why, but I can't accept that there is a reason (of the sort of reason that is associated with "it's meant to be", not the kind of reason which refers to underlying cause) for the disparity between the rich and poor on a global scale. I don't accept that we live in a just world. I don't accept that we are so very important that all of these things that we meet in our lives have a greater purpose. I'm selfish, but my world is still heliocentric.
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Maybe it's a difference in interpreting the statement. To me, "everything happens for a reason" is backwards - you've got all of these disparate strands that are pre-programmed to go into a string, which becomes a woven fabric. Many points - the everything - converging onto one - the reason. I see it the other way around. The right now is the point, and from there, I can make a million choices, which will lead to different versions of me and different chain reactions of processes. At every point, I make more decisions. Not because of an underlying reason, and not because there is a clear choice that I need to make. Every event is an opportunity, but it is up to me what I make of it. I have limits, many of them not fair. Sometimes, luck favours me, other times it doesn't.
But most of the time, it is what it is. That's all it is.
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"For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?"
And here we come back to charity. Sometimes, there are situations where you can make choices about how you will act, and that can lead in different directions. It's all very well and good to see myself in a certain way when acting that way is easy and what I want anyway. It's a whole other ball game when it's not.