when shit happens
October 30, 2007Just something that occupied my mind for a bit in light of the recent Glorietta tragedy, and after hearing an alarming story about (baranggay) election-related violence…
We often hear the phrase "everything happens for a reason" very often. It's one of the primary Christian beliefs that the higher being up above - in His infinite wisdom - has a plan. Often, we also hear the same people saying that man is the master of his own destiny… man has free will… nothing is written in stone… we can change our fate.
I just have trouble reconciling these two beliefs.
If everything happens for a reason and He has a plan, then how are we supposed to be masters of our own fate when there's already a plan? If it so happens that this plan conflicts with how we want our destiny/fate to play out, then how are we supposed to change "the plan" if nothing is written in stone?
What if something goes terribly wrong such that it shakes the very foundations of our lives: Are we supposed to believe that this is all part of His plan? Or do we resign ourselves to the belief that somewhere along the way, we did something wrong that caused this to happen? And in hindsight, if we did things differently, things would have worked out fine. (read: regret)
Or maybe we should only use the "God has a plan" belief for things beyond our control? If something goes wrong and you are accountable for it, then you did something wrong. However, if something goes wrong and you're not accountable for it, then God has a plan.
If that's the case… How convenient.
-Hyde
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In passage about the Tower of Siloam (Luke 13:1-9), Jesus tells us precisely bad things can happen simply arbitrarily. The Church also now recognizes that prayer isn’t really about changing God’s mind as it is a supplication to give us the grace for the acceptance of God’s Will, whatever it may be. So where’s God’s plan now? Do you want us to believe that it was in God’s plan to kill those people off? How would you explain to Job that God allowed his first family to be killed off because of a wager with the devil? That God planned it?
Free will is a really bad concept. It doesn’t exist as the magical free will that Jesuit philosophy would have us think. There have been experiments that show that we often act a split second BEFORE logical processing is done. Our actions are a causal chain. We may not be aware of all the factors but yes it’s a causal chain. It’s affected by history, experience, stimuli and the like. It has to be otherwise, it’d be random, which isn’t the case either.
So what do we have left? Blind faith. Oh well…
Posted by Kraelis at October 31, 2007, 8:09 pm