Disclaimer: The opinions below are solely my own, and are not meant to supplant the opinions of learned clergy, philosophers, litigation lawyers, or even, in fact, of my readers themselves. I'm just offering some food for thought.
I've been reading about the Great Plague lately (what can I say, I'm all up to date on People). Aside from the gripping accounts of suffering, what intrigues me most is how contemporaries tried to account for the disaster. They blamed themselves; they blamed the Jews; they blamed their God. They applied pitiful folk remedies; they fled; a few, noble or foolish, stayed to tend the sick.
Of all the varied and very human responses to that terrible time, the one that bothers (as opposed to outright horrifies) me the most, is the response that, "everything happens for a reason". Few expressions irritate me more. There are so many, many terrible things that have happened in our world--that are happening right now--for which it would be impossible to find a reason. Half of my family tree was wiped out in one fell swoop in 1939; did that happen for a reason? ("So that I can write about it" doesn't warrant a response.) Does suffering ever happen for a reason? (I mean, aside from childbirth, or camping out in K-ville for Duke-UNC tickets.) I know I'm in the realm of the philosophers and the clergy here, but I've got my own opinions, thank you very much (see above disclaimer). Was there a reason for the Great Plague? Some moral in terrified fathers abandoning their infected children, in mothers spewing gangrenous froth from rotting lungs? Was there some cosmic object lesson behind innocent Jews being hunted down and exterminated in a delirious fit of scapegoating? You see where I'm going with this.
There were causes, certainly. Overpopulation, abominable hygiene, an overabundance of supercharged Yersinia pestis, for starters. But a cause is not the same as a reason. To say that there was a reason for a disaster, great or small, may be comforting, in some twisted, Stockholm syndrome sort of way, but I think it misses the point. What I believe is that we create our meaning. I believe that it is in our nature to try and make sense of the disasters that befall us. And that, in the best cases, we forge some sense of meaning and dignity from them. And that is noble. But that's not the same as saying that there was a reason for the suffering, in the first place.
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Right on. I'm dealing with a crisis right now, and I've heard a lot of "He must be meant to make it through this, because XYZ." If this crisis is meant to turn out one way or the other, that implies that past crises were also meant to turn out the way they did. And I don't accept that. I do believe everything is part of some bigger design, but I don't think the universe is a micromanager. The bigger design is that life sometimes turns out the way we want it to but more often does not, and the universe still goes on. We have to get through it and do the best we can with our lives either way. ...In other words, amen, Sister.
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