“Half Truths: Everything Happens for a Reason”
Today, we begin a new series of sermon: half-truths. Not everything we attribute to being found in the Bible is actually in the Bible and biblical truth. This series is inspired by the Adam Hamilton’s book Half-Truths. (1) Most of us have said things that we believe and shared that we have not fully thought through and examined. We might even be concerned that if we examine the things, we say that we might be questioning our faith. As Jesus greeted the disciples after his resurrection, he told them to go and share the good news.
Let me ask you: What is that good news? What is the gospel? All of our gospel and good news requires that we use tradition, our reason, and experience, in addition to the scripture, itself.
Let’s take a look! We have been formed in the faith as Methodists that scripture will need to be interpreted before we can fully understand how we live it out for our lives here and how most faithfully here and now as well as then and there. In our passage from Deuteronomy, Moses shares about cause and effect – when we commit to God’s law of love, there is peace in the community.
However, rarely is the phrase “everything happens for a reason” used when discussing peace in a community. Most commonly, people use that phrase in response to suffering. It is used when suffering is difficult and unexpected. It is often accompanied by “It was meant to be” or “it was their time” or “it was God’s plan”.
If we were to take seriously the notion that “everything happens for a reason”, we would have to believe that God is in charge of everything for from personal setbacks to natural disasters to untimely deaths to minor inconveniences.
If we extend that to its logical conclusion, would we really say that:
God made the Phillies to win yesterday and the Eagles last Superbowl.
When you forget your friend’s birthday, must it be the will of God?
To say nothing of where this can go:
Why would God will the death millions of Jews and gypsies and others in the Holocaust?
How are school shootings, church shootings, synagogue shootings the will of God?
So, does everything happen for a reason? At very best, this is a half-truth.
At worst, this is a dangerous and wrong-head philosophy.
When we tell one another that “everything happens for a reason”, we undermine personal responsibility. If everything we do is the will of God, then we have no responsibility for anything that we do. We would not be responsible for the good or the bad. If it is the will of God, then we are not responsible for our behavior. To the contrary, we are actually completely responsible!
In a related way, “everything happens for a reason” makes God responsible for each action. Instead of the individual actor, this phrase and half-truth recasts God as the sole actor. Let’s take a look a few of our recent news stories:
- 300 predator priests credibly accused by the eight Pennsylvania Roman Catholic archdioceses of sexual abuse. Would we say that God acted in those acts of abuse? Of course not!
- Yesterday, California synagogue shooting was an act of antisemitism and terrorism. Would we say that God acted in that act of violence and hatred? Of course not!
- Mozambique, Malawi, and Zimbabwe all are responding after the Cyclone Idai made landfall on March 14. Over the next week, Idai left a path of destruction in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi. Would we say that God acted in the destruction? Of course not!
The third challenge “Everything Happens for a reason” presents fatalism. Fatalism is the understanding that it does not matter what you do. Whatever will be, will be. Whether or not wore a bike helmet, it does not matter. When it is your time, it is your time. There is no need to care for your body or even go to the doctor under this philosophy.
So, now that I have shared why “everything happens for a reason” is a half-truth. Let me share with you a better truth: God, Creator of heaven and earth, Creator of all that is and will be, set our world and ancestors’ lives into motion and gives us dominion, authority, responsibility. God is God. And yet, we as a people have made both really wonderful choices and choices that have been hurtful and sinful. This has been across time and place. Now, God works through us in the midst of suffering and our joy. Like the nudges and thoughts, we can have God at work through us. I have learned to pay attention when I think of someone in prayer. Often, if I call them after praying for them, there was a reason that God brought them to mind.
Kate Bowler, Duke Divinity Professor and American historian of prosperity gospel, was living the life. She was an expert in theology and critique of health and wealth with a husband and toddler at home with a plumb job at the place she always wanted when she received the diagnosis of stage IV colon cancer at 35 in 2016. Very quickly, she learned her research became more than personal. She has been fighting her cancer since then. Her research about the prosperity gospel was punctuated with choruses of “Everything happens for a reason.” For a woman who grew up on the prairies of Manitoba surrounded by a community of Mennonites who wanted financial, emotional, and spiritual relief and a story of success, her healthy skepticism about blessedness gospel birthed scholarship. She wrote Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I Have Loved. She intertwines her scholarship with memoir. I thought of our own brave church family and community, who are as we speak on our prayer list and in our prayers. I am so thankful for the way in which we pray for one another, visit one another, and reach one another. How are we caring for one another in the midst of life?
Instead of the half truth “Everything happens for a reason” – just scratch that off.
She wisely offers these words of encouragement:
“1. “I’d love to bring you a meal this week. Can I email you about it?” Oh, thank goodness. I am starving, but mostly I can never figure out something to tell people that I need, even if I need it. But really, bring me anything. Chocolate. A potted plant. A set of weird erasers. I remember the first gift I got that wasn’t about cancer, and I was so happy I cried. Send me funny emails filled with YouTube clips to watch during chemotherapy. Do something that suits your talents. But most important, bring me presents!
- “You are a beautiful person.” Tell your friend something about his or her life that you admire without making it feel like a eulogy.
- “I am so grateful to hear about how you’re doing. Just know that I’m on your team.” You mean I don’t have to give you an update? You asked someone else for all the gory details? Whew. Ask a question about any other aspect of my life.
- “Can I give you a hug?” Some of my best moments with people have come with a hug or a hand on the arm.
- “Oh, my friend, that sounds so hard.” Perhaps the weirdest thing about having something awful happen is the fact that no one wants to hear about it.
- Silence
The truth is that no one knows what to say. It’s awkward. Pain is awkward.” Shhhh…. (2)
About nine years ago, I was visiting a friend in Massachusetts when I was awakened very early in the crisp spring morning. It was not clear why I was awakened, but I was, and I prayed. I instinctively put my cell phone in my pocket and about 9 am, I received a call. A young woman, 20-year-old woman, named Tracy whose kitchen table I had sat around only a week before had been killed by tractor trailer that veered into the wrong lane. She was killed on impact. The reverberations through the high school community and dental hygienist school community where she was studying, to say nothing of her family and friends, echoed loudly of deep love for Tracy.
What continues move me though is not the trite and cliché phrases that were offered to her mother and sister on that day and in the days that followed. It is the faith that has matured and widened in her stepdad and mother. Please be careful to hear say, God does not depend on suffering to achieve God’s purposes, but sometimes through inevitable pain and grief our faith grows deepens. I wonder how many of us might add our own testimonies to that witness as well.
In this season of Eastertide, let us stand on the witness of where we have seen the Risen Christ, wounds and all, and share that witness with one another!
This is the gospel of Lord Jesus Christ, thanks be to God, Amen.
(1) Hamilton, Adam. Half Truths: God Helps Those Who Help Themselves and Other thing the Bible Doesn’t Say., 2016
(2) Bowler, Kate. Everything Happened for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved. 2018, 173ff Adapted
Old Testament Lesson: Deuteronomy 30:19-20a
I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
New Testament Lesson: Romans 8:28-30
We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.
Meditations For Your Week
Sunday, April 28 ~ Saturday, May 4
Sunday: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now.” Romans 8:22. Creation around us is indeed groaning. Consider how you are called to care well for the world around you. Consider how creation care is a part of your stewardship.
Monday: “For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen?” Romans 8:24. Pray today for those who have misplaced their hope. Offer them some hope in prayer. Sometimes we outsource out hope.
Tuesday: “But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” Romans 8:25. Who have you shared a witness of hope and patience with to encourage them as they wait?
Wednesday: “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” Romans 8:26. You breathe peace into our souls, in the midst of a world of inevitable challenges and difficult occurrences. May we know your peace.
Thursday: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28. Consider that it is not God who sends suffering or cause tragedy, but it occurs in the process of life. How can you work to alleviate suffering today?
Friday: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you, life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live,” Deuteronomy 30:19. Pray for the children and youth of our community as they choose to be Jesus followers.
Saturday: “loving the LORD your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days,” Deuteronomy 30:20a. Consider that obedience and love with God become more natural as the Holy Spirit fills your heart.