Finding the Overlap: An Example
This article is a follow up to my article “Finding the Overlap.” It is an example, written in letter form, of how to put the principles of “building a bridge” into practice (our essay assignment for the Apologetics & Outreach WITT class). In short, the letter is structured as follows:
Articulate what the other believes in a way he can agree with
Commend something that is good or truthful in this belief, something you can agree with (i.e. build a bridge)
Challenge the other’s thinking with a specific biblical truth
I wrote this letter to a person I’ll keep anonymous. He is a professed atheist, so I had the challenge of finding a specific belief of his to relate to. I found this exercise to be deeply helpful, especially in organizing my thoughts around a point of overlap and preparing ways to address it. I would encourage anyone to do this to practice building bridges in anticipation of face-to-face conversations one day.
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Dear Johnny,
As long as I can remember, you’ve said the phrase, “everything happens for a reason.” When you get in a car accident, or when you don’t arrive on time to the airport, or when someone gets a cancer diagnosis, your response is often, “Everything happens for a reason.” When life throws something unexpected, or frustrating, or ironic, or even painful at you, this has been your reaction on multiple occasions. Whatever the situation, you seem to believe that it isn’t random. This is a lens through which you look at life.
I know that you don’t just say that as an expression, but you truly think that when things don’t go as expected, there’s a reason for it. I can tell from the way you say it. I suspect there are situations from your life that as you look back on them make you think this to be true. When there have been plans you’ve had that didn’t come to pass, or when something happened that you couldn’t explain, you trust that there’s a reason behind it, that it isn’t arbitrary. You also likely see this in looking back at how things have unfolded in your life—how one thing led to another that led to another, and when you trace all the causes and effects, you can see the reason things went the way they did. But, I’m sure there have also been moments in which you haven’t figured out the reason, yet you’re still confident there is one.
The reason (no pun intended) I’m mentioning all of this is because it’s something I believe too: that everything happens for a reason. Like you, I believe that life and its events aren’t arbitrary, that there is some sort of purpose and intention behind all things that take place. Also like you, I don’t always figure out the reason for why things happen the way they do, but I trust there is one, even if it’s not known by me. I too look at life through that lens.
To say “everything happens for a reason” is a way to interpret life and its events. In holding to this view, one opposes the view that life, existence, and history are all random. A person who holds to this seeks, longs even, to find meaning in the unexpected, the frustrating, the ironic, and even the painful. This search for meaning when life strays from the “happy path” is considered by many to be human nature. We want to be able to explain why bad or unexpected things happen. The statement should really go more like, “Everything bad happens for a reason.” I find it interesting that we don’t search for the same kind of meaning when events keep to the happy path. When we get a promotion, or make it right to the airport on time, or our cancer goes into remission, we don’t say, “Well, everything happens for a reason.” When things go well, our reaction is rarely, if ever, to say that familiar adage. We don’t long to discover the reason then, maybe because we assume the reason is our happiness. That too, I think is human nature.
But I want to suggest that good things, just as much as bad things, also happen for a reason. “Everything” isn’t limited to only bad or unexpected things, but I think it means everything. It’s been said that it rains on the fields of the just and the unjust, a metaphor meaning that there is provision (a good thing) for all kinds of people, whether good or bad, and that there is intention behind it. One reason people search for meaning when bad or unexpected things happen to them is because they don’t think they deserve it. And in a sense for many of them, that is true. However, you know as well as I do that there are many people who do deserve the bad coming their way. Yet, as far as we can tell, it doesn’t come. The metaphorical rain waters their crops just as much as the crops of those who are good. For them, it would be more appropriate to say, “Everything happens for a reason,” when good things happen, not bad. I think there are times that goes for you and me too. There are many good things in our lives that we don’t deserve, yet they happen to us. Maybe we receive a wonderful gift from someone we’ve wronged, or maybe we get a raise for a job of which we don’t work with the greatest integrity, or maybe we’ve simply had food in our refrigerators and a roof over our heads our entire lives. These are just examples to point out that we can’t claim that we’re entitled to any of these things, and at times, we should receive the opposite of what we get—drought, not rainfall. Yet, we must believe this, like the bad, isn’t random or arbitrary. We must widen the lens. Everything, both bad and good, happens for a reason.
Since this is a letter, I can’t know how you react to that—whether it’s a point you can grant or deny. I must confess I struggle with that point myself. I often have my doubts about the everything part. I understand the desire to find an explanation for bad things and have experienced that desire myself. I’ve even benefited from finding the explanation on some occasions. But, when I think about the minutiae of life and all of its daily, micro events, it’s hard for me to believe they all have a reason behind them. When someone tells me there’s a reason they found an apartment, or got scheduled for an 8:30 class instead of a 9:30, or met a stranger at the grocery store, my default reaction is often skepticism. I constantly have to work to turn that off. I imagine that if you take a step back, you might have the same struggle from time to time. But, I tell you this to let you know that I admire how you’ve clung to the idea that everything happens for a reason for so many years.
Because we share this belief, I want to offer you something to consider, and that’s the reason part. At risk of stating the obvious, to say “everything happens for a reason,” is to suggest that everything, that is both good and bad things, big and small (as I’ve already talked about), happens, that is takes place, for a reason, that is with purpose behind it. It is not to suggest that everything that happens has a cause. Though true, that is a statement that is so obvious it doesn’t need to be expressed. It’s like saying, “Everything that has life is alive,” or, “Everything that is here is not there.” Put another way, to ask someone the reason he does something is not to ask what functionally caused him to do it, though that may be how he answers. That question asks why he did what he did—what purpose did he have behind his actions? (Let me say that I don’t mean to sound condescending at all. I just want to make my point clear in hopes that you can agree with it.). To say everything happens for a reason has a greater implication than that of cause and effect. As I mentioned earlier, it requires a confidence that there is meaning in the things that take place. It holds that behind everything that happens, there is intent and there is a will.
To have purpose, intent, and a will implies that there is some kind of mind that has them. It is impossible to have purpose, intent, and a will without some understanding of cause and effect, some ability to imagine consequences, and some ability to plan and have forethought. We don’t approach a shrub and ask the reason why it blooms flowers every Spring, no matter how breathtaking they may be. We understand that the shrub doesn’t have a will to do this because it doesn’t have a mind. It is incapable of having intent for its actions. It simply does what it does. But if the shrub catches fire and burns our house down, we desire to know the reason why. We know full well that the shrub is not what can or will give us the reason, nor is the spark that ignited it. The reason must come from some-thing that can think, some-thing that is capable of having purpose behind it.
Some-thing with purpose, intent, and a will behind everything that happens not only must have a mind, but also must be powerful. If everything happens for a reason, that is an unfathomable amount of reasons to hold at once. Even if the “everything” is a hyperbole, if many things happen for a reason, more than we can count, that is still an unfathomable amount of reasons to be in control of. Not only that, but all of those individual plans and purposes must be coordinated so as not to conflict with each other. Think of all the events in your life alone that must be kept straight! I imagine a phone operator from the 50s with a switchboard of infinite magnitude, working meticulously to place the lines in the right sockets and to keep them from being crossed. The reasons for the shrub catching fire, and for the house burning down, and for the particular fire crew being called to come put it out, and for the watching neighbor who is late for a flight because of it, and for the person waiting for a standby flight home who all of a sudden gets a seat on the plane may all be completely different and all must be coordinated. Even with this example, what all happens isn’t determined by a simple chain of causes and effects, but is orchestrated to take place just how it does, with reasons for every event and every person involved.
Finally, I want to point out that to have purpose, intent, and a will for everything that happens requires not just a mind and great power, but also personality. For to have purpose, intent, and a will is to have motivation, and motivation implies personal desire and choice. If everything happens for a reason, then there are motivations and deliberate choices being made by some-one in order for these things to take place. Back to the shrub, it doesn’t choose to grow blue flowers this year because it likes them better than red ones. The shrub grows blue flowers because that’s what it does. And when the shrub catches fire that burns our house down, it doesn’t choose to do this; it’s not motivated to commit arson. In seeking a reason for the fire, we must consider that there is some-one who chose to make it happen or to allow it to happen.
Amazingly, sometimes we perceive the purposes behind events in our lives. For some-thing to be able to think, imagine consequences, plan, and have forethought when it comes to events in the lives of people requires some ability to relate to them, that is, to be a person too. How could this powerful mind hope to express any purpose in the events of humans’ lives without having the ability to put those purposes in human terms? Now, we know that the reason things happen isn’t always discernible to us, but we have both experienced moments when the reason was clear. If there was some-thing outside of us with that purpose we could discover and understand, then it must be some-thing like us to one degree or another. It had to have been personal.
“Everything happens for a reason.” A rote phrase that is full of meaning. I genuinely believe that you believe this when you say it. But I don’t know that you’ve fully considered the implications of what it means. I don’t pretend that what I’ve asked you to consider is bulletproof. I’m sure you’ve already found flaws in my thinking that you’d like to point out. But, I challenge you to think about what I’ve said. If you believe that everything does happen for a reason, that life and its event aren’t arbitrary but have meaning and purpose, then there must be a being with a powerful mind behind it. The nature of that being is not of my concern at the moment, only that one exists. I hope that you can at least see that.
~~ Ethan