We’ve all heard it, and probably have all said it at one point or another. It’s the phrase we use to feel better about those awful past relationships, or jobs that we were denied, or accidents that we endured… the list goes on. When we tell ourselves that “everything happens for a reason,” it allows us to escape the regret that we made a wrong decision, or the anger about the fact that such suffering fell on our shoulders rather than someone else’s. Those things that we feel to be unfair suddenly no longer keep us up at night because we’ve dismissed them without looking too closely.
It functions as a psychological “get-out-of-jail free” card.
The phrase works just fine when a bad break up leads someone to find the love of their life. But how does it hold up at the funeral of someone who died at age 37 from cancer, leaving behind three kids and a spouse? There are certain things that we simply cannot brush off with a blind trust that fate or God intended it that way. What kind of God would intend for a family to be ripped apart by the loss of its mother figure? And if this was not intended by God, but rather a work of evil, then is not God strong enough to put a stop to it?
The Christian community, then, is left with a very difficult dilemma: how can we tackle the “problem of evil?”
Various scholars across time have taken a stab at it. Alexander Pope in his “Essay on Man” (1734) offers the perspective that “whatever is, is right.” Essentially, Pope urges us not to question the way of things; all of us have our place in the Great Chain of Being as ordained by God. Voltaire mocks this “best of all worlds” mindset in Candide (1759) by mounting suffering upon suffering against the insufficient refrain that “we live in the best of all possible worlds.” From wars, to disease, to natural disaster, Voltaire mercilessly destroys the belief that everything that happens is for the best.
Perhaps it is easy for someone to say that “everything happens for a reason” during this pandemic when the most suffering it has brought them is an early end to their school year, but the saying is not quite so easily swallowed by a family who lost a loved one to the virus. Perhaps it is easy for a white man to say “everything happens for a reason” when he does not receive a second interview for a job he wants, but the phrase is not quite so convincing for a black woman who holds all the necessary qualifications but loses the interview to someone who is white.
The more removed we are from suffering, and the more advantageous our genetics and societal position happen to be (through no effort of our own,) the more insensitive we are to the weight of a “best of all worlds” perspective.
The “everything happens for a reason” theodicy (also identified by phrases such as “life is what you make it,” “God won’t give you more than you can handle,” “bloom where you’re planted,” and so on) cultivates a society in which people belong to certain classes, and are expected to remain in them without questioning them. A family that lives below the poverty line (or experiences any other kind of disadvantage) is told “everything happens for a reason” and accepts it because 1) they are not in a position of power to change their circumstance, and 2) the phrase offers a strange sense of comfort by putting their suffering in the hands of fate or God and giving them blind faith that this is how things are meant to be.
In short, the phrase ensures that those in a position of privilege remain so.
This allows for racism, sexism, classism, ageism, and all other kinds of -isms to not only survive, but thrive. So where does this leave us?
If in the future you feel a bubbling up of the phrase “everything happens for a reason” in your throat, take it as a reminder of the sufferings of others, and of the existence of your own privilege. Don’t let that phrase bring a sense of complacency to your life. Life is unfair, and the least we can do is refuse to be insensitive to that.
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