Working Through the Process

Everything that exists, exists only insofar as it is in relationship with everything else. Every moment, or occasion, of our existence consists of our creative response to the sum of every other occasion—in all time, everywhere—that has come before. As the man said, no person is an island; no island, even, is an island. We are not only part of everything we have experienced, but we are a part of everything that everything we have experienced has experienced which is, in turn, part of everything else all the way back to the big bang. And it is all a part of us.

In every argument with an atheist concerning God's (non) existence, sooner or later, without fail, the atheist will offer the problem of evil as proof that God does not exist. We all know the argument: if God exists, why did God allow evil into the world, even create it? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do good things happen to bad people? The God on whom they hang this argument—the God the atheists reject—inevitably is some variation of the bearded white man sitting on his throne up in heaven, micromanaging our lives and generally screwing up his creation. This caricature—or a slightly more sophisticated and nuanced version of it—is the only God they will admit and the God they reject. Well, hell, I'm atheistic about that God myself.

God is the author of all possibilities; God is not the director of our lives. It is true that God has a plan for you, but it is not that you be either rich or poor, sick or well, black or white, happy or unhappy. It is not God's plan for you to enter a particular profession—even the ministry—or even to be a particularly nice person. God does not: choose your sex or race, grant you “abundance” if you do the right things, or keep you from falling from the sky in a crippled aircraft. God does not randomly select persons on whom to bestow either blessings or curses. Bottom line: God didn't get you that promotion. God didn't send that tsunami. God did not and does not do those things, because God cannot do those things. Our God is not that kind of God. The fact is that God is not the omnipotent, omniscient super being at which the atheists scoff and who makes it so difficult to answer their constant question, “If there is a God, why did [fill in your catastrophe] happen?”

I can't say why bad or good things happen, but I can say it's not because God allows or causes them to happen. It is not within God's power to cause anything to happen or not to happen. Things happen to humans as a result of the interplay of natural laws, the exercise of free will by ourselves and others, and pure blind chance.

But God is always there, always interested in us, always urging us on to our best. Each occasion of existence builds on the occasion before. Each occasion is the result of what the preceding occasion has transmitted, which is nothing more than an attempt to replicate itself, as it is affected by every simultaneously occurring occasion and harmonized by our own creative response. Even if we think we respond automatically, without thinking, our response is the result of a process wherein we choose how the next moment will play out from among a number of alternatives.

One of those alternatives will be the one that God has chosen for us, that God desperately wants to choose. This is the alternative that will result in the best of all outcomes, the best launching pad into the next occasion in a series of occasions that lead to fulfillment of “God's Plan.” We can choose God's path, or we can choose another—it's totally up to us. But here's the thing: no matter how we proceed, God is undeterred. God is active in this process. God understands the choice you have made in all its dimensions (as you probably don't) and adjusts God's own plan to the new reality, the new occasion, wherein God will again offer the God alternative.

And what is God's plan for us? It is not a plan at all, really—it is an ever changing series of choice offerings—but the goal is that you emerge in union with God as a reflection of God's love and an agent of God's grace.