Everything Happens For A Reason (Or Does It?)
Often I have heard people say that everything happens for a reason. I do not agree. Why? I do not agree because that notion runs up against the vast (though limited) freedoms that we have as humans made in the image of God. To say everything happens for a reason is to abdicate the responsibility we have as humans to make decisions about experiences, circumstances, and events.
Instead, I would say that meaning can be made of anything. As humans made in the image of God, we have both the ability and the responsibility to assign meaning to experiences, circumstances, and events. Going further, I believe that it is impossible NOT to assign meaning to experiences, circumstances, and events. The question is not whether we assign meaning to what happens in our lives (even to declare something meaningless), but rather how we go about doing it.
The cosmic battle for the condition of the soul of each of us does not lie in the external and untouchable "reason" something happened, but instead in the meaning we have the power to assign to what happened. The world is populated with beautiful and redemptive narratives that pre-exist our experiences and it is also littered with condemning and life-draining narratives that also pre-exist our experiences. Furthermore, as humans we have the power to construct new narratives that can lean toward redemption or can lean toward destruction.
There is tremendous gravity to respond to an experience by selecting from the array of pre-existing narratives. These meanings that are already present assert themselves through religion, media, politics, institutions, and any other cultural construct that carries and perpetuates meaning.
When something happens and we want to know why, pre-existing meanings are already lined up to answer the question. These social narratives give the sense that things happen for a reason. These pre-existing narratives do not present themselves as options, but instead assert that they are true. The explain the joy or pain, often convincingly. They assemble the events of your life into a coherent line of reasoning and make truth claims about them.
In general, we have three options for what to do with everything that happens in our lives.
1. Foreclose. We can just give in and accept whatever the most assertive or most available narrative is and move on with our lives now owning whatever meaning has been assigned. Foreclosing is generally the easiest option, but also least responsible option. Foreclosing requires no self-awareness or agency. It is subject to the de-humanizing ideas of fate, pre-destination, and determinism that populate popular culture, religion, and science.
2. Rebel. We can deny the pre-existing narratives and decide to assign the opposite meaning. Rebellion against the pre-existing narratives is a more difficult option as there are often consequences to such a decision. Rebellion does require some level of self-awareness, however, the amount of self-awareness is often overestimated. There is a sense of freedom in the rebellion response, but in the end it is still oriented around the pre-existing narrative - like a photo negative, the image has only changed color scheme. Rebellion does require some agency, but not much in the end. It can be as de-humanizing as foreclosure.
3. Critical Creative Intention. A third option is Critical Creative Intention. This response to the circumstances, experiences, and situations of life is more fluid and most importantly puts space between the event and the assignment of meaning of the event. That space is some of the most human space in the universe. It is the space of human creativity, humans agency, and human initiative. It is "Critical" in that it seeks to be aware of the pre-existing narratives for the purpose of examining the validity of the narratives and testing that validity. It is "Creative" because it holds out the possibility that there is no current narrative which best explains what happened and therefore a new narrative is required. And it is "Intentional" in that it assumes the responsibility for meaning assignment (and quite possibly meaning creation) rests with the person who had the experience.
Furthermore, Critical Creative Intention allows for and anticipates the evolution of meaning assigned to events as time passes. Again, there is greater fluidity to the assignment of meaning. Historical events do not change, but the assigned meaning can change. The past is fixed, but the meaning of the past is not fixed.
If we are created in God's image, then we too are creators in some sense. Part of our creative responsibility is to create meaning in this world. I would argue we are to create meaning that legitimates experiences and all of their biological, psychological, social, and spiritual implications and leverages them toward love.