Erma Bombeck wrote a book in 1978 titled, If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? It’s a humorous look at some of the worries and difficulties of life. The book was very popular because everyone could relate to it. There will be difficulties; guaranteed. Some are avoidable; most are not.
God does not promise us lives without difficulties; however, he promises to lead us through those difficulties, not just to them. Bad things happen to good people; and good things happen to bad people. Matthew shows Jesus preaching about this in his Sermon on the Mount:
… he causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust. — Matt 5:45 (LEB)
Many Christians talk about fate and karma, regarding events that occur after certain behaviors, but both concepts are entirely unbiblical. The notion of fate means you have no control over outcomes in your life. The ancient Greeks believed in fate, even creating mythological deities to personify it. They saw life as a continuous thread, which could be seen by oracles who would be guided by the gods to foretell the future.
According to the Greeks, three goddesses, the Moirai (or Fates, as they’re called in English), determine a person’s fate at birth by spinning, measuring, and cutting the thread.
The three Fates were sisters: Clotho would spin the thread of a person’s life from her distaff to her spindle when that person was born. Her sister, Lachesis, would measure each thread. Lastly, their sister, Atropos, would cut the thread at the determined length, which would mark the time of that person’s death.
Zeus was sometimes described as frustrated that he was powerless to intervene and alter the course of “fate.” After all, what’s the point in being the chief god if you’re powerless to change things done by underlings?
Karma is another term frequently used by Christians to explain people’s comeuppance after they’ve done something particularly offensive to the person describing it. It is an ancient Indian religious concept (Hinduism and Buddhism) by which one’s actions, good or bad, cause consequences commensurate with that action. Bad behavior causes bad results; good behavior causes good ones.
Both of these terms are theological precepts that directly contradict the Gospel. Under fate, we are not in control of our choices and our life events are determined for us instead of by our choices. No free will. How could Jesus tell people to repent if their actions are already orchestrated for them?
Karma eliminates the possibility of mercy or forgiveness. Response to our actions is automatic and without mitigation. Bad things will happen to people who do bad things and good things will happen to those who do good.
But Jesus says it doesn’t work that way. Evil people have sunny days, and good people get rained on. Job understood this idea also. He was a good person, yet bad things happened to him. He was wealthy, with a large, loving family. Job loved God and prayed to him for his family “just in case they sinned.”
Yet Satan took his property, his health, his wealth, his sons and daughters, and left him with just his wife and friends. His friends were helpful at first, staying with him, silently, in what is traditionally known in Judaism as sitting shiva.
But as Job got sicker, his friends started giving advice. They told him that he must have sinned against God really bad, and that God only punishes sinners, so, therefore, he’s being punished. His wife told him to curse God and be
done with it, but Job refused to do it; he stayed faithful.
Eventually, however, Job got angry, and demanded that God explain his actions to him. He demanded that God appear before him to answer his questions. We read 37 chapters of bad things happening to a good person—and then God appeared.
God demanded answers from Job:
Then Yahweh answered Job from the storm, and he said, “Who is this darkening counsel by words without knowledge? Prepare yourself for a difficult task like a man, and I will question you, and you shall declare to me. “Where were you at my laying the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you possess understanding. Who determined its measurement? Yes, you do know. Or who stretched the measuring line upon it? On what were its bases sunk? Or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars were singing together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? “Or who shut the sea in with doors at its bursting, when it went out of the womb, at my making the clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, and I prescribed my rule for it, and I set bars and doors, and I said, ‘You shall come up to here, but you shall not go further, and here it will set a boundary for your proud surging waves’? “Have you ever in your life commanded the morning? Have you made the dawn know its place, to take hold of the earth’s skirts so that the wicked might be shaken off from it? It is changed like clay under a seal, and they appear like a garment. And their light is withheld from the wicked, and their uplifted arm is broken. “Have you entered into the sea’s sources? Or have you walked around in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been revealed to you? Or have you seen the gates of deep shadow? Have you considered closely the earth’s vast expanse? Declare it, if you know all of it. — Job 38:1–18
Job never gets the answer to his question, but he is good with that outcome. He realizes he could not possibly comprehend God’s reasoning if it was shared with him. He understood at that point that all he could do is trust God. The same is true for us.
We focus on the immediate (we have microwave ovens and complain that it takes 8 minutes to cook lasagna). God deals in eternities. Our most devastating problems are still just temporary. They seem to last forever, but they diminish over time. They may not disappear, but eventually they hurt less than they did before. God uses those terrible things in our lives, often to help someone else’s eternity.
How many people have learned God is still in control by reading Job? How many times has God used a calamity in your life to help someone else who’s going through a similar situation? Cancer, job loss, death of a spouse or child? Quite often, only someone who has gone through similar pain is in the position to comfort someone currently nduring theirs.
So, enjoy the sunshine and endure the rain. But be thankful for both—even if we don’t know why.
Your Brother in Christ,
Fr. Austin