Phrases I Can't Stand: Everything Happens for a Reason

Imagine, if you will, that's you're a reverend.  Your wife was recently involved in a horrific accident in which some guy fell asleep at the wheel and hit her while she was taking a walk.  She was pinned between a tree and the car, just about severing her in half.  There was nothing the paramedics could do for her, other than keep her alive just long enough for you to talk to her one last time.  Her death caused you to question your faith and, subsequently, you no longer practice your religious profession.  In fact, you aren't even religious anymore.  You now live on a farm with your brother, who used to be a minor league baseball player that never quite made it to the majors because of his penchant for always swinging for the fences (striking out a lot as a consequence).  You also live with your asthmatic Macaulay Culkin look-a-like son and your adorable little daughter who has this quirky behavior of leaving unfinished glasses of water all over the house (what's up with that?).  And now, as if life wasn't difficult enough, some jokesters are making crop circles in your cornfields.  It's probably just that rascal Lionel Pritchard and the Wolfington Brothers, you think.

Well, as it turns out, those crop circles weren't the prank of some misguided teenagers with nothing better to do in the hick town that you live in.  They were created by intelligent poisonous gas secreting extraterrestrials.  And now there's one trying to get into your house!  He's climbing in your windows, he's snatching your people up.  And by people, I mean your son.  The alien has your son, who is scared shitless and having an asthma attack, in his arms and is about to administer the poisonous spray of death.  As you and your family stare this monster in the face, you remember your wife's dying words.  "Tell Merrill to swing away."  Merrill is your brother with the harelip, in case you forgot.  You tell your brother to swing away, so he grabs his record setting baseball bat that is conveniently hanging overhead on the wall in the living room.  But just as he moves in for the kill, the alien sprays the poison into your son's face (to be fair to the alien though, you did chop off his fingers earlier in the movie).  Your daughter screams and all hope is lost.  Or is it?

Your brother attacks the alien with the bat and gets him to drop your son.  You remove your son out of harms way just as your brother connects with a swing that sends the alien flying into a table.  The table has a glass of water on top of it and the water spills out onto the alien's shoulder. Remember that weird habit your daughter has of leaving unfinished glasses of water everywhere?  Well, apparently, the aliens didn't do their research and came to a planet that is made up of 70% water, despite the fact that it's like burning acid to them (I guess they're smart enough for interstellar space travel, but not smart enough to realize that it's not a good idea to come to a planet where the inhabitants are water based creatures).  You take your son outside to administer his asthma medication while your brother finishes off the alien.

After your close encounter with perhaps the universe's dumbest species of alien, you come to the realization that everything happened for a reason.  You son had asthma so that his lungs would be closed when the alien sprayed the poison in his face.  Your daughter had a discerning taste for water so that her unfinished glasses would be in position around the house to be used as a weapon against the space invader.  Your brother never made it to the majors so that he could come live with you and use his skill of "swinging away" to save you and your children from certain death.  Your wife had to die so that you would remember her dying words when you were too panic-stricken to act or even think straight.  With that revelation from God, and your faith fully restored, you return to your calling as a reverend.

If you haven't already figured it out, the above scenario is from the movies Signs.  And while I think it is a decent movie, I don't agree with the conclusion of the movie.  I don't believe that everything happens for a reason.  In fact, it's one of the many phrases that I can't stand.  

Case in point, the recent tragedy in Japan.  Why did that happen?  What was the reason for that?  Maybe WNBA player Cappie Pondexter can shed some light on it for us. 

"What if God was tired of the way they treated their own people in there own country! Idk guys he makes no mistakes."

"u just never knw! They did pearl harbor so u can't expect anything less."

"I wanna apologize to anyone I may hurt or offended during this tragic time. I didn't realize that my words could be interpreted in the manner which they were. People that knw me would tell u 1st hand I'm a very spiritual person and believe that everything, even disasters happen 4 a reason and that God will shouldn't be questioned but this is a very sensitive subject at a very tragic time and I shouldn't even have given a reason for the choice of words I used."

Those quotes are from her twitter account.  The first two tweets are her making an ass of herself and the last one is her trying to cover her ass with a halfhearted apology.  And that last tweet precisely illustrates why I can't stand the phrase, nor that way of thinking.  The people who say and believe everything happens for a reason use it as some sort of rallying cry when bad things happen to them or in the world.  And when those seemingly inexplicable bad things happen, they have to believe that there is a good reason that they happened.  These people need to feel comforted.  They need to feel like someone, somewhere, is in control and looking out for their best interests.  They like to think that someone is God.  And according to them, God is all knowing and has a plan for everyone.  God wouldn't allow bad things to happen unless there was a good reason for it.  Well, I'm here to tell you that there are plenty of bad things that happen for absolutely no good reason at all.

Let's go back to the aforementioned current event, the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, for a moment.  What could possibly be the reason for that?  Is God just some sort of spiteful little brat with a magnifying glass, who gets his kicks from burning and killing defenseless ants?  Would that really be a loving God's modus operandi?  If God really did create everyone and everything on this planet, and loves us all despite our faults, why would he indiscriminately kill a bunch of people?  I'd like to know what all those people who died, and all the people effected by this tragedy, did to deserve what happened to them?  I'm sorry if I'm questioning God's will here, but I really think it needs to be questioned if he has any reason at all for this.

Okay, moving on to the next thing that can't possibly have a reason for happening.  SIDS, or sudden infant death syndrome.  If you're not familiar with the term, here's the medical definition:

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is the unexpected, sudden death of a child under age 1 in which an autopsy does not show an explainable cause of death.

Why would God allow a baby to die?  There are plenty of other people out there who deserve to die a billion times more than a innocent baby.  Rapists, murderers, child abusers, Justin Bieber.  They all deserve to die more than a baby.  So what would God's reason be for killing a baby?  And really, if he ever had to kill a baby at any point in history, why couldn't that baby have been Hitler?  If God would have done that, and I somehow knew that he did it, I would gladly admit that there is a reason for SIDS.

I mentioned child abusers in the above paragraph for a reason (see what I did there?) because it provides a nice little segue to the next thing that couldn't possibly have occured for a reason.  My grandma used to work in downtown Detroit as a nurse at Children's Hospital.  She told me a story of a little boy she once took care of there.  This little boy was around the age of two and had the unfortunate circumstance of having his butt placed on a red hot stove coil by his father.  And this wasn't an accident, oh no.  His father deliberately put him on the stove as punishment for some wrong that the little boy committed.  How could God possibly allow that to happen?  And don't hand me that bullshit about how God couldn't stop the father because people have freewill.  If you're one of those people who truly believes that God has a plan for you, and everything happens for a reason, you don't have freewill.  If the plan is already laid out for you, and everything in your life is already determined, then you don't have freewill.  So I ask again, why was a third degree ass burn (or worse) in that child's plan?  That seems like something God could have left out or, at the very least, gone back to the drawing board and revised.  And while he's back at the drawing board, I'd like to see him make an addition.  Why not have the father take out a life insurance policy on himself a few months before the child is born, and then have some drifter put a bullet in the father's head shortly thereafter?  That sounds like a pretty good plan to me.

Okay, I think those three examples are enough to illustrate my point.  And if you read all of it, you probably think I'm a cynical bastard.  Well, I guess there's really no denying that I am.  I'm just sick and tired of people's "everything happens for a reason" bullshit.  If you want to go on believing that, that's fine.  I'm not here to stop you from believing in anything you want to believe in.  Whatever helps you make in through your day. Just know that the only place where everything happens for a reason is in your mind.  Your mind is what creates the reason for things that happen, not God.  It's a coping mechanism for you, with God flavored sugar on top, to help you deal with life.  I, on the other hand, prefer to deal in the rational world where things happen for no reason at all.  It may not be as easy, but it's much more grounded in reality.