Is it a "God Thing" or Just a Coincidence?

I think it was Arsenio Hall who, years ago, coined the phrase, "It's a black thing, you wouldn't understand." For some time I saw (and occasionally still see) t-shirts flaunting these words at me in my nerdy whiteness. Thankfully, for the most part, in popular discourse that silliness went the way of the Arsenio Hall show and the Dodo bird.

But in recent years the phrase has been baptized and spiritualized into a new phrase, "It's a God thing." I hear, on a fairly regular basis, people attribute all kinds of things to God's activity--all the while speaking with such certainty that you'd guess that their lives had been filled with fiery bushes and doves floating from parted clouds. I'll never forget a new student who came to the college I worked for claiming that God had shown her that this was the school he wanted her to go to. How did she know? She had done a Google search and our school came up. I didn't have the heart to explain to her that our school came up on the search because I paid a dollar per click for that search term. It wasn't God, it was clever advertising--and she realized it later when she decided she didn't really like our school and that God was leading her somewhere else!

Events of the past week have inspired three very interesting conversations with people whom I have a great deal of respect for. Two of these conversations centered around a major life-decision I have made this week which might very well have been one of the least rational and yet vitally important decisions I had ever made. Ironically, I based a lot of my decision on a feeling, a sense that I needed to or should make this particular decision. The third resulted from a really neat moment my wife and I experienced when a young man who works at a Subway restaurant we frequent offered to pay for our lunch. Interestingly, though we were willing to pay, my wife and I are currently broke and really needed the meal.

On the first event, I was choosing between two options and went an option (A) I had initially thought I would not choose. For some very rational reasons, the option I did not choose (B) was a lot better option. But I chose the one I did (A) simply because I felt better about it. I like to think that that in itself may actually have some rational aspects.

The conversations surrounding this were with a man who used to be my minister (and in many ways still is) and a friend of mine who is a minister. Both of these insisted, at least at first, that I should interpret my feelings (or that it was fair to interpret them) as God's leading. Now, I don't have a problem with the notion that God may lead us--even through feeling. What I do have trouble with is making the statement that I know with certainty that he has led me--and that is what our friendly disagreement was about. The truth is, I think my feelings are just too arbitrary and fleeting to be trustworthy enough to interpret with certainty. And that's ok--I'm not demanding certainty; I'm just stating that I have a lack of certainty.

The second event spawned a conversation between me, my wife, and three good friends of ours. After the young man bought our lunch, my wife turned and asked, "Do you think that this was a 'God event'?" In other words, did God cause this to happen in order to bless us? My initial answer was, "I don't know, it could be--it might not be." And I was thankful either way! One of my friends, though, initially insisted that it must have been God--but later admitted that it really isn't possible to know. (I hope I have accurately represented him here, I'll know if he reads this.)

My question is about whether it is possible to have certainty when discerning whether God has acted in everyday life. Before I begin to address it, I want to clarify that I am not a deist. I do not believe that God is out of touch with life in our universe. I believe he interacts and that the Bible records much of his interaction. I believe he still works in and through his people on this earth. But where I differ with many of my friends is in our ability to have certainty when interpreting events.

Even when we assume (rightly) a supernatural being (God) who routinely interacts with the universe, it does not seem possible that we should live on a planet with 6 billion conscious free agents and a universe of nature instinctively and naturally following its programming without the possibility of random coincidence. There is enough randomness in weather patterns, animal life, the feelings and actions of others, and my feelings to merit my assumption that any event (good or bad) which happens may have meaning (in that God or another free agent had a distinct purpose in it) or not (in that the event was caused by coincidence). Allow me to argue from analogy.

Deer instinctively run from danger. A friend I have enjoys hunting for deer and engages in this activity because he freely chooses to. I go to work every morning because I need the money and because I choose to pursue legal methods to acquire it. Now, let's say my friend is hunting and shoots at a deer and misses. We will understand that this frightens the deer. We expect him to follow his instincts and run away from the sound. Now, let's also say my friend was hunting about the same time I was going to work and close enough to the road that the deer ended up running directly in front of me and I hit it, totalling my 96 Oldsmobile Achieva (finally). What are the key factors leading up to this event?

First, there is nature, represented by the deer. Nature is without reason--I mean, the deer was not reasoning about his actions, he was following instinct. Granted, in a theistic paradigm that instinct is planted by God, but it is indistinct. What I mean is that if the deer were put in the exact same situation twice, his instinct would cause him to run both times--but the odds are he would run in two different directions. In fact, any number of random events may affect him. A gentle breeze may waft a scent by him which triggers his instinct to graze somewhere else in the first place, causing the event to never take place. In other words, instinct is general, i.e. deer run when startled. But the specifics of actions in nature are random. Acts of nature are really affected by three things: instinct (in the case of animals--physics and natural law in the case of inanimate objects and the weather), the actions of free agents, other acts of nature, and chance. When dealing with nature (the deer in my analogy) we must make room for random chance. With God in the paradigm we can say that he has built randomness into the system.

Second, there are the choices of free agents--in this case, me and my friend. Now, there may be all kinds of factors--from arbitrary ones to ultimately purposeful ones--but the simple truth is this: I was in my car and my friend was in the woods because we both chose to be. Nothing made us be, we simply chose it. When it comes to free agents, our decisions are basically affected by these things: nature, needs, desires (conscious and subconscious), and the actions of other free agents (which may often enough include God). We take all these into account when making decisions, but we make them consciously just the same, and we could choose not to. In this sense, we are almost like necessary beings. We are necessary to bring about the contingent actions we do. (Of course, we are not exactly like necessary beings because we are definitely caused.)

The thing is, when it comes to events in our lives, we must assume there is some randomness. If I am making free choices and my friend is making free choices, it is only a matter of odds that our paths may eventually cross without our knowledge or planning. Throw into this the fact that there are 6 billion people on this planet making free choices and the randomness of our lives emerges. It always seems silly to me to insist that when two people meet we must assume that God has brought them together. What would have happened if one had chosen something else? The answer is, they would have met someone else. Now, God may act and interact here and there outside of our knowledge, but if he is guiding everyone to meet the way they do--well that's just determinism. And I'm not into that! The odds of meeting one person out of 6 billion are nearly one in 6 billion--yet I meet new people every day! Randomness in life is truly an every day occurrence.

I am not a deist. I am not saying that God is not involved in creation. What I am doing is making a case for randomness and the impossibility of epistemological certainty when approaching "brushes with the metaphysical." It may be that God influenced or led one of us to be in a certain situation. But the problem is, we can't know it with certainty. We can guess it, and we might have good reason to. But we cannot know it. And the truth is, we cannot prove it wasn't coincidence when coincidence must be understood as an element in the system God created.

Why did our friend at Subway buy us lunch? Perhaps God saw our need and gently influenced him to do so by planting the idea in his mind. Perhaps God inhabited his body outside of our friend's free will and caused him to buy us lunch. Perhaps our friend simply responded to us out of love. Perhaps he felt sorry for us. Perhaps someone tipped him off that we were broke and needed help. Maybe he was moved by something we said or did which revealed the work of God in our lives and he freely responded to that. But my answer to the question, "Did God do this for us?" must be, "I don't really know." I like to think he did, and I believe he is taking care of us. Truthfully, I really believe God blessed us with lunch through our friend. But we're talking knowledge here, not belief. Belief requires intellectual agreement, knowledge requires proof (see my appendix at the end of this article). Though I believe it, I cannot rule out the fact that our friend acted freely and could have chosen not to. I cannot rule out the randomness of our encounter--he could very easily have chosen not to come in to work that day. His boss could have scheduled him for a different time. I could have been hit by a meteor on the way in the door but I wasn't, therefore, nature was favorable to the event (I had to work nature in somehow). Many things had to happen in just the right way for this event to occur--which may be evidence for God's activity and it may not. The truth is, if the event hadn't occurred, whatever event did occur would also have needed many events to happen in just the right way in order to occur. And something is going to happen one way or another.

So what, then? Do we give up? I think we can make a few assumptions. First, God does not have every event planned for our lives (see appendix 2). He has listed general instructions (what type of person I should marry, what types of activities are wrong) and has given us a basic purpose (what kind of life I should lead) in his revealed word, the Bible. The specifics (i.e. who I'll marry, where I'll work) he leaves up to us. Second, God does act in the universe. Third, humans are free agents who freely choose to do whatever they want to do, even if those choices are influenced by needs, desires, etc. Fourth, events in nature are determined by instinct, physics, chance, and sometimes the actions of free agents (i.e. global warming and the Genesis flood).

Mix these ingredients together and what do we have? An Open System! (Isn't it predictable that this is my conclusion?) I think God has created a system in which anything can happen, anything is possible. I think God is working within that system to accomplish his purposes. But we are really blind to him. We cannot see clearly what he is doing and why. We cannot always tell the difference between chance, our feelings, and the actions and will of God. Sometimes we are confused. For this reason, we must do the best we can do to follow him and trust that God will take care of the things we cannot see. And we mustn't assume too much that we cannot know. I think there is a danger in assuming that God must have provided my free lunch. It begs the question, why doesn't he do the same for my brothers in Christ who are starving somewhere else? I think the only right answer to questions like, "Is this a God thing?" and "Did God lead me here?" is, "I don't know for certain--it's possible. But I'm going to follow him whether he did or didn't--though he slays me yet will I serve him!"

Is it a God thing? Only God knows.

Appendix: My definition of knowledge is the enlightenment definition. Knowledge is justifed true belief. Of course, by this definition, knowledge of something is only possible if that something can be proven--until it is proven it is only belief. Hence, my wrestling with the question, "Do you know God exists?" I think the answer is, "I have faith that he does, but not knowledge." Yet I acknowledge that there is a biblical definition of knowledge which is quite different. But I have difficulty wrapping my brain around it. I have Michael Polanyi's book, Personal Knowledge, but I have not started it yet. It is my hope that this book will help me make my epistemological shift.

Appendix 2: Does God ever have a specific in mind? Even though I stated that I do not think God has all the details of our lives mapped out, I think it is entirely possible that he knows of occasional specific situations in which he may want one of us to act or live or which he feels are best for us. It is my belief that he may act through "open and closed doors" or through the gentle nudge of a "feeling of leading." But we must be very careful with this. We can't always see all the doors well enough to say we know all the doors were open or closed and we can't always adequately interpret our feelings. For this reason, I think we are almost better off to assume he is not leading us--to just do the best we can and trust he'll fill in our gaps.