Distressed and doubly distressed

I try not to quote poems that I think are unhelpful, but today, I am doing just that in order to produce what I hope will be a helpful reflection. The details of the ‘case study’ that follows have been changed and so do not reflect anyone’s actual story.

God knows all our days
Well in advance
And nothing in life
Is left to chance...

- From God has a plan, M S Lowndes

Several times over the past few months I have sat with people who have been distressed and doubly distressed:
Distressed by the effect of events that have overtaken their lives;
And doubly distressed by the interpretation of those events that their understanding of God and God’s ways has led them to produce;
an understanding of God and God’s ways that is captured in the first stanza of M S Lowndes’ poem and expanded upon and reinforced in the subsequent stanzas of that text.

Sometimes life can dish up more than we feel able to bear. Other times it might actually deliver more than we can bear. In a short period of time we can move from a phase of life that feels like plain-sailing into a period that feels like facing an overwhelmingly chaotic tempest in a very inadequate boat. We expect to be swamped at any moment.

It might be that a sudden, surprising and serious health diagnosis arrives at the same time as we discover that a family member needs our support as they face life-threatening challenges in their intimate relationship and as the new management at work causes the place to suddenly become toxic.

Any one of the issues that has suddenly arisen would have been a challenge to face by itself. The combination of them is more than overwhelming. Hence the feeling of distress that has been expressed by those who have come seeking support.

The extra layer of distress, the feeling of being doubly distressed, has arisen as the person has started to look for meaning and purpose in the unfolding series of events. Humans are hardwired to do meaning-making, so that process is both natural and necessary. The distress is caused when the meaning-making somehow involves the idea of God having a plan for our life, and consequently coming to see the unfolding events as part of that plan.

This theological idea, which is really an expression of superstition based on a flawed understanding of God and the world, gets expressed in all sorts of ways that lead us into the path of being doubly distressed:
God has closed that pathway off so I need to look for what else God has in mind;
God took him;
God sent this to test me;
God does not send us anything we cannot bear;
Nothing in life is left to chance, so God must have wanted this to happen;
This is part of God’s plan...

All of the above discount the reality of the world in which we live and in which God operates, which is why it is helpful to label them as superstition.

They discount the agency of others and our own. People make decisions that in a myriad of small ways shape our destiny.

They ignore the realities of our biology. Cancer happens. Our bodies fail. Genetic mutations arise as part of the evolutionary process; as part of the way life is.

They also ignore the vagaries of the world, such the complexity of weather systems and the fact that avalanches occur as rocks weaken and branches fall off aging trees.

And they ignore role of chance, that it is possible to simply be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sorry M S Lowndes, a whole heap of our living is subject to chance.

It is little wonder that people experience being doubly distressed when the difficult happenings of life are interpreted as being part of God’s plan. Part of that being doubly distressed arises from the fact that interpreting these events in this way is saying something horrendous about the nature of God and God’s operating style.

This is further compounded by expressing that the unfolding of these ‘planned’ events is part of the operating method of the one we label as loving. This adds to these very difficult situations the confused and confusing understanding of love that we see in some toxic domestic situations. ‘I love you..’, says that one who is making life hell.

Having said all this, there is still a place in this schema for talking about God’s purposes, and in one sense at least, also of the idea of God’s plan. It is just that talking of these things needs to move from a focus on detail and specifics to being about God’s intention and desire and then to a conversation about the invitation that comes to us as free agents.

The loving purposes of God are not to be found in the details of life but in and through the lives and actions of people who are working as agents of God’s Commonwealth. The plan is that we will be agents of God’s love and be those who make it real in a world full of vagaries, that is shaped by the operation of free-will and is subject to the playing out of chance; a world where the gift of human presence conveys God’s presence and interest to those who are distressed and doubly distressed.

Peace,

Peter+