Perhaps God has nothing to do with the weather at all and the climate of a given region is a natural phenomenon. As such, the weather is simply due to luck, an observation that begs the following question: what controls our lives Divine Providence or Lady Luck? At some point everyone has exclaimed, "What a great stroke of luck," or "We survived by the providence of God." As a Baptist, I have grown up with the concept of "the providence of God," but what exactly is luck and how do I reconcile it to a dominate idea in Western culture that God somehow regulates the universe?
My brother-in-law had a great game of golf one weekend—even for him. He shot 67 for 18 holes, including a hole-in-one. His wife (my sister) chalked up the hole-in-one to his skill with the clubs. But he insisted, "No, any time you shoot a hole-in-one, it's luck." I thought about it for a moment and had to agree. If holes-in-one were due to skill there would be more of them. So, I suggested, "Perhaps it was divine providence." My brother-in-law replied, "No, it's luck. God doesn't care about golf." My brother-in-law is a Baptist Deacon, so I had to take him seriously. Golf is a game where you play against yourself, so the only reason for God to intervene in his game and bless him with a hole-in-one was to lower his golf score and make him feel rather smug. We usually like to think that God has bigger issues on his plate, which is what I think he meant when he said, "God couldn't care less about golf."
What we seem to mean by luck is that sometimes things go in our favor and at other times they do not, including even the most trivial matters. We seem to conceive of luck as a pervasive random force in the universe that, for whatever reason, is erratic or whimsical in its application. If this is true, we do not live in a universe where everything is micromanaged by God. Hence, people who believe in God's providence must cope with the disturbing idea that God (if God there be) manages some things that happen, but, on the other hand, God allows other things simply to happen, as they will, without his oversight. Or perhaps we do live in a world where God micromanages everything and must be given the credit (or take the blame) for everything that happens. If God is to be given the credit for everything that happens, then we humans bear no responsibility for global warming, poverty, the breach of the ozone layer, or the failure of the levees in New Orleans in 2005. Somehow, however, we instinctively know that we cannot make God the scapegoat for all the misfortunes of the world. Most of us realize (I hope) that God is not responsible for the incompetent response of the Federal Government to the disaster in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, or the current bumbling administration presently making a mockery of the democratic ideals of the nation. Voters at least must share the blame for that debacle.
Perhaps luck is only a more or less natural force in the universe, something like gravity for example. While the ancient Greeks and Romans personified it into a deity named Tychē (Greek) or Fortuna (Roman), we moderns have secularized the force. Nevertheless, the idea that some things just happen for no apparent reason is a disturbing concept for those who think that God guides a master plan for the universe. If things happen for no reason, then we have a universe permeated by a principle of randomness that suggests God may guide matters in the universe in most instances, but leaves others to happen without his guidance. Such a possibility raises the question how can we tell benevolent concern from random event? Perhaps we cannot.
The Bible is full of bad things perpetrated by the biblical God on basically decent people. Many believers seem willing to accept that sometimes God does bad things to good people for reasons they cannot understand. Job thought so as well: "Shall we receive good at the hand of God and shall we not receive evil" (Job 2:10 RSV)? Maybe we invented the idea of luck because such capricious behavior on God's part is simply inconsistent with the idea of a benevolent God. But if we invented luck, we could have invented God as well.1
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University
1Charles W. Hedrick, House of Faith or Enchanted Forest. American Popular Belief in an Age of Reason (Eugene, Or: Cascade, 2009), 6–7. This essay first appeared before 2009 as a Religion and Ethics Editorial in the daily Newspaper, The Springfield News Leader.
1 comment:
I wonder about your definition of "luck": something random and unpredictable? and if so, is weather (or a hole in one) simply a random event? and is the weather really random? or are both simply complex? the weather is utterly capricious, or is it a product of natural laws? a neophyte at golf couldn't hit the ball far enough on most holes to ever have a hole in one; a professional might come very close, and frequently. so getting a hole in one might be a matter of hitting the ball correctly; just because it is really difficult and rare wouldn't mean that it is sheerly a question of chance, like a roulette wheel... Anyway, what i'm wondering is your dichotomy: should it be luck v. divine providence? or a mechanistic and knowable natural law v providence?
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