I am all for spiritual quests and faith. Life is often difficult and we grow increasingly aware of our mortality with the ceaseless march of time. If spirituality, whatever that term may mean, gives us relief from life’s woes and death’s approach, then by all means let us seek it. I have been a very ardent Christian adherent in the past, and though my theological point of view is much more abstract and ambiguous these days, I still choose to believe there is something eternal, something 'godly' in ourselves and our universe.
But I am not a fan of the concept of God’s Plan. I believe it is employed to cover a multitude of sins and is often divisive and hurtful. The idea that God has fully planned out this world and our lives seems patently absurd to me. There is no logic in it and one simply has to abandon all rational analysis to hold to this belief. In the end, it is another human system of defining winners and losers.
To interpret life's events in terms of a Godly plan is to beg the question of why some are favored and some are not. This is reminiscent of the ancient belief that the righteous are rewarded and the wicked punished, that there are the chosen and the discarded.
‘God has a plan for all of us’, ‘Inshallah’, ‘Everything happens within God’s plan’, ‘God has done great things in my life’, ‘God’s plan is good!’ – these are the expressions one hears that give voice to the idea of God as a great planner. But these same voices contradict themselves. When asked if God’s plan is also responsible for evil, then they say that there is free will and God is not a puppet master. But if God is not a puppet master, then how can He or She ensure that the plan is carried out? The standard answer to this question is that this is a mystery and we cannot understand the nature of God, which is of course a total copout.
To associate God's plan with some events but not to others makes no sense. Many events in this world are unfathomably sad or brutal. Is the child who dies at birth part of God's plan? How did God's plan work out for the serial killer or the drug addict or the quadriplegic?
And to say that God has a plan but that our free will and our actions may alter this plan doesn't hold water either. That is a goal or a hope, not a plan. If God's plan can actually be altered by actions then there are a billion such actions that we make in our lives and no plan would ever be carried out exactly as 'God planned'. Either God is in full control or has no control. Having a bit of control isn't a plan.
Some people say that God knows our hearts and knows what will happen. But this is omniscience, not planning! If everything happens within God’s plan, then He or She must be in full control, not merely an observer.
There is a broader question of whether God intercedes at all in our lives, which again confronts a logical conundrum. What would cause God to intercede? When does He decide to cure someone’s disease or get them a good job or grant them admission to the first-choice school or cause them to win the championship? And why would he decide not to do the same for someone else? What kind of scorecard of good deeds, bad deeds, prayer circles, and other metrics would God need to have to make any sense at all out of interceding in human affairs?
If one argues that God's love can have an impact on the world and in an indirect way influence events or create something good after misfortune or tragedy, then I find no logical contradiction there. It is a consolation and an appealing aspect of spiritual faith to believe that some sort of higher power of love and kindness imbues human beings with the will to do good things. However, this is not a plan, except in a very broad sense.
And if one says ‘God’s will be done’ or ‘Inshallah’ as a way of expressing resignation to life’s vicissitudes, there is no harm in it. We must all come to terms with the fickle nature of life and must use any tools available to achieve some level of solace.
But the rational basis for the interpretation of life events in terms of direct intercession by God does not exist and I find it hard to believe that assigning either misfortune or good fortune to God’s plan can ever be anything but respectively profoundly distressing or obscenely egotistical.
