Faith and Coincidences
I recall reading a book in which the author offered an anecdote about how his faith was reinforced: it was when he found a gift that his daughter wished for, that was no longer commercially available. This felt like a simple coincidence for me, but maybe it only needed to be meaningful for the author.
So, I wonder what to make of a coincidence that we seem to find meaningful. There seem to be three options:
1. It's just a coincidence - people are good at seeing patterns everywhere, and making meaning.
2. God has made something happen, so that we might draw meaning from it.
3. God provides us with the grace to see as meaningful something that would happen anyway.
My faith wanes and waxes, but I tend to settle on option (3) for the most part.
What has been your experience(s) of coincidences?
Which position do you take, and why?
Are there other options?
So, I wonder what to make of a coincidence that we seem to find meaningful. There seem to be three options:
1. It's just a coincidence - people are good at seeing patterns everywhere, and making meaning.
2. God has made something happen, so that we might draw meaning from it.
3. God provides us with the grace to see as meaningful something that would happen anyway.
My faith wanes and waxes, but I tend to settle on option (3) for the most part.
What has been your experience(s) of coincidences?
Which position do you take, and why?
Are there other options?
Comments
At first, when I was exploring faith, I would have a burning question in my mind and pray about it, not sure whether God even existed. But in all kinds of ways, ‘coincidences’ happened which helped that burning question - not to be completely resolved, but to lead to more questions.
For example, someone would say something out of the blue, a magazine I picked up in a waiting room at random would include an article, or on one occasion I picked up a book on a charity stall (something I would never normally do) which happened to be one which addressed the very issues I was thinking about.
I have come to have faith in ‘coincidences’ - but not to the extent where I think that every coincidence has been engineered by God.
So all three of your options are true sometimes, I think.
As a kid(*), I used to bet my soul to Satan, wagering on the outcome of everyday events, along the lines of: "If the phone rings when I snap my fingers, Satan gets my soul for eternity."
About half a dozen times, there were some real WTFs, the most memorable probably being when, attending a circus, I bet that an acrobat would fall off a tightrope the moment I tapped my foot against the floor, and he did.
Of course, the law of averages would dictate that if you do this thousands of times, which I prob'ly did, the house is gonna win, so to speak, once in a while. But I didn't think of that as a kid, and got pretty freaked out whenever I came up short.
(*) Actually, I still do this all the time, but simply to test for recreation, though I do frame it as a wager with the devil.
I like the quote (I forget from whom) "when I pray, coincidences happen. When I don't, they don't".
This year a man came into our parish church at the Easter vigil and someone asked me to look after him as he had said it was the first time he had been in a church in this country. He came from a Hindu background and some incident in his Himalayan country had convinced him that he must become a (Catholic) Christian.
I lost touch with him for some time but then met him again and helped him on his way over many difficult months to baptism which took place late on Christmas Eve.
Whatever it was which caused us to meet and journey together I believe that it was not simply a coincidence.
How do you discern between them? What is it that signals it is not "just a coincidence", but instead a God-led prompting to see the meaning that is possible, or even God intervening for you?
Or... do you think that we should just remain open minded in the face of coincidences, entertaining the possibility that it could be anywhere on the scale?
What leads me to the possibility of something meaningful, I think, is a "cumulative case": when a number of small things start to connect in ways that seem/feel less random.
I have trouble with the idea of a prayer being answered, because of all the ones that are obviously not answered...
...and yet. When I was a little kid I prayed fervently to get away from the school bullies that made my life a misery. The family did move, to a place where I was not bullied - but we moved because of financial necessity, and I got some peace but also a lot of deprivation. I still think this is most likely my construction of meaning in the situation, but it helped me to accept the bad with the good. So maybe this an exception that proves this rule:
(Although I generally agree.)
I guess people are most likely to see something as more than a coincidence in the context of a faith journey (whether their own or that of someone else). And of course that could be in the context of various faiths / traditions.
It’s a matter of keeping a mind open to possibilities, and of not looking for coincidences as signs.
If it’s something important God wants to communicate with you, eg your calling, not only will you get a sense of a nudge yourself, but affirmation will come in different ways when you ask in prayer. You are not in control of the timing or the method, God is. Often it comes through the words of other people, usually people of faith who are used to listening to God.
And yes, a cumulative case often amounts to something too.
She prayed for a sign that she was to start fundraising, and the next day she received, though the post, a cheque from a complete stranger with a covering letter wishing her well with the project.
I know about this because I was the complete stranger who sent the cheque. I had been going to attend a funeral but on the morning of the funeral my small daughter woke up early with a sore tummy and threw up all over her bedclothes. She had a miserable day in bed, and I had a miserable day at home dealing with a mountain of vomitty laundry, of which the original bedding was only the start.
I knew had been a collection at the funeral for Tearfund so the following Sunday (this being pre-internet days) I looked through a pile of leaflets in the church vestibule, trying to find one with an address for Tearfund, to send the donation I would have made had I been able to attend the funeral. A friend asked me what I was looking for, I told her, and said she knew someone who was volunteering for Tearfund and perhaps I could send her the donation. Which I did.
X got one of those perfect "answered prayer" faith-enhancing stories.
My wee daughter got a nasty sickness bug.
I got a day of feeling sad for my girl, and cleaning up vomit.
Not to mention that the funeral I was to have attended was for a remarkable woman who died in her forties.
If 2) is correct, I know what meaning X took from it, but what meaning was I to take? I would settle for 3).
Generally I try to avoid the extremes--I'm not sure that in a universe where God exists, it makes logical sense to talk about anything being a coincidence, good or bad--I think it more likely to ID such things as being things where I don't have a broad enough viewpoint to see and understand the reasons why A and B occurred together. God does--but of course this gets us right back to the problem of evil, and why it occurs in a universe where God is... Not going to solve that one this week!
As for 3, I'm really cautious about saying "Definitely God did this" or "God meant X by this event." I could be wrong! And the Bible has some pretty harsh warnings about people who do the whole "thus saith the Lord" thing and get it wrong (false prophets, taking God's name in vain, etc.). So I don't want to mess around with that, especially when it's taking it upon myself to explain someone else's experience. Better to shut up and listen...
But if it's my own experience affecting me primarily (I'm on to 2, now) and the coincidence was really, really over-the-top*, I'm likely to live my life going forward as if I were sure. Because I do think God finds ways to communicate with most of us (not going to say anything about people who experience the opposite, who am I to say?) and if he wants to do it through what I would call coincidence, well, okay then. It's mostly me that will take the fall if I turn out to be wrong or misunderstanding in these cases, and so I'll take that risk. But the greater the risk, the more over-the-top the coincidence-or-whatever has to be.
* By over-the-top, I mean something like finding a door unlocked, AND a fence fallen down, AND a guard check-in time missed, on the eve of one's execution--which "coincidences" happen to allow one to escape from prison camp and remain free, 40 years later. Things that are NOT over-the-top and that I tend to be skeptical about (in my own mind; I'm not going to diss somebody for thinking differently) are stories like "As we lowered my mother's casket into the grave, a cloud moved aside and a single ray of sunshine lit the bird that was singing on the branch of a nearby tree. And therefore I'm sure she's with God in heaven looking down on all of us gathered here today." And I'll be privately thinking, "Well, I'm glad you feel comforted, it wouldn't work that way for me."
@Lamb Chopped the point about weighing the consequences of interpretation is an interesting one too. And kind of leads back to NEQ’s point, since the actions that we might choose to take could affect a number of people in quite different ways.
However, that’s the kind of difficult complexity that could lead me to stop trying to ‘compute’ and go with heart rather than head.
Case in point NEQ's X who if they hadn't "prayed for sign" would not be able to see the cheque's arrival as that sign. Doesn’t mean it wouldn't have arrived just the same though.
If @Raptor Eye is right I must simply conclude that God has never had anything important to tell me. The one occasion in my life I thought he had was shown to be not the case by events as they unfolded years later.
Frankly, it's safer and better for my mental health to conclude that is indeed th3 case and not to bother with any idea of God manipulating events to tell me anything or facilitate anything. Not being a knob and doing the good I can do is more than challenge enough; if in a thousand lifetimes I made a dent in my inability to do those two I might start looking for anything specific. It also has the advantage that it has intrinsic value if God turns out to be no more than a mirage borne of a desperate need for validation when I was on the social scrap-heap of school, all those years ago.
IMO you really have to go with head and heart both, as either of them alone will lead you astray. Sincerity of feeling doesn't prevent genuine mistakes, and all that.
We took a student from Tanzania with us to visit our kids who live North of Seattle.
He is a Fullbright student.
He told me he had two schools he considered. One in Edinburgh and one at WSU. He said in considering both schools, he just felt that God was telling him there would be someone at WSU who would be there to befriend him.
Me? I have always befriended international students. It is a part of my DNA. I have experienced times when there was no one who helped me out. It gave me a drive to make sure at least one student will have my interest.
Is it coincidence I met the Tanzanian student? Or did God match us?
How many of us think our lifelong partners/spouses are the result of a match made in heaven?
A few years ago I ghost-wrote a book about a friend's remarkably effective child-protection charity.
He comes from a Pentecostal background and so is very inclined to see instances of divine intervention, strange providences and remarkable coincidences.
As it was his story, not mine, I included most of these as he related them. The book also included plenty of facts, figures, research and reflection on the issues he deals with. It certainly wasn't a simple 'testimony' book.
The thing was, however, that some of these apparent coincidences and strange providences really were remarkable and did lead to significant advances in the way his work expanded or operated. They didn't, however, obviate the need for hard work, application and professional practice.
I also found myself caught up in it all to some extent as apparently 'chance' encounters or serendipitous lines of enquiry led to more material or fruitful avenues. Ok, we were operating within a framework where such things were looked for and valued, and things were interpreted that way, but even so ...
Yes, there were blind-alleys and set-backs too. It wasn't all plain-sailing but as an exercise I found it remarkably 'integrated' and indeed 'incarnational'.
My friend's professional practice and expertise seemed to meld with those things I brought to the party and with the help, insight and support of others. I don't want to over-egg the pudding but there was a sense of something mysterious going on and bigger than ourselves.
Ok, we are wired to discern patterns and attribute meanings to events but even so ...
Like all of us I'm working these things through and reflecting on them in the context of a particular tradition or framework. In my own case it's an Orthodox one following several decades steeped in evangelical and charismatic Protestantism. I suppose the big difference I'm encountering is the idea that 'God is everywhere present and filleth all things' - and that consequently there is less of a sense of God 'zapping' things or intervening 'from outside' as it were, but of divine influences and 'energies' active in an integral way in and through whatever is going on at any time.
This doesn't remove the problems of Theodicy, for instance but it does help me accept @Gramps49's example as a both/and thing. Apologies for applying a Gamaliel cliche.
Equally, I'm prepared to accept @Lamb Chopped's 1,2 and 3 approach, with the caveat that it may be all or a combination of them at one and the same time. I don't see the need to compartmentalise these things.
Where 1 becomes 2 becomes 3 or whether 1 and 3 overlap or contradict isn't something we can always readily discern. As Eliot put it in 'The Four Quartets' some reflections are 'the occupation' of the Saint.
Can I put my hand up? It's not just me wot finks it is so.... so do our (relieved) daughters. It's not something I would preach about (our first marriages were not at all right for either of us) but it is a source of praise to God.
I would also include our two rescue cats .....
I can see Martin 54's point of view(s) of course and respect them , but with mrs RR head and heart definitely came together.
Often there’s no discernable cause and effect, and yet synchronicity—Jung defines it as meaningful acausal connection—comes into play. How and why we 'fall in love' and what that phenomenon means is as much of a mystery as religious conversion. John Barker's study on the number of people who had premonitions or clairvoyant dreams about the tragic landslide of coal waste above Aberfan in 1966 raised unanswerable questions about modes of knowing. Reading mystics on their encounters with the Divine indicates a tension between what seems humanly impossible and yet happens through ecstatic Love.
For some years my partner, then agnostic, nursed patients emerging from comas or regaining consciousness after severe strokes. She and her colleagues came to the conclusion that Near-Death Experiences described by patients were too common to be coincidences. Some patients only remembered their experiences for a few days, but others recalled what they had found in great detail. The experience was always positive and moving, they were surrounded by long-gone beloved family members, reunited with much-missed friends and partners, they came into a luminous place and felt a dazzling warmth and love, the presence of God or a reassuring embrace from a guide, angel or grandparent. On follow-up visits, the nurses found a number of these patients had changed their lives because of these NDE memories. They were no longer afraid of dying and did not feel alone or abandoned. Some joined churches or began meditating, wanted new spiritual connections.
This is really interesting, and connects with part of the reason I am so interested in coincidences - when they seem to signal opportunities that require a lot of work to be realised, rather than just a 'lucky break'. How we interpret the coincidences at such moments (or a cumulative series of moments) could set us on a change of course - bearing in mind, too, that sometimes it might not work out as we expected as @KarlLB related earlier (I think).
Interesting too that people are relating persuasive type 2 or 3 examples that involve more than one person (even when their views of and around the coincidence may or may not be the same). Although in the case of committed personal relationships (as with @Gramps49 and @RockyRoger ), it does beg a question about what we might attribute the 'failed' ones to...
Ours feels like a match made in heaven but it is the result of many unconnected events and decisions.
And of course some are matches made in hell. Equally random in the pats that led to the partnership.
I guess I don't believe in a God who meddles in any way in human affairs,
Yes; a God who is omniscient and who pushes two people together who he knows will later divorce is a difficult entity to trust. As is one who calls people to ministry who forty years down the line turn out to have been an active nonce.
Ah .... but the temptation to praise someone else when things go right and to blame someone else when things go wrong is a strong one.
Why, oh why?????
How does St. Puddleglum fit with this cry?
It would be closer to say that we have a question that we are raising - either explicitly worded, or a more general question. And the events of life will help us find an answer, not because of this being a direct divine answer, but because it guides us to a way forward.
And coincidences are patterns that we see and put meaning on - this is something that drives our thought processes all the time. And we can make these decisions and see those within our worldview which might include a sense of the divine.
In the OP - the man was questioning his faith. He found a pattern that he interpreted as boosting his faith. That is a fair interpretation of the pattern he experienced in terms of the questions he was asking at that time.
We are creatures who excel at pattern matching. All of our decision making is based on this, so it is perfectly normal. Whether there is any divine intervention involved or it is just our interpretation of events that reinforce our interpretation of the world - that is not (IMO) relevant.
(I say 'if' because not all people and not all those who claim to be Christian do believe this)
If God is not interested in our wellbeing what is the point of our joining together in prayer to him ? The active prayer thread on SOF is then a complete waste of time.
Standard Christian teaching tells us that God gives us free will to act for the good of others or to act selfishly. Given the opportunity to act for the good, many people, sometimes inspired by Christian teachings, will opt for the good.
Perhaps we can say that it is in this way that God intervenes in human affairs.
The same may indeed apply to 'callings' and 'vocations'.
However we cut it we are to 'work out our salvation.' That doesn't mean we are 'saved by works' but if we are to make 'spiritual progress' - however that is defined - then it's going to involve some graft.
But yes indeed, I've known plenty of people who've claimed that God called them to do this, that or the other only for it to all go belly up.
There's a balance somewhere between a quiet trust and confidence and out and out presumption.
Yes, this. Thank you @Lamb Chopped
As one minister I know puts it, God calls us to be faithful, not to be successful.
But yes, I take the point @Lamb Chopped is making. @Nick Tamen also raises a good point.
I must admit, I do struggle with some of our notions about 'calling' and 'God's plans' and so forth. How does that apply to infant deaths or kiddies with leukaemia?
But then, it's not as if I'm the first to wonder about all that ...
Well, I'm still here. Despite the total adequacy of psychology to explain all the remarkable lengths we go to explain the lack of ripples on the statistical surface above.
I'm waiting for a Puddleglum to agree with me and say let's be as gracious as we possibly can be anyway. That all that divides us isn't grace, but the trivia of how much we believe beyond believing that we should be gracious.
These are good points, but do seem to make it hard to discern misinterpretation in the first place from misadventure later on. I think that takes me back to looking for cumulative signals, or (as others have pointed out) looking at (or with) others and what they make of the same coincidence(s) from their different angles.
I don’t know if this will ever have any bearing on theodicy. I think maybe it is a case of accepting not knowing / understanding, but finding a way to go on, in a trusting and intuitive way, nonetheless.
I guess for faith to be faith, signs can’t be in metre high neon letters (which is why coincidences seem so fascinating).
The marriage itself or the failed bit?
Problem with the latter is it's then "I want you to marry X, but I know you're going to feck it up and divorce in fifteen years time after five years of simmering resentment and much unhappiness. I'm not telling you that bit though, obviously"
It's when you thought you were told to do something but that something never happened at all.
Sure I've read here some wise words to the effect that anything you say about God needs to be something you can say over a mountain of dead babies.
Within that guidance, I believe that everyone has a calling, and that we can become aware of it when we are going the right way. As time goes on, the path may change. If we continue to do our best to humbly stay close to God, through prayer, reading scriptures, learning through our church community, and discerning thought, we hopefully will be able to continue to serve.
The idea of Open Theism offers a way past the conundrum, but does away with the idea of God’s perfect foreknowledge. In this picture the future is not predetermined or fully known to God, whose promptings are therefore towards possibilities not certainties - and whose future actions depend on what we decide to do.
This approach has the benefit, too, that God did not foresee particular infant deaths and so on.
I’m not trying to make a case for Open Theism here though - I just introduce it as an example theology / picture of God that still allows the interpretation of coincidences to be meaningful.
Edited to add: this jibes with what @Raptor Eye wrote too.
Well, this is the sucky bit.
I mean, when people ask me (in real life) how they can know what God wants them to do (and they're talking about "Should I take this job" or "marry this guy", NOT "should I punch my neighbor"), I generally tell them that if God was really bothered about them getting the decision right according to some predetermined idea of his own, he would make it super-obvious. Because the fact that we're even having this conversation (and that it's repeated worldwide a zillion times a week) is proof that humanity generally sucks at reading God's mind. And God is not some monster that has a Sooper-Sekrit Will that he keeps hidden from everybody, even those who love him most, and then rains down punishment on them (like certain humans I have known).
So basically, I believe that God gives us a huge amount of free choice to be used with as much wisdom and consultation (with friends, with Scripture, with other sources of good sense) as possible. And I don't think he puts up his nose and sniffs at us when it goes south. In fact, the whole "I did the best I could and it still turned into major sucky-time" experience is IMHO inherent in living in a broken world--did you ever know anybody who avoided it, who lived past age five?--and those kinds of experiences often result in other long-term GOOD consequences, like being able to empathize with others and be helpful to them when their own lives get messed up.
So where does that leave me? Praying for wisdom, talking to friends, and hopefully, forgiving myself for not being omniscient when some choice of mine turns out worse than I expected. And refraining from attributing to God the kinds of attitudes and behaviors that would class a human parent as abusive.
I am married to the person I'm married to at least in part because God apparently arranged it that every other woman I had previously tried to start a relationship with made it clear she'd sooner put her legs in a blender than be romantically associated with me. That's how he "guided" me away from them. That eventually someone I liked wasn't horrified by the very thought seemed like something of a miracle, to be fair.
I'm in the job I'm in (IT) because I was pretty shit at everything else.
In church my "role" is singing in the choir or playing the organ if they're really, really desperate. Again, I do that because I enjoy it rather than any coincidences or convictions leading that way.
I dunno; I just find most people's talk of this area just doesn't resonate with my experience at all. I can't find points of correspondence.