BIshop's letters: November 03 +James Fate

“Beware of fate. It loves to take advantage of anyone who believes in it”. And plenty do.

Take, for example, a young man who went on holiday abroad with his girlfriend last summer. She was struck by lightning as they lay on the beach and subsequently died. He was unharmed. According to one newspaper, he told the reporter, “It must have been fate”.

Or how about ‘Pop Idol’ finalist Rik Waller. Questioned by members of the Bromley Operatic Society, he was asked, “Do you believe in fate?” “Yes I do” he replied. “If something is meant to be a certain way, then I believe there’s nothing you can do about it”.

I meet any number of Christians who would take a similar line. Disasters ‘must have been meant’ to happen. When they go for interviews, they know they will ‘get the job if it’s meant’. Everything in and about life seems to be predetermined and there is nothing they - or anyone else - can do about it. After all, isn’t that what it means to say that ‘God is in charge’? Isn’t this one obvious implication of believing that he is sovereign?

Actually, no. There is a huge difference between what theologians call ‘Providence’ and the popular notion of ‘Fate’. Fate suggests that our choices and decisions make no difference to what happens to us and to those around us. It is the fundamental philosophy that lies behind astrology and which, therefore, influences millions of people who read their daily horoscope. It is also built in to some eastern religions which speak of people’s ‘destiny’ in a deterministic way which rules out any possibility of change. ‘Fate’ and free will are mutually exclusive.

Providence, by contrast, takes seriously both the reality of our actions and our responsibility for them. It describes the continuing will and activity of God the Creator towards his creation. He didn’t simply create the world and then sit back and leave it to its own devices. Rather, he continues to act towards his creation with the same purpose and in the same spirit in which he created it. He is continually active in the course of history - but his activity and oversight allows us the freedom to make plans and choose between alternatives. Of course, our choices are affected, one way or another, by factors such as heredity, environment and social pressure. But we have been created with free will and God honours that as he stands behind and alongside everything we do.

In his providence, God also ‘works in all things for good, for those who love him’. So Lisa Potts, the courageous Nursery School Teacher who protected her charges from a machete attack in Wolverhampton, found that her faith was strengthened, despite permanent injuries and horrific memories. It wasn’t ‘fate’ that she was there on that July day in 1996. But in God’s Providence, she was where she was, did what she did and has inspired many others since.

As with so much of Christianity, there is an element of mystery here - which was wisely and humorously summed up by Archbishop Temple when a woman told him about her aunt’s marvellous escape from certain death. Before setting off on a sea voyage, the aunt twice dreamed that the boat was going to sink. She abandoned the trip: and, sure enough, the boat sank. “Wasn’t that a marvellous act of providence?” asked the woman. “Well ma’am” replied Temple, “as I don’t know your aunt, I can’t say”!

James Newcome