I didn’t contradict her to her face. However, by this point, even though I was still a theist, I was already not taking assertions like the one she made as seriously as most people in the ultra-religious Southern United States do.
This instance was the most memorable case of me having been told something like this. However, I grew up and spent my young adulthood in East Tennessee – and over those years I heard countless variants of this assertion. Here are just a few:
- “God never closes one door without opening another.”
- “It’s all part of God’s plan.”
- And the most canonical form: “God never gives us more than we can handle.”
Though the truth is – lots of people have more obstacles thrust upon them than they can handle. There’s babies who die within weeks of their birth. They clearly had more thrust upon them than they could handle. The parents of those babies are haunted for the rest of their lives. Some of them move on, however painfully – but some of them are never functional in society again. They, too, had more thrust on them than they could handle. And you may hear from time to time inspirational stories about how a Jew survived the World War II Holocaust – but for each Jew who survived, several more died gruesome deaths during that chapter of history. No – it’s not their fault for not having done whatever the few who survived did. Rather, the truth is that they, too, had more obstacles thrust upon them than they could handle.
If you think that I’ve left something out of this list then you’re absolutely right. I could write till the cows come home, and still this list would be far from complete. But what I did manage to do is to provide enough examples to make my point – lots of people have more obstacles thrust upon them that they can handle. The only reason why I no longer believe that God is the one who is thrusting these unsurmountable objects upon so many is because I’ve stopped believing that God exists altogether.
Such idyllic views on life are, of course, inherent to mainstream monotheistic religion. When people believe in a being that is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, it becomes inevitable that sayings such as this one come up. An omnibenevolent being wouldn’t want to put more on your plate than you can handle, and an omnipotent being wouldn’t have to. Furthermore, if that omnipotent, omnibenevelent being is also omniscient, then that being would know when, exactly, you have as much on your plate as it can handle, and therefore would at that point know not to thrust any more obstacles upon you.
Of course, by no means am I suggesting that all theists hold to such naive optimism. As a matter of fact, I think that I’ve already made it clear in this piece that I discarded such notions quite a while before I was ready to let go of belief in God altogether. But despite the fact that it is possible to believe that God exists without believing that He is bound to give you your Happily Ever AFter in the end, the logical link between mainstream monotheism and this fairytale optimism is still undeniable.
But you might ask – what’s wrong with this fairytale optimism? If someone is having a difficult time in life, what’s the harm in believing that somehow it will all work out in the end? Well – there are lots of problems with it.
The main defense of this mindset (not counting those that hinge on the premise of this empirically untenable position actually being true) is that it gives people the strength that they need in order to persevere through their difficulties. This is important because even if in reality there is no guarantee that things will work out, things are still far more likely to work out if you keep pushing when the going is tough than it is if you give up.
However, while such beliefs might give some people the strength to persevere through tough times, they are just as liable to enable the complacency to coast by and not do everything that you could to increase the odds of an optimal outcome. After all – we go through the bother if you can just trust God to fix the problem? I believe that the expression is – give your burdens unto Him.
Furthermore, since the possibility of things not working out so nicely in the end is part of reality, insisting otherwise constitutes a failure to face reality – and that never goes over well. People can make really bad choices in life because they’re counting on some guarantee that things will work out in the end when in reality there is no such guarantee.
Truth be told, there are ways to increase the strength that one would need to persevere amidst adversity that don’t involve deluding oneself into thinking that a happy ending is guaranteed. It is better to use one of those alternative approaches.
Another defense of this naively optimistic mindset might be that if someone is bound to suffer in life, such a believe (even if it is not true) can at least give that person some comfort. This defense also appears at first glance to make sense. After all, if a difficult situation can’t be relieved, why should we not at least want some relief for any emotional misery that it might cause?
The problem is – such theistic optimism can backfire in this regard as well. It’s all fine and dandy to be energized by the illusory assurance that God has a plan for your deepest desires to be fulfilled – but what happens when time goes by and you see that things don’t turn out so great?
The answer is – you start to wonder why. You wonder if this might be a sign that God is displeased with you. You’ve done everything that you can to live a devout life – but you conclude that there is obviously something that you’ve been failing to do that causes things to turn out badly. Maybe you haven’t been praying hard enough, or you’ve entertained that spiteful thought toward your neighbor. Or perhaps you weren’t given more than you can handle – but you failed to handle what you got through your own fault – despite the fact that there is no reasonable evidence that you could have handled it. Or maybe you haven’t adequately turned your life over to God – despite the fact that in every discernible way you have.
Or maybe you’re just not being patient enough. Nevermind if, by all reasonable standards, the season for this desire of yours to be fulfilled has long since arrived and is starting to fade.
In short – you conclude that it is somehow your fault. You become convinced that either it is your fault that what you desire hasn’t come or it is your fault that you are disappointed at it not having come. Either way, you blame yourself. And there’s nothing wrong with taking responsibility for things that truly are your responsibility. But it is another thing entirely to blame yourself when you have no reason to pin the blame on yourself besides the unsubstantiated notion that your despondency is despite some God Almighty being out there who wants good things for you.
But even worse – having such a world view doesn’t just cause you to victim-blame yourself if you happen to be the one who suffers from the random misfortunes that can come in life. Even if you happen to be one of the lucky ones who don’t encounter such insurmountable obstacles, such a world view can cause you to victim-blame others who aren’t as lucky as yourself.
Another way that it could warp your perception of misfortunes that befall others might be by making you dismissive of the severity of their situations. After all, if God doesn’t give people more than they can handle, then surely God isn’t doing it to that couple that is completely devastated by the death of their child who was only a few weeks old. Surely they have the means by which to pull through. And you conclude that without doing anything to check if that is actually true.
Or if you see someone who has been completely bankrupted by medical bills – you might think that that, too, surely isn’t as bad as it seems. You ignore any evidence that it actually is that bad because it doesn’t fit with your world view that God doesn’t thrust on people more than they can handle.
Very few things can impair someone’s cognitive empathy like theistic optimism can. It is not only an unsubstantiated viewpoint. It is also an extremely harmful one.
