Maybe It Was Meant to Be

Do you ever get the feeling that some things are simply meant to be? Maybe you don’t exactly know why, or you might not understand how something came to be, but it simply seems right. Maybe you ended up at a certain place at a certain time, and you really cannot be sure why a particular thing happened, but it simply felt a certain way.

I wish I had a better way to describe it for you, but I think we have all been there. Some people describe meeting their eventual spouse for the first time in this way. Some people talk about how certain career opportunities just appeared out of nowhere at the right time and turned out to be the perfect fit for their skills. Even some things that may not be great, but they still have that feeling of destiny or, in the words of George McFly, “density.” (Incidentally, I was talking to some younger coworkers the other day who had never seen Back to the Future. They have no idea what they are missing.)

I have been thinking about this a lot lately in the context of a quote from The Lord of the Rings which probably comes as a surprise to just about no one. As they are nearing the end of their journey to destroy the Ring, Sam is carrying Frodo and the road is becoming remarkably difficult. He is dehydrated, malnourished and exhausted in a barren wasteland, and he is carrying his friend up a mountain. That’s a tough time.

In the midst of all that though, he finds a path. Sam sees it as something that was simply meant to be for his benefit, but that’s not the entire story.

“Sam could not see the course immediately above him, where it was lowest, for a steep slope went up from where he stood; but he guessed that if he could only struggle on just a little way further up, they would strike this path. A gleam of hope returned to him. They might conquer the Mountain yet. ‘Why, it might have been put there a-purpose!’ he said to himself. ‘If it wasn’t there, I’d have to say I was beaten in the end.’

The path was not put there for the purposes of Sam. He did not know it, but he was looking at Sauron’s Road from Barad-dûr to the Sammath Naur, the Chambers of Fire.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002), 941-942, Kindle Edition.

This is a fascinating passage. Notice what we have here based on the different perspectives. Sam does not know much about the geography of Mordor. He simply knows that there is a path in front of him, and he is grateful that it is there because it will make his journey that much easier. However, he attributes the purpose behind the path to some benevolent power who put it there for his benefit. The reader is not given any more insight into Sam’s thoughts at this moment, but they are obviously characterized by gratefulness.

What the reader does know in the next sentence is that this path was actually created for nefarious purposes. It was built to allow the Dark Lord to move around his own domain more efficiently. It was not designed for Sam at all. In fact, a little further down on the page, the reader is informed that even Sauron’s minions maintain the road. It wasn’t just created originally for the Dark Lord, but it was actively maintained for his purposes.

There are a few potential options here for the reader. I find this passage perplexing in some ways. After all, the road was indeed built for a specific purpose. I do not know the implications of the construction of that road. Had it created a great deal of pain and suffering by allowing agents of evil to move more quickly around their own land? I am not sure. Maybe so, or maybe not. We simply do not know. Maybe there were certain conflicts that would have turned in favor of the good armies if the evil hordes were not able to effectively move troops. Perhaps there is some reference in the legendarium I am not aware of, but I don’t believe there is. All that we actually know is that it was indeed constructed for the purposes of Sauron.

However, if Sam’s evaluation of his own situation is accurate, then this road was also what ironically brought about Sauron’s defeat. If Sam would not have been able to ascend the mountain without that path, then the forces of evil had been committing time and energy to creating and maintaining exactly what would ultimately bring about their own downfall.

Was the path intended by a higher power? Was it not intended by a higher power but nevertheless used by that higher power for the facilitation of a good outcome? Now we have run into our classic theological debate about the nature of free will. I’m not necessarily going to dive into it, but no matter which perspective you take, the actual facts of the situation remain identical. There is a road that had been used for bad purposes but was ultimately used for a wonderful purpose. In fact, it was used for the purpose of saving the world.

I don’t know where you are spiritually. However, I imagine you have probably had some tough times in your life. We are all different and have our own obstacles to face, but we share the common reality of living in a fallen world. That is the one thing I think people of all religions or no religion can agree on. Our world is a pretty messed up place a lot of the time, and we are really good at making a mess of it ourselves.

However, we find the signs that seem meant to be, and they surprise us. We end up surrounded by all of these things that may not always go our way, but sometimes those detours are the things that work out for our benefit in the long term. We don’t like them in the short term. They might be objectively bad. That being said, they also seem to have this strange quality that makes them either ultimately beneficial or seemingly beneficial even if they were not intended that way by their creator.

This passage of The Lord of the Rings never really stood out to me in my prior read throughs, but it really stood out to me this time. The theme has seemed remarkably powerful to me in just about everything lately. I don’t know exactly why. Maybe I just want to see the activity of Providence in the world, or maybe I am seeing it more, so I am becoming more attuned to its presence. Either way, these types of things are not just limited to fantasy. I think you can find them around you as well.

Knowing Those Who Make a Difference

I know you will not read this post for a few days, but just so you know, I am writing this on Independence Day. I was thinking back to what an exciting time it must’ve been for our Founding Fathers. I get excited when I create minor things like this website, but I can’t imagine the thrill of creating something as amazing as a country. Very few people have the opportunity to be a part of a project that, 243 years later, we know changed the world quite literally. Of course, they did not know what their efforts would lead to. For all they knew, they were going to be captured by the British and hanged for treason. They knew they were declaring their independence from the crown, and a few years later they would be building the massively complex, living organism.

However, with this gargantuan task laid at their feet, it has always been surprising to me how small the world actually was. There were not that many people around overall.

In 1776, the colonies had an estimated population of 2.5 million people. For little bit of perspective, in 2018, my home state of Vermont had approximately a quarter of that, 626,299 people. Vermont is one of the smallest states, but our population is a rather significant portion of the entire colonial population. I can’t pretend that I know everyone in Vermont, but if I reflected over my entire life and considered how many people in the state I have come into contact with, it would not be a small number. Also, people did not travel nearly as much back then as they do now, so you would become very close to the people that were geographically closest to you. I have gone to many doctors outside of my state. In 1776, besides the fact that there would be no treatment for my condition, I would have gone to the doctors closest to me. It would not really have been realistic for me to travel from what were the New Hampshire Grants to Maryland like I do in modern times.

Why is this all significant? When you think about who the delegates were who signed the Declaration of Independence, it was much easier to make sure that you are putting forward people that actually represented your state because the likelihood of you knowing your representatives was significantly higher. If you did not know your representative, it would be a much easier process to either find someone who did or find that representative yourself.

That strikes me as highly significant when you are trying to find someone that you want to be in the room as your country is being built. Let’s face it. Most of us don’t really know our representatives. As a Vermonter, I have said hello to Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch, but I don’t believe I have ever spoken to Patrick Leahy unless I just don’t remember. But, like I pointed out above, I live in a small state. The odds of me meeting my representatives are much greater than people in states with larger populations. As a result, we don’t really know very much about the actual people that we put forward. I know that we try our best to learn. I tried to be educated about my voting decisions, and I hope that you try to be as well. However, I’m largely voting on the images people portray. It is not a personal connection like I imagine would be more possible in 1776.

The obvious piece of contradicting evidence is the difficulty of travel as I mentioned above. What is a two-hour drive today very well might be a multiple day trip in 1776, so if you wanted to be a part of that event, it would take a lot more effort. Therefore, even with the reduced population, it might be much more difficult to become educated like I suggested I try to be today.

However, reputations travel. Do you work in a place where rumors spread? Assuming that you work, then the definitive answer is yes. We all understand how that works. Even if I was not capable of traveling to meet a particular person in 1776, it would not be as difficult to find someone who had. Personal impressions I have to imagine involved much fewer degrees of separation.

Again, why do I mention this? As I mentioned above, these people were given a remarkable task. Not only did they have to declare separation from the most powerful entity in the world at that time, but they also had to build something that did not exist and would not exist if they did not do their jobs. You would want to make sure that you have the right people in the right position to represent you. Obviously, these men were far from perfect, and they certainly did not do everything right by any means. Nobody said that. However, what I am suggesting is that the world in 1776 had something that we do not have. With fewer people around and less geographic mobility and an increased likelihood of living in one’s hometown long-term, the chances that the average person would know the person representing him or her I would imagine would be higher. Perhaps I am wrong, and if you know some research that contradicts what I am saying, please email it to me.

However, if my theory is accurate, then I think that there is a very important truth that applies to all of us today. We all want to know the people who are making decisions about us. We want to feel like they know us and care about us individually. I don’t think that desire has gone away even as our country has grown and perhaps we have even grown more connected by social media. You can have friends from across the country instead of the geographic limitations that existed in 1776.

However, there is a trade-off there. I know people from around the country and around the world, but that means that I do not invest as much time in knowing the people around me. Ironically, in the case of the United States, that may mean that instead of investing my time in knowing people who actually have an impact on my life, I am investing more time in other things that do not have a direct impact on me.

I do not write this to denounce all online friendships. Plenty of you reading this are people that I will probably never meet in person. That’s okay. However, I think that that needs to be a critical balance. We want to make sure that we are cultivating our local relationships as well. Because, at the end of the day, I think we somewhat desire the conditions of 1776. If we put down deep roots in a particular town, we want to know the people that are living there with us. We desire that direct human connection in person. Again, not to insult any online friendships, but there is something absolutely different about meeting someone face-to-face. In fact, the people that you meet face-to-face in your local area are much more likely to impact your life in significant ways, much like the representatives in 1776. It was important for people to know them, and it is important for us to know people directly around us as well.

Isn't Your Life Remarkable?

Have you ever really taken a second to consider the improbability that you specifically would be brought into this world? A few friends and I were talking about this just yesterday. There are so many things that could have happened in literally the entire course of human history that would have caused a detour that may have skirted my entry into the human race.

Think about something as simple as maybe your parents not meeting. Maybe your parents are like mine and met during college. What if one of them chose a different college? Either one of them could have easily chosen somewhere else.

Or, you might be a child that was not exactly planned. Or you might be a child who was adopted from a foreign country. Or maybe your parents or grandparents happened to serve in the military and were one of the survivors from D-Day. I don’t know your story and your background, but my point is that there were tons of things that brought us to the point we are today where you are reading this. Some of them were improbable or even surprising.

Even beyond that, why did you happen to read what I write? Maybe you know me. Maybe out of the billions of people in the world, I had the pleasure of meeting you, and you know that I write, so you decided to read what I have written. Maybe you simply found this post through a Google search. You weren’t planning on reading anything I had ever written because you didn’t know I existed until this moment. But now, you and I have some common ground. Albeit, we don’t have much. You have read about 250 words that I have written, and that is about the foundation of our relationship, but you know something about me, and I at least know that you are a statistic that shows that one person has visited this particular page on my website.

You have to admit, it is really a remarkable thing that we are exactly where we are in history at particular times. There is so much that could have happened in different ways, but it didn’t. It happened one particular way, and we now find ourselves exactly where we are right now.

Without getting incredibly philosophical here, I’m curious how this fact makes you feel. For me, it makes me feel fortunate for one thing. Of course, I don’t think I would know anything if I was never born. It is not like I would be some kind of disembodied soul floating around waiting for a body that never happened if history didn’t play out exactly the way it did. However, I feel like being, and all of the great things that I have enjoyed about being a member of the human race, is certainly better than not being. After all, I would suppose that a net positive overall considering my experiences is probably better than the apparent neutrality of nonexistence.

I am always sad when I hear people talk about how bad their lives are and how they wish they had never been born. The simple fact that you were born is frankly a miracle. I am not just talking about birth and of itself of a generic child. Rather, you specifically, out of all the potential children who could’ve been born even just by your parents, but multiplied by millions and billions of people throughout the course of history means that you are in pretty remarkable company. You are one of the privileged few that has had the ability to even take a breath.

If you really are in that type of special company, I feel like you and I have some obligations. Why should we not make the most out of the time we have? Why should we not necessarily embrace life for all it’s worth with this type of understanding?

I feel like a lot of us avoid this obligation. A lot of us don’t necessarily feel like we are anything special simply for being here, but even if you deny the existence of some higher purpose that brought you here at this specific moment (something I do happen to believe in), the fact that you are here means that you owe something to your fellow members of humanity.

Even if you are simply the product of random chance, you were the lucky product of that lottery, and you ought to do what you can to make a difference given the lucky break that you have been given. Of course, I think it is quite evident that this world is driven by a lot more than just plain chance and luck, and I think there is actually a purpose for you and I both being here at this moment.

Regardless of which perspective you take, I hope that at least may be reflecting on this really remarkable yet surprisingly ordinary miracle causes you to want to do something. I don’t know what it is as I think it will be different for each one of us depending on our individual gifts and talents. However, don’t you actually want to do something with quite frankly the gift of life that you have been given? There are so many ways that you might not have been given that opportunity, so the fact that you have it is something that should not be taken lightly.

Let me ask you this though. When you think about this idea of making a difference, one of the most important questions you can ask yourself is why you want to make a difference. Do you want to make the world a better place? That’s good. How do you define better? How do you decide what would be better or what would be worse? These are the key questions that you need to ask.

If you are not in a position to answer those questions right now or have to think a little bit harder about them, all I can ask you that you do not take your existence for granted. Man, we all know so many people who do. There’s a lot of waste. Let’s at least try not to be part of that problem. Let’s do what we can to help not only make the world a better place but also live for whatever purpose we are specifically put here for.

The Power Soccer Community

I have now been home from our power soccer national tournament for about a week and to say it has been on my mind is an understatement. After getting over my tiredness and simply the letdown of being done, I have to admit that the results were obviously not what I was aiming for. Does anyone go to the competition without hoping to come away with the championship? If you do, then maybe you are just wired differently than me. Winning is not everything by any means (okay, I am just saying that to try to sound normal, as it has been said, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing”), but I do play to win to the best of my ability, so the fact that we had our share of struggles, particularly on Sunday where the proverbial (and literal in the case of one of my teammates) wheel came off, was a little bit tough for me. It is not so much a matter of blaming myself, my teammates, the referees, or anyone else, but there is still that twinge of regret that we did not come away with the trophy that I was hoping to bring back to Vermont. If you’ve played sports before, I think you can understand where I am coming from.

Trying to set aside that competitive wiring in my mind, I have to come back to my topic that is one of my favorites. The power soccer community is a remarkable thing. I am a pretty social person, so I take advantage of every opportunity to hang out at the gym watching other people play. Whoever I end up sitting by turns into my conversation partner, sometimes whether they like it or not. It is so easy because we have a shared interest playing out in front of us. I like to talk about the game. Most people have no idea what power soccer is, so I take advantage of the opportunity to discuss the intricacies of the game with other people who love to play it as well.

Over the years, I have gotten to know a lot of people. When I went into the gym on Saturday morning, I was greeted by a bunch of familiar faces. People were greeting me, and I was greeting them. Lots of smiles were going around because it simply made me happy to see some cool people I hadn’t seen for a few years. That is the power of community. You have a group of people with a shared interest, and they come together to celebrate that interest. This is why communities matter. There is a natural human desire to want to have these types of experiences. We are wired to want to have things like this, and I’m so privileged to have been able to find several of them, power soccer being one.

I would like to suggest, however, that there is something deeper to this desire for community other than the really great fact that it makes me feel good to be a part of it. That is certainly a significant benefit and should not be minimized. However, when we do things that are consistent with human nature, it does not just make us feel good. Rather, it encourages human thriving. When humanity thrives, we are not just happy. Happiness is a symptom of thriving rather than the root cause of it. In other words, I am doing something that is good, beneficial, healthy, and positive, so I am happy. Community does not become good because it makes me happy. Instead, community itself is good and therefore makes me happy.

Let me suggest an alternative illustration if this seems a little bit convoluted. For some people, drugs make them happy. However, that does not mean that drugs are good. If drugs were actually good, then they would be beneficial, healthy, and positive, making people happy as a consequence of that intrinsic goodness. Just because they make some people happy does not make them good.

With that differentiation clarified and hopefully understood, I think that there is an extension we can make beyond this fact that community is good. If community is intrinsically good for us and encourages human thriving, then reaching back one step raises the question as to why we are wired this way. After all, there is no real reason that community itself must be a good thing. It could be a damaging thing like drugs. I guess I need to justify that assumption a little bit further.

Since the beginning of human history, it seems to be the case that humanity has organized itself in groups. For Christians, we recognize the reality of God’s statement that it is not good for man to be alone. Of course, God was speaking in the context of creating Eve, but I think that the principle extends beyond just a discussion of husbands and wives. It is good for us to have friends. It is good for us to have children. It is good for us to have other people to avoid being alone. It is therefore no surprise that humanity has followed its actual desires which God put in the human heart for man to desire companionship in a variety of ways.

Doesn’t this understanding of why humanity is wired in this way simply seem consistent with your experience? Even if you are not a Christian, don’t you get a similar feeling when you are around a group of people who share common interests and values? You are all committed to something and desire to do it together with joy. You have that desire in you just as much as I do. Whatever your explanation of the origin of a natural, human desire for community, the one thing that you cannot do is deny that it exists. I think the Christian explanation makes a great deal of sense. We simply desire community because we were designed with that desire. It is a good desire that was built into our species from the beginning. For those of you who do not embrace this type of understanding of creation, I would at least encourage you to make sure that your understanding takes into account this feature of reality. It needs to.

So, in conclusion, community feels great, but it is not good because it feels great. Instead, it feels great because it is intrinsically good, and I would contend that it is intrinsically good because God designed us and understood in His infinite wisdom that it is not good for man to be alone. I know that I am reaping the benefits of that goodness after last weekend, and I would encourage you, if you are not actively a part of some community, to find one. The church would be the ideal place to start. Naturally, the best communities are the ones that are based on the foundation of God’s Word. However, if you are not quite ready for that step, I would at least encourage you to do what is consistent with your human nature and seek out a community. You are designed this way for a reason, and you know what communities feel like from the ones you have been a part of before or are currently a part of currently. If you are missing that in your life right now, make it happen.

Doing What We Have To Do

I am writing this piece on June 11. When you read this, it will be ideally June 17, and I will be in Fort Wayne, Indiana. As most of you know, my team will be playing power soccer, so I don’t know that I will have a lot of time to write over the weekend like I usually do.

I don’t normally like to write ahead of time because you never know what might change between now and then. I don’t remember the exact legislation, but there was one time I had anticipated publishing something on a particular law that was about to be passed, but I had written it a week early and by the time my next publication date came around, the law had been shot down. Not that it was that big of a deal, but I think you can see what I mean. It is weird to write something one day, anticipating you will feel the same way about whatever you have written several days later.

Of course, I am a chronic second guesser as well. I write something, but I always doubt what I have written. I may feel exactly the same about what I have written as a matter of principle, but as a matter of communication, I may want to word things in a totally different manner. This comes out a lot for me when I write about controversial issues. On this website you know I have written about abortion multiple times. Those are hard articles for me to write. It is not because I question my principles or my position. I think I have a solid intellectual foundation for my pro-life convictions. However, I question the way that I communicate those convictions. I want to put forward my position in the best light possible for two reasons. When I talk about important things like that, I certainly don’t want to be the guy who puts up a dumb article that people use to explain why the pro-life position is terrible or something like that. I want to be the guy who puts up the article that really forces people to think. Again though, I second-guess myself, so even if I may feel exactly the same about the position I have already taken, I may want to rewrite my entire article just because I all of a sudden doubt what I have written. It is another problem with writing something so early.

I don’t know that I can write this article without also mentioning the fact that when you write ahead of time, you sometimes forget what you have written until you publish it. I have definitely done that before as well. For some of you who might not have been following my writing for all that long, I used to write a daily devotional blog. I would take a chapter of the Bible every day and just reflect on it in a few hundred words. There were times when, for example, during final exam week in college, I would do much like I am doing right now and write ahead of time. I wanted to make sure I put out a decent product and didn’t rush ridiculously because I was stressed out over my exams or anything like that. The fun part happened when people wanted to talk about what I had written. That didn’t happen all the time of course, but it is funny when you publish something in the morning and claim that you couldn’t remember it in the afternoon. Yet another hazard of trying to write ahead of time. And, as a bit of a disclaimer, if you could be on this article next Monday (or, the day that you are ideally reading this), hopefully my team will be gearing up to play in the semifinals, so I can virtually promise you that I may not remember all the fine details of what I have written for you. My focus will hopefully be elsewhere.

As I write about all of this, I cannot help but think that it seems really bizarre to be writing an article ahead of time about why I should not write articles ahead of time. However, there is one last truth that is absolutely necessary. Sometimes life makes you do things that you may not necessarily want to do in a perfect world. My example here is a little bit ridiculous because I am doing something I want to do, so writing early is really just a choice I am making. I realize that there are not serious consequences really to any decision I make. Even if I didn’t write for a week and didn’t publish anything, maybe some of you would be disappointed, but overall, it is not really the biggest deal in the world. The world is probably not going to change because of anything I write or do not write on this website.

All that being said and qualified, I think we can all relate to this kind of thing. Sometimes there are things that have to be done with you want to do them or not, and you make it happen. I can’t help but think of the conversion of CS Lewis. He went to a very long intellectual journey to try to find the truth, and he ended up with Christianity. He realized that it was right, and he had to make a decision. I would consider him a reluctant convert. He did not just go to church one day and all of a sudden recognize that he needed to become a Christian. It was a journey, but it was something that had to be done if he was going to consistently pursue truth.

That is my encouragement for you today. Sometimes I think there are things that we cannot always understand or don’t always want to do, but we do them. There is some sufficient reason that motivates us to recognize the fact that we have to pull the trigger on whatever decision we might be facing. For CS Lewis, it was his Christianity. In a much more trivial way, it was be deciding to write something even know it is not my favorite way to write. For you, who knows what it might be? I certainly don’t. That said, if it really is something that you have to do, then I think this is probably the time to do it. There’s not much that you can do if it is actually necessary. Take the courage and face it head on. (And cheer for my soccer team in the games that we are hypothetically playing perhaps even as you read this).