Cause and Effect?

Events happen because something causes them.  Your toe hurts because you smacked it into the door jam.  You’re tired because you stayed up too late the night before.  It’s dark at night because the sun sets.  We may argue about the causes of what we experience (is human activity responsible for climate change? have government regulations killed the coal industry?).  And we may not know what the causes are (why do people get cancer?  what started World War I?).  But we all agree that our world operates under the rule of cause and effect.

Philosophers of religion sometimes refer to God as the “First Cause.”  He ultimately is the cause of everything that happens.  The circumstance that causes one event was itself caused by something else, and so on down the line until we reach God himself as the First Cause.  For example, someone’s house collapses because of an earthquake.  The earthquake occurred because tectonic plates under the earth’s surface grind against each other.  The plates move because of the earth’s structure.  The earth is structured the way it is because…. Eventually we reach the first cause: “because of God.”  And God has no cause.  He is the one who causes everything else.

Lately, however, I’ve been wondering if the rule of cause and effect actually runs the world.  What if some things happen for no reason and with no cause?  For example, medical researchers have not been able to find the cause for some diseases.  Because we believe in cause and effect, we assume that there is a cause, and we hope that more research will find it.  But is that always the case?  Could it be that sometimes when we ask “Why did this happen?” there is simply no reason why?  Not that we can’t figure out or understand why it happened, but that there simply is no cause for it at all.

Unbelievers may chalk such events up to dumb luck or random fate.  Sometimes things just happen, they may say.  Life is one giant coin toss: sometimes you come out heads, and other times for no reason at all you end up with tails.

But as believers, we acknowledge that we are under the control of God’s providential care.  He does not need a reason, or a cause, to do what he does.  Job and his friends spent 35 chapters debating the cause for his affliction.  When God finally spoke, he did not provide a reason or a cause for what happened to Job.  He described his power and his control over the most powerful and the most insignificant happenings in creation.  In essence, he asked Job, “Who are you that you should expect an explanation from me?”  Sometimes, we do not know the cause for what happened because there is none.  There is only the will of God.

In his letter to the Romans, Paul considers the question of God’s justice when he blesses one person instead of another.  He does not explain that the person deserved what they got, or even that there is a purpose beyond human understanding.  He concludes that God’s will needs no reason or explanation: “God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden” (Romans 9:18).

God has blessed us with inquisitive minds and the desire to understand.  But at times, we submit to God’s authority by relinquishing the notion that our actions, or events in God’s creation, can explain what happens to us.  God needs no cause or reason for what he does.