A Christian Response to Fatalism

  

    In the late 1700’s, a young minister stood up in the middle of an English Baptist convention and asked to be sent as a missionary. Few protestant denominations of that time did any missionary work. William Carey’s request was radical and, according to most the pastors present, impossible. International travel was too dangerous and new languages too hard to learn. But more importantly, converting people to Christianity was not their responsibility; it was God’s. According to one pastor, “if God wanted to save the heathen, he could do it without help from you or me.”  After 200 years of protestant missions and an extraordinary growth of Christianity around the world because of it, it sounds ridiculous to believe that Christian leaders once believed God did not want or need them to help save the diverse nations of the world. However, this basic attitude persists throughout history in the form of fatalism: the belief that I am powerless to change the situation.

            Fatalism was the dominate belief of the western world until the rise of Christianity. The gods were fickle and controlled the fates of humanity. They were just as likely to turn a person into a cow as bless them. Devotion and sacrifices might earn you favor, but there was no guarantee. With Christianity came a God who was far more caring and far less controlling. People have choices; actions have consequence; and God’s world operates according to natural laws, not divine temper tantrums. But fatalism did not die. It simply took new forms. It lives in the hedonist who proclaims, “eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.” And it lives in the smoker who says, “well, we all have to die from something, so it may as well be lung cancer.”

            Fatalism plays an important physiological role because it frees people of responsibility. If this situation is out of my control, then there is nothing I need to do about it. As much as most people claim they want to be in control of their own lives, honestly, most of us do not. We like having bosses and laws and moral codes that take the responsibility for our actions away from us.  Because of this psychological release, fatalism tends to increase during troubled times. It is a coping mechanism just like denial and anger. So, it is not surprising that it has shown up frequently in the last several years. Some examples of modern fatalism?

• ·       “Racism is a heart issue, and only God can change people’s hearts.”
• ·       “If people are going to get COVID, there’s nothing we can do to stop that. If it’s your time, it’s your time.”
• ·       “Everyone on both sides is so corrupt, it doesn’t matter if I vote.”
• ·       “People have always been violent and always will be. Laws to restrict violence won’t help.”
• ·       “The world is so big and I am so small. If there is climate change, how could we do anything about it?”

Among Christian circles, this fatalism is often dressed up in biblical-ish language of “trust” and “faith” and “spending time with God.” Genesis 1 records the first words God spoke to humanity. Were they an invitation to enjoy God’s presence or a command to wait patiently for God to move in their lives?  No. They were marching orders, “Be fruitful and multiple. Fill the earth, and steward it” (Gen 1:28). When Abraham is called to trust God, it is not by waiting in his home country but by packing up and leaving it (Gen 12). David proved that he had more faith than his fellow Israelite soldiers when he fought Goliath, not by trusting God to send someone else to do it for him (I Sam 17). In the New Testament, Jesus called his disciples to “come and follow me” and upon his ascension, commissioned them to “go and make disciples” (Mt 4:19; 28:19).

Of course, we must distinguish between the gift of God of salvation and the actions that are expected to flow out of it. Good works do not cleanse from sin; Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection from the grave does. But the apostle James considered Christians taking actions so important that he questioned the legitimacy of the “faith” of anyone who did not have actions to go with that saving faith--- “as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead” (Jm 2:26).

Expecting Christians to take actions does not diminish the supremacy of God. The pastor who challenged William Carey was technically correct when he said that God could save the heathen without our help. It’s not that God can’t; it’s that God doesn’t. Some say that God is a gentleman God, but I prefer the language of a cooperative God. The cosmos is his sandbox and he could form and reform every piece of it with a word. But when it comes to changing people’s minds, spreading his message, showing his love, and caring for his world, he invites humans to cooperate with him in these tasks.

I have a sign in my living room with one of my favorite quotes from a seventeenth century mystic named Teresa of Avila. She said, “Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassionately on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.” It is a convicting challenge. How would we live if we believed our actions had consequences? If we believed the good we put into the world mattered, would we do more? If we believed that we could dent or break a stronghold of suffering, would we try?