A Casual Musing on Fate and God

I’ve had this topic in mind for over a year, but I never had time to sit down and organize my thoughts. As my general examination is over and I have no business working with unethical people anymore, I suddenly have all time to meditate on it.

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Though I’ve been exposed to various religions growing up, neither my family nor I have been religious. Yet, I’ve grown to think about the topic in the past several years, especially since I watched the following documentary: Identical twins were born in the 70s in Korea, but their mother immediately fell ill. She and her husband couldn’t afford to raise them, so they sent one child away for adoption. More than forty years later, the twins found each other. The Korean twin had become a shaman and the American twin a psychology professor. Before the documentary ended, they were asked if they believe in fate or destiny. The American twin said No: “I don’t. I’m a scientific practitioner, and I believe that each one of us has choices, and we follow those choices.”

This particular interview shook me. To be precise, I don’t believe there’s a destination assigned to us (I might accept destiny if it means following our choices or their outcomes, but then “destiny” becomes hopelessly broad and useless). Yet, I believe in fate. For instance, it was not the American twin’s choice to be sent away as an infant. She sure made choices to become a professor, but what if her sister, not she, was sent to the United States? Would that not have changed the course of her life? In this intricate web of human and even non-human relations, we are bound to make choices within the contexts shaped by other people’s choices.

Of course, these contexts can be described without invoking the mysticism “fate” introduces. Her mother’s illness, unexpected twins, the economic and social conditions of Korea in the 70s, and the list goes on. Yet, some choices, such as which baby to give up, are made without sufficient rational or practical explanations. Moreover, from a subjective standpoint, what matters is that we are constantly wrestling with the conditions created beyond our will. In other words, while there might be an explanation for why she, not her sister, was sent away and why to this specific American family, there is nothing she can explain in terms of her free will. On an individual level, this was a mere twist of fate that transcends the reason.

And this, to me, is where the picture of a god enters. A god can be transcendence itself or a being that directs this transcendental flow of affairs. In either case, a god surpasses human will and reason. This is well-illustrated when religious people say it was god’s plan when someone dies or survives. While this line of thought is often ridiculed by non-religious people for committing confirmation bias, this criticism is irrelevant if we consider that a god, by definition, is the pure expression of supreme will unbounded by human reason.

Now, there is no need to equate fate or the transcendence of affairs to a god. One can be satisfied with positive descriptions of events, however incomplete they are. Alternatively, one can accept transcendence without appealing to a god. Yet, I see the utility of accepting a god. By assigning a name and structure to transcendence, one can claim to follow its path and exercise one’s will beyond its practical or reasonable limit. This is why Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an anti-Nazi activist pastor, asked God to give him strength as he waited for execution. Death is fearful, and the will to fight against this fear takes a miracle.

So in the past year, I came to the point where I can accept a god from a practical point of view. For the same reason, I can accept monotheism as much as polytheism. Assuming one and only god would help consolidate one’s will. However, I accept these doctrines in terms of utility and possibility, not as a necessary truth. I am especially resistant to metaphysical claims in most religions. But if I pick and choose parts of a doctrine, can I call it “faith?”

Anyway, this is my not-so-rigorous contemplation without any training in theology. I bet theologians have already explored these questions, so there shouldn’t be anything new.