What Makes God Laugh?

One of the traditional claims of religion is that it makes sense and order out of chaos. Inthe creation stories, the God or gods are always finding Chaos and making something out of it.If religion was not so traditionally masculine, God would be pictured as A Great Housewife inthe Sky: creating order in a messy world, cleaning up the dirty places, and decorating the uglyones. You could see her in her home—arranging, cleaning, planting and cultivating her GreatGarden.

We create gods in our own image. We are always trying to make order out of theworld—particularly the uncontrollable parts of the world. World events of recent years havebrought home that we are vulnerable. Terrorist attacks. War. Hurricanes. Floods. Privateevents, too—illness, the death of those we love. Suddenly we face our vulnerability. Ourrealization that we are not ultimately, in charge. Contingency, as the theologians call it. We faceour dependence on others and on the natural forces beyond human control. That phrase echoedfor me.

Like most middle-class Americans, even more especially UU’s with our emphasis onindividualism and human power to effect change, in my daily life and in my worldview, I oftenoverestimate how much my good planning, my work, my intelligence, my creativity, and all therest will bring about the wished-for results. It is a scientific fact that the better our fortune in lifethe less we believe in luck and the more we believe that we create our individual reality. And formany of us, misfortune beyond our control—illness, natural disaster, accidents, war andterrorism—don’t seem to put as big a dent in our illusions as it ought to. Because events beyondour control shape every life—for good and for ill.

I can cite you several stories of people I have known:

John had planned to get married, get a graduate degree, and settle down in a small town,teach college and raise kids. He was a pleasant, good-hearted, bright man, with only the normalamount of psychological trauma. But he found he could not balance study and home life, sotwice the women he married left and divorced him complaining of neglect. Finally, at age 38,when his life seemed in order, a good job balanced with a good relationship and even a bit oftime to think about having a child, his dreams seemed finally within his grasp a drunken drivercrossed the road, hit his car, and killed him.

Jeannie had married her childhood sweetheart, they had two kids, two dogs and a housein the suburbs, when her husband’s, John's, medical exam showed he had cancer. Two yearslater, she was a young widow with two young children, and only a secretary's salary to supportthem.

Sally had been a traditional homemaker. She and her Presbyterian minister husbandraised five kids to a pretty healthy adulthood. She was admired in the community. When herhusband died in middle age she was sad but went on with her community work, her friends, herfamily connections, until she met Ursula—a younger, dynamic woman. Sally and Ursula fell inlove and for the first time in sixty years Sally came out. She and Ursula made a life together, her

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grandchildren kept loving grandma, and Sally and Ursula became active in their local UUchurch.

Robert, had decided to retire early, live on a houseboat and write, paint, and read, whensomething he had written for his church newsletter was picked up and printed all over the UnitedStates—in Ann Landers, in the Congressional Record, to name a few—and a woman asked himif he had any other writings she could look through for a possible book. It became a best seller.He became a millionaire and much in demand as a public speaker.

All these people were worthy people who deserved a good life as much as anyone—badluck killed two and gave the other two unexpected good fortune.

Many years ago, David and I went to a play in which the British Prime Minister isruminating on his fall from power and fall from grace due to a scandal he had nothing to dowith. I don’t remember much of the play, but I remember one line. The Prime Minister, in adarkened room, is saying mournfully, “Do you know what makes God Laugh? People makingplans.” A rueful remark by a man once the most powerful in the nation who loses it all becauseof something he had no hand in.

I was struck by the line—partly, perhaps, because I grew up making all kinds of plans. Iwas the kind of kid who was always organizing things: games of hide-and-seek, Kool Aidstands, a backyard circus, theatrical productions, and the like. Sometimes with great success, aswhen we won great acclaim from all our parents for our death-defying feats of somersaults, andwalking across a balancing beam between two boxes, and dressing up as clowns. Sometimeswith miserable failures, as when my best friend quit the title role in my production of Cinderellabecause some more attractive opportunity offered itself at the last minute, or when a day-longstint at our Kool Aid stand didn't even make us enough money to recover our costs—putting meoff entrepreneurship forever. I had lots of long-term plans as well—when I grew up, I planned toget married, have three kids, and be a children's librarian like my heroine, Sarah Carter. By thetime I hit college I was less certain about the future. I had no idea exactly what I wanted to bewhen I grew up. I knew only that it would have nothing to do with the two subjects I hated most:chemistry and religion.

My life fit the script—it developed quite differently than planned. At times that has beena good thing—after all, my birth itself was an unplanned event, my parents had planned to waitfor my father to finish school before their first child arrived, but I came anyway. At times it hasbeen a difficult thing, as when I took a job in a place I expected to stay a long time and foundthat it was not where I would be happy staying.

The unpredictability of life is probably one reason so many people like to think that thereis a God, a Providence that directs every life toward some unseen plan. That Great Housewifearranging lives. But I have always found that kind of God no more believable than the Old WhiteGuy with the White Beard. But then what do we make of hurricanes, tornados, volcanoes,earthquakes, tsunamis? What kind of ordering is that?

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I have often wondered at people who talk about how God saved them from the storm orfrom the bus that came hurtling along and just missed them. How do they answer the question ofwhy their God plucked them from the path of the oncoming bus, while that same bus hit the littlechild next to them, why the storm avoided them and devastated their neighbor. Do they trulybelieve in a God that intervenes to save them and then stands by while thousands of others arekilled? Do they think they are especially deserving while babies and old ladies deserve illfortune? Or don’t they think about such things? I believe in expressing gratitude to God, but notto a God who spares me only to cause suffering to others. I don’t believe in Providence orKarma; as comforting as either idea might be, it is not one I accept.

I have a friend who claims to be an agnostic. Either, he says, there is no God—or there isa God and he's out to get me! My friend tends to be a little paranoid. But he has a right to be. Hehas tried very hard to make a good life for himself—only to be foiled by an unavoidable illnessand other bad luck. He certainly could believe in a God that laughs at our attempts to planourselves a future—a malevolent God.

What kind of a God would laugh at people making plans? Certainly not the benevolentand loving God of the Universalists. But I think of the laugh not as a gleeful laugh at humanmisfortune, but as a rueful laugh at the people you love who are deceiving themselves. “Don'tthey see?” this God asks. “Hasn't it sunk in yet that they are mortal, finite, limited, and that thefuture is never assured? Don’t they know they can never gain enough power, accumulate enoughthings, or make so many friends that they can be assured of escaping the thousand natural shocksthat flesh is err to?”

We create gods in our own image. We are always trying to make order out of the world—particularly the uncontrollable parts of the world. But I believe that the truly spiritual peopleadmit that they, that we are vulnerable, human, and not in control of nature, other people, orchance. If this is true, our religion, our spirituality is not about controlling our lives and the livesof others; it is about responding to our lives and the people and the world around us.

On the practical level, there is plenty of room for responding to the givens in our world inways that make a good outcome more likely. We can plan roads that make accidents less likely.We can build homes in places less vulnerable to storm or quakes. We can enhance our health.We can wear seatbelts. Such things increase our statistical chances at health and good fortune.But they can never give us certainty. And no matter what we do, some times in our life we willsuffer and ultimately we will die. Those are givens. Religion is our response to the givens, thethings we cannot change.

I don’t know about you, but the idea that there are things I cannot change goes against mygrain. I was always a planner. I was a social activist. I liked to see things change and getbetter. There is nothing wrong with that. Good qualities really. Just bad when they give you anillusion of control. Or if you take things to extremes.

My mother always used to tell us stories about one of her college roommates who was theultimate planner. Every minute of her roommate’s week was mapped out. She even had aparticular time to wash her hair and would never go out with her friends or to a party if it

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happened to be her hair-washing day. Mom claimed that her classmate was at the top of her classin college, but that she became a very boring person, who never did anything particularly fun orinteresting with her life. Her best opportunities probably came on her hair-washing days. Thatkind of order and control may seem to be our need, but it masks our deeper need. The man orwoman who seems desperate to control life is usually fearful of that need, fearful that it is anendless emptiness inside.

That deeper need is for the inner spiritual resources to respond to the unexpected anduncontrollable events in life with a certain grace, flexibility, strength, humor, and humanity. Ithink I first learned this when a series of events left me without a job in a place where I was verymuch alone. I would have expected to have felt terrified. Instead, I found I had confidence, hope,and a sense of possibility. Even though the situation was in some ways sad and discouraging, Iwas surprised to find an inner certainty that my own inner resources, my family and friends, andmy spiritual strength would see me through to whatever came next. I couldn’t control outerevents, but I had that within and the love of others that I knew would see me through.Spiritually, I felt not that God would smooth my way but that that Holy Spirit would be with meand give me strength to meet the days ahead. Equally important to me were family, friends, andeven sympathetic people who were near strangers who, though many were far away, let me knowI was not alone, let me know I would never be abandoned.

It is sad to me to see the faces on TV so emblematic of an era in which more and morepeople are being abandoned. When I was young, we had the feeling that we lived in a vastnetwork of relationships: neighborhoods, towns, extended families, churches, synagogues, civicgroups, voluntary associations of all kinds. We didn’t agree politically, but as a nation we didagree that our government was there to take care of things we couldn’t do alone and to take careof the least of these. I don’t know that we did it, but we felt that we ought to. But in my adultyears I have seen the destruction of those relationships through suburban sprawl, technology, anda false ideology of extreme individualism that puts forth the idea that we each make it on ourown and are not connected to nor responsible for one another.

For me, congregations ought to do what we can to be an antidote to the modern illusionsof control and extreme individualism. A healthy congregation should help cope with themessiness of life, the things beyond our control, in several ways. First, it should help us learn,maintain, and sustain, our spiritual life, the resources and relationship with the spirit that give usstrength in hard times. Second, it should provide an opportunity to become a part of acommunity, a community of memory and hope where we are companions in life’s journey. Thisis something that takes effort and mutuality and a sense of purpose on all our parts. I have seenpeople walk into a church and expect instant community—as if the church were a store youcould walk into and buy community. But community is about making and maintainingrelationships and mutuality—reaching out in hard times, celebrating in good ones. It doesn’thappen through e-mails; it happens face to face. It also requires dealing with the messiness ofother people. I don’t know anyone who behaves well at all times. There is no one I am close tothat I haven’t felt a murderous impulse towards at some point. Anyone I met who was too goodto be real—wasn’t real. So community requires dealing with each other and caring for peoplewhose behavior we don’t always like. Third, a healthy congregation is prophetic; it reachesbeyond its walls to ease the suffering of the abandoned, the neglected, and the oppressed. It

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reaches out to the community beyond to cajole those who harm the greater community and tobuild up relationships and structures to nurture the well being of others.

I believe that the truly spiritual people are those who think of religion not as a protectionfrom things we cannot be protected from, but rather as something that strengthens us in meetinglife’s challenges in the best possible way. The theist in me feels that however alone I mayfeel, there is that great Love of God that holds me in its embrace not a God who fixes things buta God who loves us and gives us strength and courage. The humanist in me remembers the wordsof a colleague who, in talking about the death of his son, said that in his sorrow there was no oneand nothing that could help him, but of all the things that didn’t help, the one that helped themost was the presence of friends.

In times when we face life’s unexpected challenges, at times when life is messy, these arethe times when it is most important to have a spiritual life and a community of spirit. Otherwisewe can be swallowed up by despair, by anger, by depression, by fear. If we can face life with theknowledge given us by our hard-won faith, we will remember that each one of us isprecious, that we have resources and strength within, that we have companions on thisjourney, and that will be enough to pull us through this messy life—and, we hope, enough, tohelp us reach out to give others our hand.