For God's Sake

Living for ten years in the Bible Belt, I've heard more than my fair share about God, Jesus and all the magic angels.  But this post isn't about God particularly, it's about those people who say, "Everything happens for a reason."  Those that say it, or post it on Facebook, say the words with conviction, as if they are repeating wise words.  My issue is that I do not believe on any level that these are in fact wise words.

Things don't happen for a reason, things just happen.  If you start to believe for a moment that a magic invisible man has decided a life plan for everyone, the first question that comes to mind is why God is such a sadistic racist?  Did God really plan for millions of brown people to starve to death before they reached adulthood?  Did He sit down one night and invent AIDS just so a bunch of kids would catch it before they were born and die in agony as children?  How about Ebola, was that just to scare the shit out of us?

If God really is carefully constructing all these life plans for us, what's the point of existence at all?  Our whole life is just a pre-planned fairground ride?

Most Christians will tell you that God gave us free will.  Freedom to choose to walk in Jesus' footsteps or not.  Of course that's not really much in the way of freedom since allegedly the punishment for straying from the path is eternal torture, pain and suffering.

At the end of the day, it's not for me to tell you what to believe when it comes to your chosen deity.  For many people said deity is very real to them.  But for the love of God, stop claiming that everything that happens in life is some magical life plan; as if you were a pawn in a giant game of God chess.  If we are to assume for a moment that God is real, why would He want to pre-determine everyone's lives for them?  And if He does do that, does that mean that Original Sin was invented by God and used as an excuse to make our lives miserable?

Well thanks for reading my morning God rant about destiny.  All you have to figure out now is whether reading this was part of God's plan.