Home | Every Spirit's Guide | Magazine articles for fun and profit | Contact

Fate and luck

Note from Fate: you are destined to read this article, so you may as well get on with it. No flipping over to the next page. It isn't that good, anyway.

You can think of them as people. Luck is female: tall, pale, beautiful, elusive. When you don't expect it, she flashes you a warm smile. But try to get friendly, and she's gone. One moment you're dancing with her; the next, you're dancing alone.

Fate is male, thuggish and not very subtle. You see him shoving through the crowds. He takes you by the collar. 'Don't do that. ' He growls. 'Do this.'

Does faith make you lucky?

But surely our faith will charm and tame Luck and Fate?

We read in our Bibles that 'goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life.'

And common sense makes us think, too, Christians will not be plagued with bad luck.

For example, just as I was writing this article, I (luckily) found that two Christian newspapers in the UK had recently been writing about luck. They had commissioned a survey of attitudes, and given the results to a psychologist who specialised in understanding psychological factors in creating luck. He found that, compared with the average person, committed Christians will be luckier, because Christians tend to:

• Chat to strangers (so they will have more happy coincidences with meeting people)
• Expect other people to be helpful and friendly (which is often self-fulfilling)
• Expect bad situations to produce good in the end (which has the effect of helping you reaping the best from any given situation.)

Then, it seems to me that Christians are less likely to be involved in some risky or unwise behaviour, which also affects your 'luck'. Here in the UK, many traffic accidents, diseases, and crimes arise out of alcohol abuse, clubbing, smoking, drugs and gambling. It is rotten luck to be hit by a drunken driver. But this rotten luck is more likely to happen at times in the night when the Christians are already self-righteously tucked up in bed with some hot cocoa and the latest copy of the Church Times, safely protected from sinners.

True, you may spill your cocoa and be badly burnt, or you may be angry at some Church Times article and suffer a stroke and die. There is, indeed, a finite probability that you will first burn yourself with cocoa and then suffer a stroke and die because of the Church Times. But still, rest assured, snug in bed, you are safer and luckier than the average.

Oh no, it doesn't

So - to repeat the question -- does the Christian faith charm and tame Luck and Fate?

Not so fast. Christianity has side-effects that might look 'lucky'. But waving prayers and Bible promises at those evil characters Fate and Luck is about as much use as waving a child's plastic sword or cardboard shield at Death itself.

Let's not be shallow. Look around in your church. You will see people suffering from the most outrageous, improbable acts of ill-luck or malicious fate. If you personally have escaped so far, stick around. Never think, just because your life is going well, that the Christian faith has finally persuaded Luck to fall in love with you or Fate to tone down the bad stuff.

How do I know? I managed to get an interview with that world-weary, but ultimately faithful observer of faith and life, Ecclesiastes, stirring him from his slumbers in the middle of Old Testament.

Impact: Can I call you 'Eccles' for short?

Ecclesiastes: No.

Impact: Fair enough. Give me a straight answer: Does it make you luckier to follow God?

Ecclesiastes: Straight answer? In every way, wisdom is better than folly, just as light is better than darkness, but-

Impact: So it does make you luckier?

Ecclesiastes: But the same fate overtakes both the wise person and the fool.

Impact: Ah - You mean --

Ecclesiastes: I mean,
The race is not to the swift
Or the battle to the strong
Nor does wealth come to the wise
Or favour to the learned
But time and chance happen to us all.

Of course you have more blessings in life if you follow God. But you still won't escape from Fate and Luck.

Impact: But what about Psalms like Psalm 23 (a part of the Bible, may I suggest, you ought to read some time)? Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life. That seems a pretty cast-iron guarantee?

Ecclesiastes: Try reading the rest of the book. Get a rounded picture. Look at Psalm 13. How many times have you seen this on a get-well-soon card?

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me for ever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
And every day have sorrow in my heart?

How much 'goodness and mercy' was the psalmist feeling when he wrote that? Not much!

Impact: You seem to be saying, God passes the law, but Fate and Luck get to introduce amendments.

Ecclesiastes: Go do some more research. I'm going back to sleep.

Quit the game

I did, and I found that Christianity is not really much use for manipulating Luck or Fate. Why? Because that's not what the Christian faith is for.

Take the apostle Paul. Before his conversion to Christ, he was a clever, well-educated, hard-working, zealous, and highly respectable young man, from a good family, the sort every Jewish mother might want for her daughter.

Conversion ruined this promising, respectable life. Paul abandoned a good career as a Pharisee-cum-rising politician and instead travelled the world preaching the gospel. From then on, his was almost a cursed life. Wherever he went, trouble followed. The state often flogged him. Mobs attacked him. City authorities despaired of him. He was in and out of jail. At times, people actually prophesied that he was fated for trouble if he visited Jerusalem. He went anyway. Sometimes, riots happened despite his best efforts, just through 'bad luck'. He was kept in jail in Caesarea for two years as an innocent man on the careless whim of a corrupt governor: what a rotten stroke of luck. He didn't care.

He had turned to Christ. Life then seemed to turn on him. And yet he never turned back. Why? Because when he turned to Christ, Paul had found Life Himself. He found the Priceless Pearl, and he gave up everything else to get it.

Before his conversion, Paul's religion could have been described as 'principles for a successful life.' But they didn't work for him: they were fine principles, but there was no power. After he met Christ, life became about being joined to The Life, loving Him, serving Him, bearing His fruit. He gave up, in a sense, on wisdom for living and preferred to die every day.

And Fate and Luck no longer had any power over him. Bring 'em on. Let them do their worst: they only became something like allies in his pursuit of God.

In one of the most famous chapters of his most famous book, Paul wrote,

... we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope (Romans 5, 3-4).

It's as if he said, 'Good luck? Well, if heaven drops a date, I'll open my mouth. Bad luck? That will just drive me deeper into the resources of Jesus.'

Paul's co-authors on the Christian textbook agree. Here's James: Trials? The testing of my faith develops perseverance. Peter: Trials? They just prove my faith genuine, like a storm proves the seaworthiness of great ship. Even the writer of Psalm 13, I found, eventually takes his eye off himself and his rotten luck and focuses on the eternal. Never mind all this, he says to God. 'I trust in your unfailing love.' Right in the midst of my trials, he says, I find all this goodness and love, eternally strong and sure.

So the next time Luck separates you from your life-savings or Fate stuffs you into the back of his car and carries you to the cancer ward, fear not. Your universe may be collapsing but the universe is only temporary. Fate and Luck belong to this provisional universe, and they will pass. Christ's salvation is primarily designed for universes and worlds that will never wear out. We will still be feasting there when those doomed wretches Luck and Fate are distant memories from another age.

Back Previous