RANDOM OR PREDICTABLE?

In ancient history, the concepts of chance and randomness were intertwined with that of fate. Many ancient peoples threw dice to determine fate, and this later evolved into games of chance.

Most ancient cultures used various methods of divination to attempt to circumvent randomness and fate.

Randomness or predictability?

Martin Luther believed that absolute free will and unbounded randomness are extremely limited to the point that behaviours may even be ordered and not random. This is a point emphasized by the field of behavioural psychology. Give a behaviourist random subjects and they determine to condition them to behave in certain patterns.

 "Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select - doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors."
--John Watson, 1930

 What about pre determination or free will?

C. S. Lewis, a 20th-century Christian philosopher, discussed free will at length. On the matter of human will, Lewis wrote: "God willed the free will of men (and angels) in spite of His knowledge that it could lead in some cases to sin and to suffering: i.e.He thought freedom worth creating even at that price."

Thoughts of randomness raise themselves in times of crisis, suddenly we are faced with the ‘Why’ question? There seems to be “No sense”.... we know that we believe in an orderliness to life; nature reflects it and scientists observe and count on it every day...yet loss makes the universe a cold unfriendly place. Thoughts run through our minds which in the end is often illogical and outside of our control – an “accident”. An act of free will. Randomness.

Jerry Sittzer author of “A grace disguised” talks of The Terror of Randomness: that shocking moment when life as we know it changes forever.

Affliction is anonymous; it deprives its victims of their personality and makes them into things. It is indifferent; and it is the coldness of this indifference – a metallic coldness – that freezes all those it touches right to the depths of their souls. They will never find warmth again.  They will never believe anymore that they are anyone (Simon Weil).  

For those who have experienced this; suffering may be at its fiercest when it seems random...Wrong place at the Wrong time.

Sittzer states that loss may appear to be random but that does not mean it is. It may fit into a scheme that moves beyond even what our imaginations dare not think.

I believe that the ‘road along a belief in randomness’ finally ends in bitterness. It is better to give up our pursuit for control and live in hope. We love again and live again; we hope again. Deep understanding of our own pain makes it possible for us to translate our weakness into strength and to offer our own experiences as a basis of healing to those who are now suffering.

This is a redemptive cycle we can all play a part in; when we have journeyed through struggles and thoughts of randomness to a place of acceptance, our experience is not for us alone but for those who follow after.

To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it – Mother Theresa.

You can also be that oil in another’s lamp!