I heard that recently from Oprah show, think it may have been from the book "The Secret" but not sure.

I would like to hear anyone's perspective on this as I really don't think I understand.

BS 58
WH 62
Together 20 yrs, M-9
DDay Dec 2005

lindysue, in my opinion, there ARE many accidents in life, falling off a ladder or stubbing your toe for example.

If you are talking about a choice to engage in adultery, that is NOT an accident, that is a choice.

So, it's not clear what you are asking.

I am not sure what I am asking either, but not talking about it literally as in falling off a ladder.

I am "guessing, thinking???" it means our fate/destiny is predetermined and if that is the case- how are we accountable for our mistakes if we were meant to make them.

I agree adultery/infidelity is a choice but why did we make that choice-was it to make us wake up to the reality of the problems in the marriage-to change us into better people-to lead our lives in another direction.

I honestly do not know-that is why I threw this out there.
Lindy

I've heard some relate this phrase to 'pre-destination' or the scripture that says "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose. (Romans 8:28 ~ KJV)

But like FH says, the act of adultery is a choice, a nasty, destructive life-changing choice........but the aftermath could result in something positive. At least it has for me/us. Although I would have preferred it occur in some fashion, it (H's A) ended up being the wake-up call our miserable marriage needed. Accident? NO! Choice, YES... because we were given free will.

Could that be what you're asking?

Ace

I am just asking for input on that quote-

I am confused as to what it means. Not trying to justify bad choices at all- just curious as to what people think this means. People that think a lot deeper than I do.

Well, here's my take .... yes God is in control and He has the power to do anything, and yes we can pray and pray and pray and God will nudge and pull and tug at a person's heart but sometimes a person can still make the wrong decision (i.e. lie, cheat, steal etc) b/c He has given us free will.... if we did not have free will wouldn't we all be Christians??? so that is why sometimes bad things happen to good people... I believe that it pains him to see us hurt!! BUT I also know that God can take the worst of things and turn them into something good....

I have never seen any evidence of this whatsoever and I have looked and looked. This notion usually comes from dizzy minded new agers and I get the sense they will believe just about anything without a scintilla of evidence. If one could come up with some actual evidence of fatalism, [such as evidence of the required puppet master and his plan] I would be interested in seeing it!

Other than that, I do believe in accidents and I do very much believe in the FREE WILL described in the Bible, and have no evidence to the contrary.

I concluded long ago that it was nonsense made up by foolish minds.

Oprah would be at the top of my silly female list if there were to be such a thing. She believes all that silly new age nonsense, apparently. She has a show on XM radio called something like "Soul series" <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" /> where they discuss "soulmates" and other such nonsense. I hear the commercials and get quite a laugh out of it. ["I walked into a crowded room and had a soul connection to this man and my soul walked over and said hi soul to his soul!"] This is the kind of goofy stuff she believes in.

Some folks don't have the common sense God gave a goose and I think alot of new agers fall into that category.

God knows each and everything you will "choose to do", once more "choose to do" and will not be pleased by all of them. That doesn't mean that you were or are destined to act out like a trained monkey. God's omnipotenece, omniscienous (spelling, all knowing) does in no way mean that you were destined to do certain things, only that he knew and knows.

Geeze people, enough with all the God talk.

Not everything in life is directly related to God. Find your practical sides already.

This quote simply suggests that everything happens for a reason, that nothing is an accident. Nothing more, nothing less.

From Penalty Kill


Ugh, Oprah. The Secret is nothing but snake-oil in print format. Salon called it "a mishmash of offensive self-help cliches", and came down hard on Oprah for shilling it. I do know that it's "no accident in life" that there are a lot of gullible, greedy people who will buy the book and make a ton of money for its author, Rhonda Byrne.

Personally, I think that daytime tv ought to be avoided at all costs.

Yes, I am a snob.

PK

God does live on my "practical side". I assume by your comment you think I should put him in the same closet with the tooth fairy, santa claus and yetti.

Okay, let's look at this for just a moment, and in the process perhaps we'll also address ChrisBlue's concept that appears to be "anti-God."

There are two, and only two possibilities for how life "got here," Evolution or Creation by God.

Without going into either of those origins issues, it can be easily said that the phrase you are pondering CANNOT be true if we are "evolved" by random chance with no conscious directing "force" behind our existence. Each individual in an evolutionary setting does whatever it deems "best" for its own survival and that choice is not predetermined because nothing "exists" outside of the "here and now."

If there is a living, conscious, "Creator," who made and controls everything according to His will and desire, solely so that He can have something to "play with," then we are merely "puppets" on the stage of His construction and operate ONLY as He has chosen for us to operate. He is, in effect the great cosmic "Puppet Master."

On the other hand, if that Creator is a loving God who created us to love Him and to have fellowship with Him, a puppet cannot love or fellowhip, it can only "dance" according to the strings that control him/her. Therefore, in order for us to freely love Him, He had to create us with "Free Will," with the CAPACITY to choose, to choose love or hate, obedience or disobedience, good or evil. Only a loving God who wishes to have fellowship and loving communion with His creation would DARE to create humans with the capacity to CHOOSE, regardless of His love for us.

Therefore, if that is true, then WE are responsible for the choices we make and they are NOT "pre-scripted" but we are free to "improvise" and toss out the "preferred script" that was designed for our goodness and benefit and substitute our own wants and desires, no matter how debased they may be, because we choose to be the "Master" of our own lives, no matter what anyone, let alone the Creator, thinks about it or our choices.

So what IS predetermined IF the Creator is real? Our "ultimate fate" is predetermined because not only did He create "flesh and blood," but He gave that flesh and blood an eternally existing Soul that survives the few years our bodies exist before returning to what He used to form us and make us. As the Creator, as the only true Sovereign Lord, no matter what we may choose, HE has the sole right to determine the "rules" by which we can either fellowship with Him or be eternally separated from Him.

In other words, we "play by His rules" whether we want to or not, because there IS such a thing as "absolute truth." What we are "given" is that from conception to death, we have "that long" to accept the only way that we CAN be saved, and change the ultimate destination we inherited, by becoming a "new creation" through the only way provided by Him for us to "choose wisely." Again, He has provided it to us, but He does not force it upon us. He allows us to CHOOSE.

In short, we have up until the minute we die to CHOOSE. After that, we no longer have the capacity to choose and only have the application of His judgment. It is the gift of Free Will that is a "double-edged sword" and how we wield it is NOT predetermined. That God KNOWS what will happen and what each of us will choose at every moment in our lives is NOT the same thing as His making us choose. What He does is to restore to us the CAPACITY to choose for or against Him, just like Adam and Eve had the capacity to choose.

God bless.

ChrisBlues, is this what you believe? Is that what you are saying? Is there nothing that happens for "no reason?" If that is so, that nothing happens without a reason, who or what determines the reason and applies it to a given circumstance?

You would seem to arguing FOR some "intelligence" behind every happening, causing whatever it is to occur.

What PK said^^^^


Oprah...Bah! Humbug!

She cares more about keeping her money than she does about her Honey...or is that "fiance" (when did that become another way to say "The guy I've been shacked up with for a few years now?") STUDMAN....

Please...Fate?

The Biblical position is not that things happen for a reason known only to God and He caused them to happen that way, but that God can use everything that happens for His purpose. The Bible clearly states that we have free will. Jesus pointed out in Luke 19 that sometimes things just happen, which is not to say that God did not know they would happen only that he did not cause them to happen but did allow them to happen. Jesus also points out in the same chapter that we must each change our own thinking (repent) or we too might perish, which again reinforces the idea of free will.

The Darwinist view is that all things happened by random occurrence and therefore everything is pretty much an accident.

The Zen view is that bad things happen to us because we resist them therefore we should accept what happens because it was not intended to mean anything other than to happen. Even in this view point it requires our acceptance to be so since by our resisting it, we are preventing it from becoming what it was meant to be or could have been if we did not interfere. By taking what we get and embracing it rather than fighting against it, we reach a position of harmony with all things which lessons our trauma, not because things stop happening but because we can now accept them.

Everybody knows what view I hold, but what Oprah is teaching people is a crock of [email]cr@p.[/email] She is interested in one thing and one thing only...more money.

IMO this is why she never got married to her "fiance." If they were to spilt, he would get something...This proves that she would enter into marriage with an expectation that it would fail. This makes her, in Dr Harley's terminology, a Renter rather than a Buyer at best and perhaps even a Freeloader.

As for her view of "fate", it is not fate but fatalistic that her views represent. This is a view that says...things happen to me and there is nothing I can do about it and nothing I can do contributes to what happens either.


Chris,

Those who hold a Biblical world view, view the world through the lens of the Bible. Therefor God does apply to everything. It does not mean I stop thinking but that I seek to think in line with what God teaches.

The idea of "fate" is NOT that [censored] happens so get over it, but that things happen for an agenda unknown to us and that we are helpless to resist them. Things happen TO us in this type of world view and we have no control over any of it. It is a view that relies on kismet, mysticism and magic rather than effort and trying.

Mark

Wow,

This is interesting, guess I am going to have to write Oprah to ask what she meant.

I am not an Oprah addict and usually don't get the chance to watch except in summer but think I am open minded enough to watch and listen and make my own judgments, as with any show. When info is tossed out there, you either use it to fit your own life or you negate it if it does not suit your purpose.

That is kind of my philosophy on organized religion. Please take no offense, if your religion gets you through your day and salvation, I envy you. But a lot of what I see in the different religions is that you (anyone) chooses the one that best suits what they want to believe. Shoot me down here, not opening a can of worms, this is just my opinion.

I still am confused about quote but chrisblue makes the most since to me so far.

Maybe I am still trying to find a "rational" explanation of why my H had an A and if I think - well, marriage was in big trouble, he had a drinking problem and then A, all this happened for a reason so he could wake up and get his act together and be a better man and have a better marriage. Yes, there would have been better choices a lot less painful and heartbreaking but this is the choice he made. We now have to live with it, but did it happen for a "reason">

BS 58
WH 62
Together 22 yrs. M-9
DDay Dec 2005

Hi Lindysue

There was a WH poster here a few years back (SNL = SadNLonely) who liked going around telling betrayed spouses that the betrayal they experienced was an "opportunity" for them to grow and learn, and they should be grateful for that opportunity. And that was the reason they were experiencing it. They needed to learn.

Suffice it to say he was deluged with counter responses. One of which was mine. I told him that I really could have done without the opportunity of stage 3 cervical cancer which resulted from my serial cheating husband sharing STDs with me.

Talking about FOG.

I don't see much openness to the notion that there are no accidents.

Speaking as someone who grew up in an alcoholic and mentally ill home, I needed to believe in accidents. Just like those who get in terrible accidents falling off ladders need to believe in accidents.

However, if there are no accidents then there are no victims. And if I'm not a victim - but an agent of choosing what happens to me - then I have the power to recover.

Every single accident I've ever had has been a result of my own negligence, fear or doubt. My horse crushing my little toe was in part of not taking the time to put on my cowboy boots.

When I got pneumonia in college, and missed almost a full 9 weeks of school, it was during a season I desperately wanted to get away from my family home and the dysfunction there. I developed asthma and hayfever as a result of the damage to my lungs. The only relief I could expect to have was, according to doctor's orders - moving away from home.

Car accidents? Injuring my back to the point of near paralysis?

I am the person I am - every speck of insight or wisdom I might hope to acquire came from accepting that there are no accidents - and to find the personal growth from the experience I found myself in.

I don't believe my husband finding comfort from a predator in a recovery meeting was an accident. We had some challenges in our marriage before she showed up. But in the process of recovering from her harm to our family, we became more unified and have grown tremendously.

Perhaps I didn't choose someone to come in and attach herself to my husband emotionally. But you know what? I would have chosen the growth that I got out of it. And if there was no other way to gain it, I would have chosen it.

Be mindful, no one here should be advised to be grateful that their spouse cheated on them. It is evil that someone betrays the sacred trust of a marriage vow. But I have seen many here - including those poo-pooing the idea that there are no accidents as some new age concept - encourage those using the carrot and stick of Plan A to find their personal strength, to work on themselves.

They find themselves stronger, more connected with themselves as a result of the trial that they've gone through and the strength that the trial required that they gain.

Consider that acceptance that there are no accidents allows you to contemplate WHY you chose to be there, at that specific moment of time, to have that experience. Not to beat yourself up, but to find the gift in it.

Resilient,
Sorry to hear about that! I said I am trying to "rationalize" or make sense of it, I am still angry about it and would like to get over that anger as it does not do me or him any good.

Yes, I never had been tested for any STD in my life and was embarrassed to have to go through that and angry as ****** at age of 58 H would put me through that, I am fortunate that I did not get an STD because his OW slept around.

I would not be forgiving at all had I caught something. I would be as angry as you sound.
Lindy