Did God Make Me Miss My Flight?

Two people with luggage, running through an airport. Image source.

So here's some exciting news: I am now part of the elite group of losers who has run through the Chicago airport panting and wheezing, and arrived at the gate to find out the door's been closed and I'm not getting on my flight. And, actually, I'm in an even more exclusive group of losers, because it was an international flight, yep, the kind of flight that only happens once a day. Chicago to Shanghai. And bonus points for me because the plane was sitting right there, right outside the window. I asked the gate agents, "I really can't get on that plane?" If I had been 10 minutes earlier, I would have made it. Not my fault, it's because my first flight was delayed and arrived in Chicago several hours late.

Check that off the bucket list.

So they booked me on the same flight but 1 day later, and gave me a hotel room for free. I ended up contacting some friends who live in Chicago and I got to see them. And had fun exploring Chicago, because I'd never been there before, apart from all those times I've been in the airport. Yep, and by "exploring Chicago" I mean I rode the subway and I bought a smoothie. ("Wow, I wasn't expecting I would need American money today...") Fun times.

The next day, I got to the gate 2 hours early, got on the plane, 14 hours later arrived in Shanghai. Missed 1 day of work.

So, because I'm an ex-evangelical, this has all got me thinking about why God "let this happen." Is there "a reason"? I don't believe in that anymore, but I used to, and this kind of stuff is a big deal in the Christianity I was taught. If something bad or inconvenient happens to you, well, it must be that God has "a reason" and it happened because of "God's plan."

If this was a sermon illustration, you know the first plane would have crashed. It would have been a story about how somebody missed their plane and was so mad at God, so stressed out, and then that plane crashed and everyone died and our hero learned that God was taking care of them and they shouldn't have been so angry at God, they should have trusted. A happy ending to a nice story.

Why were there so many sermon illustrations where death suddenly makes an appearance? Anybody else grow up in a church like that? Stories about getting shot because you "stand up for God", about missionaries being tortured, an effed-up retelling of the trolley problem where a man pulls the switch and the trolley kills his son, to show up how God felt about sacrificing Jesus, and make us feel guilty for not appreciating it enough. Sermon illustrations that make you go "well, that escalated quickly."

But this wasn't a sermon illustration, this was real life. I looked up the flight number on google. Arrived in Shanghai on time. And then, the next day, the flight I managed to get on: arrived in Shanghai on time. One uneventful flight, and then the next day, another uneventful flight. I arrived in Shanghai on time. Well, 1 day late.

And the evangelical I used to be wants to find reasons. Okay, we know that nothing bad enough to be newsworthy happened, but we can speculate about other hypothetical bad things that I avoided by not being on that plane. Maybe I would have gotten into an argument with the person in the seat next to me. Maybe there was a baby crying the whole time. Maybe someone was throwing up, in the seat next to what should have been my seat. Maybe the line to go through immigration at the Shanghai airport was really long and slow that day. Maybe I would have lost my luggage. (Well, definitely. If I had to run through the airport to make it on to the plane, you know my luggage wouldn't have made it.) Maybe a thief would have stolen my phone while I was waiting in line for a taxi in Shanghai.

Yes, lots of bad things that God decided to spare me from. But God's totally fine with those things happening to the other 300 people on that plane.

See that's the problem with these stories where God causes an inconvenience in someone's life, but it turns out to be a good thing because they end up avoiding some worse problem. In these stories, it's all about you and everybody else is a red shirt. God has a plan for your life, but apparently not for all those other background characters in your story.

When I hear those sermon illustrations, I don't hear "don't worry, trust God." I hear, "isn't it great when God makes bad things happen to other people instead of you?"

I look out for myself first. That's good and normal. But God shouldn't do that. God shouldn't be biased towards helping me over other people.

Or perhaps the "reason" God "made" me miss my flight wasn't so I could avoid a bad thing, but so I could have a good thing. Maybe to give me the opportunity to see friends in Chicago I haven't seen for a long time. Maybe so I could do some fun sightseeing (ahem, ride the subway and get a smoothie). Maybe so I could be friendly to other people who also missed their flight and cheer them up a little. Maybe that was the day that the in-flight movies got updated and I got to see some new ones that weren't there the day before.

Or maybe God did this as a punishment. (Like what happened in The Worst Bible Story.) Hmm, let's think back on the past few weeks- did I commit any major sins? Maybe I haven't been "putting God first." Maybe I haven't been making God a priority, maybe I've been too busy and haven't read my bible enough. (Note: I rarely read the bible now, but back when I was an evangelical I did every day because obviously that's what good Christians are supposed to do.) Maybe I had been having some selfish feelings. Maybe I didn't pray for God's protection over my travels, and that shows I'm arrogant and I think I don't need God, and God is like "well I'LL SHOW HER!" (Wow, I'm so glad I don't believe in any of that anymore. So glad I'm no longer constantly thinking in terms of "am I putting God first?")

Or, how about this: God was punishing someone else who was on my flight into Chicago. God delayed that one so that this other person would end up missing their next flight, and unfortunately I happened to be on the plane too so I got caught up in it accidentally. But no, nobody in evangelical land speculates along those lines. "God's plan" is always all about me, and everyone else is an unimportant background character. I'm never the background character.

And we could go on and on like this forever, imagining things that aren't real and believing that's what was on God's mind when They "made" this happen. I don't believe any of that. I don't think there was a reason; I don't think God had anything to do with it. I think it's just bad luck. Every day, people miss their flights. Miss their international flights, even. It's a pretty normal thing. Just bad luck that it happened to me that day.

Back when I was an evangelical, I always heard people say, "everything happens for a reason," and I told them I didn't believe that. Because I knew they didn't really mean "everything"; they meant "things that you are emotionally invested in enough that you want to have a reason when they go wrong." RIGHT? Like, let's say you dropped your pen on the floor and you picked it up. Did that "happen for a reason"? No, nobody is talking about the "reason" for that because it's such a small thing it's not even worth mentioning. Like, it's so small it doesn't even count as an inconvenience. Probably a minute later you forget that it even happened.

When something doesn't go according to plan, but you quickly adapt and move on with life, take it in stride, roll with it like it's no big deal, then you don't ask God "why?" But if it's something that you just can't accept, if it takes time to cope with it emotionally, if it means you lost something important to you and you have to mourn it- that's when people want to believe God has "a reason." And- get this- it could be the exact same bad thing, but because you attach different emotions to it, in the first case you barely give it a second thought, while the second case has you praying and looking for the "reason" for days.

Missing this flight means I missed 1 day of work. Just a regular day, didn't have anything important planned. Not a big deal. But what if there was something really important scheduled for that day, something I had been looking forward to for months? What if it really mattered that I wasn't there? What if ... what if it was something I had been praying about as I prepared for it? Then the evangelical version of me would have believed there was "a reason" and it was "God's plan." In fact, the reason would have to be proportional to the emotional fallout I suffered from missing whatever important event I missed.

That's what I believed. If I prayed about something and was looking forward to it with a ton of emotions and anticipation, then it was less likely that something would go wrong. Because, like, God wouldn't do that.

I don't believe that anymore. Now I just believe in probability. The universe doesn't care if you're happy to take an unplanned vacation in Chicago or if you're missing your grandma's funeral. In both situations, you have that same probability of missing your flight. I believe in a God who causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

And when I travel international, I always build in an extra day so I'm not missing any hugely important thing if I end up stuck somewhere unexpectedly. Because, it happens. It's just bad luck. So I do what I can to minimize the damage.

So no, I don't believe God made me miss my flight. If it was to spare me from something bad, well what about the other 300 people on the plane, doesn't God care about them? Believing that there's a "reason" means believing in a reason that's proportional to the emotional distress I feel about it, and that just gets too complicated- why would "God's plan" depend on the whims of my emotions? And I don't think all this endless speculation is healthy either- all this imagining of hypothetical "reasons" that God "made" it happen, trying to force myself to believe one of them must be true.

No, I don't believe any of that. It's just bad luck. It happens to people every day. I made the best of it- I got to see friends in Chicago. It worked out okay. But it doesn't make sense to believe God had anything to do with it.

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