I was seventeen years old when someone first gave me Jeremiah 29:11. "'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'" It was the Bible verse that accompanied a high school graduation gift — dark blue ink inside a cheery Hallmark card. Four years later, when I graduated from college, I received the verse again, this time in block letters on the cover of a prayer book. A year after that, my husband and I found the verse among our wedding presents — penned in calligraphy and set in an elegant silver frame. For years, the frame hung on our living room wall.
"For I know the plans I have for you." Or, to put it in the language of one of the most commonly used evangelistic presentations in the world: "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life." In the circles I grew up in, the "wonderful plan" was orthodoxy. As a Christian, I wasn't simply saved, forgiven, and loved; I was held in the sovereign will of a God who ordained my comings and goings, my nights and my days. This meant nothing would happen to me — nothing could happen to me — outside of God's plan.
I don't remember now when I took the silver frame down. But I remember very well the sadness and confusion that accompanied my doing so. I felt like the ground was giving way beneath my feet. After all, there's nothing fun about losing a certainty you cherished, a source of comfort you once held close to the bone. But neither is there nobility or nourishment in clinging to a "truth" that no longer rings true.
And so I'm wondering two things. What was at stake in my believing so ardently in "the plan?" And what's at stake now, as I grieve the loss of that belief, and attempt to replace it with something truer, braver, better?
Whenever I look back on my fundamentalist past, I'm struck by how much ardor and energy went into 1) Making God Okay, and 2) Making Myself Okay. To believe so literally in Jeremiah 29:11 was to keep God safely on his pedestal — omniscient, omnipotent, transcendent — and to fend off the many anxieties I am prone to by nature. As long as I clung to the notion of A Plan, I could wrap both God and myself in bubble wrap; he would be safe from my blasphemy, and I would be safe from, well, reality.
Like most unexamined beliefs, my belief in God's plan had unspoken but powerful corollaries — some of them sinister. If God really had a plan, then my freedom was an illusion; God the Great Puppet Master could overwhelm it at any time. If God had a plan, then the cosmos itself wasn't free; chaos in any form (natural disasters, viruses run amuck, senseless war) could not exist. If God had a plan, then at every possible fork in the road (Mack truck about to hit toddler — divert or not? Cancer about to kill young woman — heal or not? Mass shooter about to enter elementary school — intervene or not? Tsunami about to drown thousands — call off or not? Hijacked airplanes about to level the Twin Towers — prevent or not?), God was making intentional choices to act or not to act, and those choices were pre-scripted. If God had a plan, then the only way to explain Bad Things was to either view them as punishments for sin, or to accept them as mysterious tests of our faith and character. If God had a plan, then his capacity for empathy — genuine surprise, true horror, unyielding sorrow — couldn't help but be blunted; why would anyone grieve their own perfect plan?
At some point, slowly and painfully, I realized that believing in the promise of Jeremiah 29:11 required more than blind faith and a muted intellect; it required a suspension of my moral judgment. I could not perform the mental and spiritual gymnastics The Plan requires without twisting God into something ugly.
And so… there is no Plan. There. I've said it. There is instead, I believe, something sweeter, more tender, and more fragile. A dream. A desire. A hope. In this iteration, God doesn't plan our future; he walks into it with us, hoping for us as fervently as human parents hope when they launch their children into the world. God doesn't hover over Creation with a giant planner in his hand, ticking off events as they occur; he experiences reality on the ground, just as we do. Determined to accompany us, he rounds every bend in the road, gasping at each glorious landscape, celebrating every mile we conquer, and mourning the weary aches and broken ankles we suffer along the way.
In this version of faith and reality, I don't have to strain and struggle to explain away Bad Things. When you're suffering, I never have to tell you to buck up and believe in the Master Plan. I never have to suggest that God is punishing or testing you. I never have to make God ugly in order to make him good.
But this iteration has its limits, too. In it, I cannot detach myself from reality with glib references to the Plan. Instead, I have to feel deeply, just as God feels deeply. I have to let joy be joy, sorrow be sorrow, panic be panic, horror be horror. I have to make my slow, bumbling way towards God's fondest dream and desire for his Creation — the dream of Love. The kind of love that will look reality full in the face without numbing out to doctrine and dogma. The kind of love that will laugh, cry, flinch, and rage at this beautiful and holy, chaotic and broken world.
If I sound like I've arrived, I haven't. If I sound like Jeremiah 29:11 no longer attracts me, it does. If I sound like I have no empathy for those who need The Plan, I do. There are days — many days — when I ache for the certainty of a perfect plan. I'm not by any stretch of the imagination a "fly by the seat of my pants" kind of person. I like order, and I crave it. I'm easily overwhelmed, easily frightened, easily shocked, and easily wounded. I run back to the old version of God again and again because I long for safety. If anything, I still find it appalling that safety is not God's number one priority for me and for my loved ones.
Given the particulars of my personality and past, I imagine I'll spend the rest of my life learning how to live in uncertainty without succumbing to fear. I know I'll encounter demons along the way. Demons of panic, doubt, and pain. But I also know that God will face the demons with me, ever desiring courage, stamina, and victory for me until I reach my journey's end.
What's at stake in this journey? Lots, I imagine. But here's what I've discovered so far: if I'm willing to let go of The Plan, I might learn to pray in ways that are not so superstitious and frenzied. Prayer might cease to function as a talisman, warding off misfortune and punishment, and become instead an intimate conversation between lover and beloved. If I'm willing to walk in uncertainty, I might slow down and pay better attention. This world in all its sweetness and sadness might become more precious to me — not a waystation along the hurried highway of God's Plan, but a fragile gift, meant to be cherished at every instant while there is still time. If I'm open to the possibility that chaos and randomness are real, I might discover a God who is larger, more interesting, and more delightfully creative than I have yet imagined. This God might show me how he enacts redemption in real time — not though coercion, firing off executive orders and pre-scripted memos — but through improvisation, transposing keys and strumming new notes of hope for an evolving world. God as Jazz Artist, not CEO.
What would it be like to embrace such a God? What would it be like to rewrite the promise? "'For I know the dreams I have for you,' whispers the Lord, 'dreams to bless and not to blunt you, dreams to kindle your courage in a future sustained forever by my Love.'"
