Am I self made or God made?

I recently was having a conversation with an acquaintance, and we got talking about whether there is an element of luck or chance in the successes of our life, or whether it is always all due to preparedness and self effort. This friend argued vehemently on the path of self effort, hard work and preparation and opined strongly that luck, or chance is not an element that should be relied upon. I agree with that up to a point though, but couldn't full concur. 

What brought on that discussion? It was Andy Murray during the last Wimbledon championship. I do not particularly fancy the guy, and I was saying that his winning that grand slam last year was down to luck. My friend clearly didn’t buy that as she believed that luck was not involved, that the guy did everything right, and so should win.

So I want to pose the question to you? Is there an unseen hand moving things in our life? Is everything we have due to the fact that we are qualified to have it? Are all our achievements in life down to the fact that it was by our own ability that we got them?

I looked up the definition of luck and chance and here is what I got;

1) the force that seems to operate for good or ill in a person's life, as in shaping circumstances, events, or opportunities
2) good fortune; advantage or success, considered as the result of chance
3) a combination of circumstances, events, etc., operating by chance to bring good or ill to a person

What about Chance? Here is what I found:

1) the absence of any cause of events that can be predicted, understood, or controlled: often personified or treated as a positive agency:
2) luck or fortune
3) a possibility or probability of anything happening: a fifty-percent chance of success.

I like the first one on luck.. The force that seems to operate! Where does such a force come from? What gives rise to that force? What determines if that force is going to be complimentary or adversarial to you? The definition makes it clear that this force is a force that you cannot control. It is a force that seems to put everything in the balance for you. I don’t think that we should go too far in dissecting this definition.

I wonder really about that force. I am a firm believer in God, and I preach faith and works. and I don’t believe that we should get anything without preparing for it, but I also know that the best of our preparation is futile if “God is not involved”. Or let me put it this way, God plays a role in where we go and what we do or get in this life, whether we believe in him or not. He is not a God that stands at a junction, and says “Oh, you didn’t obey me, I will make sure you are sick” or “you are sinner, so you won’t get this job”. I think we should know that those are things that small territorial gods do, GOD does not behave like that.

I am not aiming to preach here today, so let me go back to my discussion on Luck/chance or preparation. I posit that luck/chance plays a huge part, or as the definition of luck said it, this force plays a huge part. But you see, we call that force different names. People of the world call it luck; and I am sure a lot of people who believe in God call it a God factor. In any case we are both referring to the force (not a force), so it’s not just some random thing that happens to us in our journey of life.

There is the God factor in every life, and His hands direct the course of our life. Of course a lot of times we still go our own way, trusting our abilities and all… but He offers his directions and guidance and usually He will not contend with us, except in very key circumstances or decision gates in our lives. Now what these key decision points are, we will never know, and trust me they are not those decisions that seem key in our eyes, like getting married, or deciding which school to go, which job to take, and all those sorta things. The simplest looking choices may be the most pivotal in our lives.

If we look back at our lives, we will see a pattern of happenings that can at best be termed fortuitous. You probably have done the best you can to get things done one way or the other, but as it turned out, the unexpected happened, and it was the better decision. 

I have looked at my life, and I know that God guided me. There are no explanations for certain things in my life, certain good fortunes and accidents of fate that has landed me where I am today. For example, I can never explain the fact that I got my first job accidentally, I was just loafing around the campus when they told me they were writing tests, and my name had been on the notice board in the department for days, with an invitation to come and write the test. I would have missed that test, and perhaps I would never have worked in the company.

Or how would I explain that while I was waiting to serve in Chevron, the very day I decided to take my cousin on a drive to see the company I wanted to work for was the same day they had invited me for a test and I didn't know about it? I only saw one of the women who I had known previously outside the gate while she was seeing off her friend. She asked me if I got the message sent to me to come and write a test that day. Of course I didn’t. I just happened to be there by accident! 

If I did not write that test that day, would I have still served in Chevron? If I didn’t serve in chevron, would I have known the set of guys who, during lunch one day, brought out a copy of The Guardian and showed me a vacancy notice posted by Shell? I didn’t even want to work for Shell at that time; I thought Chevron will just give me a job at the end of my service year. And would I have known that if I went for the Shell test, they will refund my transport fare (and I tell you today, this knowledge was the only thing that convinced me to go and write the test. I would not have gone if I didn’t know that).

There was a particular friend there who didn’t go for that test. You see, that vacancy notice was for Human Resources Advisers, not for Engineers. And all of us in that group were brilliant engineering graduates with first classes and second class upper degrees. We were brilliant and confident that the Oil and Gas industry will not be okay if we didn’t work there. So this friend said he will wait for the Engineers vacancy to be posted. Hmmn… I just went for the sake of the money.

Two things happened; If I hadn’t gone for that test, I would probably never have worked for Shell. When we got to PH, we did that test, and went away. They called us back for another test, and in that one, they said since we were engineers, would we want to be moved to engineering lines? Of course we said yes. The third interview, they asked me if I would like to be an Operations Engineer or an IT analyst. I chose IT, and ultimately this is what I have been doing all my working life. That friend who was waiting for the Engineers Test…. Guess what, that notice never came! They took the engineers they needed from those of us who had applied for HR Advisers role.

Again, if I hadn't gone for that Shell test, I would probably never have met my future wife, because as it is, I met her on my way back from PH after one of those tests. And if I didn’t meet my wife then, would I have eventually started worshiping at The Stone Church? You see, it was in the process of trying to marry her that I had to go and see the Senior Pastor, who is like an adopted father to her. I went there and met him, and I really liked the guy. I felt that this is the kind of person I would not mind becoming. Professional, nice, suave, settled in his service to God, and his work of destiny. Little did I know that someday, the church will open a branch in PH, and that I would be invited for one of the services, and that I would stay on later, and eventually become a Pastor in the same church!

I can go on and on, but I don’t have to. The biggest things in our lives are usually not the ones we could work with our hands. They are the complimentary things that seemed small at that time, but with hindsight, only a fool would think that he would have become what he is now if those other things did not happen.

Of course, one can argue that maybe if those things did not happen for example, to me the way they did, then perhaps I would have had a better job, a better wife and even a better life. Perhaps, but that’s the whole point of my argument. You are not the one controlling the steps. The best of my hard work without ‘the force’ would not have made me go to PH because I didn’t like to work for Shell. It would have kept me in Chevron, and who knows what other things would have happened subsequently.

Again, I look back at my life. I simply just noticed that I was born into a particular family, started in a particular school, found that I was particularly brilliant and could pass exams without reading for it, and that I make good grades easily. I just realized that amongst all of my grooving up friends, I am one of those who made it easily in life, who didn’t die on the way, who didn’t go mad due to drug usage (I never did that one, but a friend went for a party that I was meant to also attend, and he was introduced to Indian hemp, and till today, more than 30 years after, he is still mad. He was as brilliant and gifted as I was!).

It occurred to me that God had just preserved me, somehow. I wasn’t born again or saved all these time, but he ordered my steps. He kept me on a cause that eventually led me to where I am today- Happy, satisfied and grateful with my lot in life.

I remember that verse in Ecclesiastes 9:11

I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all

So will I in the face of all these argument say to myself that I am a self made man? A self made man is the man who didn’t have any help in life; who got to where he his by sheer hard work. Oh, I have read a lot of autobiographies and biographies, and I am always hoping to find one self made man, who didn’t receive help from divinity or from mere mortals, and the truth is this, I have never seen one. There is no such man as self made. We are all God made; we are God assisted; we are God directed, whether we care to admit it or not. The people that helped us in life had a choice, to have helped us or to not have. And instead of us, there were other people they could have helped. Something made them like us, helped us, or assisted us. That thing is the ‘the force’. The force is God’s hand. It is present in every life….

I hope you recognize it in your own life today. Better still I hope we can all submit to that hand, because trust me, it’s a far easier journey than struggling to go on another way that we think leads to a better life. And by the way, Andy Murray was knocked out in the semi finals of this year’s Wimbledon tournament. Maybe his preparations were not enough this year!