I don’t claim confusion. I don’t spend a lot of energy analyzing or agonizing over things I can’t be certain of.
If a Christian is going to focus on synchronicity, there are a number of considerations one must be ready to deal with:
Of PRIMARY concern: Does God speak to us in specific ways outside of his Word at all? (And I will leave the discussion of what comprises God’s Word for another thread.) Perhaps consider
Revelation 22:18 “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book; if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book.”
If one believes God does speak in such a way now:
What are the bounds of such communications?
- Dreams
- Interesting coincidences
- Desirable convergences of events
- Apparently coordinated disasters
- Healing
- Languishing long until death
On what basis does one decide the bounds of such communications?
- What I want?
- What suits my needs?
- What confirms my already held beliefs?
- What helps me serve or obey Christ better? (His will is already clearly stated in his Word. We don’t need message via syncronicity.)
- What helps me love my neighbor better? (We already have this as well. We don’t need another word.)
- Something else?
How does one interpret such synchronistic events? How does one evaluate the validity of the interpretation?
When the interpretation involves someone else, on the basis of what real authority does the interpreter have a right to speak, much less direct another to act according to the interpretation? What if the recipient or others reject this subjective word, which may or may not be valid?
As I think through possible examples to list, which I have decided not to, I see so many hideous, ghastly things. I’ve been told by people, who must believe they have better skills of interpretation, that I should try to understand what God would have me learn from this or that. I am incapable of interpreting the synchronicities of suffering, misery, death, long-term grinding disability, crushed innocence, insanity, inequity, abuse of power and more in a way that would tell me anything other than that evil and injustice are overwhelming and the same hideous end awaits us all.
Ecclesiastes 9:1-6
But all this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. Whether it is love or hate, man does not know; both are before him. 2 It is the same for all, since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the sinner, and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath. 3 This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. 4 But he who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. 5 For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. 6 Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished, and forever they have no more share in all that is done under the sun.
So, I refrain from spending my limited mental energy on something so speculative. There is enough in God’s Word that is clearly spelled out. His revealed will is more than enough.
Over in the “The End of Apologetics” thread
Daniel Fisher quoted from Kierkegaard ( don’t have a citation):