I recently hurt someone I care about.
Actually, I hurt two people.
They’re fictional, so I should probably mention that before anyone gets concerned.
I’ve been working on a longer story for a while now, and somewhere along the way these characters became real to me in that strange way fictional people sometimes do. I’ve spent enough time with them that I know them. I care about them. I want good things for them.
And recently, I hurt them.
On purpose.
I won’t get into what happened. The story is still very much a work in progress, and I’m not about to start giving pieces of it away here. What matters is that I knew exactly what I was doing. I could have stopped it. I’m writing the damn thing. I could have changed the circumstances, taken them in another direction, or decided that this particular thing simply wasn’t going to happen.
But I didn’t.
I didn’t want to hurt them. I wasn’t looking for some cheap way to make the story more dramatic.
I did it because I knew why it had to happen.
And that’s the part I haven’t been able to shake.
Because somewhere in the middle of thinking about all of this, my brain wandered into a question I’ve struggled with for years.
“God has a plan.”
I’ve never really liked that phrase.
It usually shows up when something bad happens. Sometimes when something terrible happens. I know it’s generally meant to help. There’s supposed to be some comfort in the idea that something bigger is happening. That maybe there’s a reason for whatever we’re going through, even if we can’t see it yet.
But that’s always been the part I’ve struggled with.
If there is some greater plan, why does suffering need to be part of it? What kind of creator could look at something they love, know that it’s going to hurt, have the power to stop it…and choose not to?
Then I thought about what I’d just written.
Shit. I’m not sure I like where this is going.
Because I’d just done exactly that.
Now, before I get carried away, I know this isn’t the same thing. Not even close. These are fictional characters. I can close my laptop, and nobody is actually sitting somewhere dealing with what I’ve done to them. Real grief hurts. Real loss changes people. Real suffering isn’t something I’m going to explain away with a metaphor about writing.
I’m not trying to solve any of that.
I don’t think I could.
But I also can’t completely ignore the thought now that it’s there.
My characters don’t know why I did what I did. From where they are in the story, something happened, and it hurt. They can’t see beyond that moment. They don’t know what I know.
I can see more of the page.
And there it is again. That same argument I’ve questioned for years.
The strange thing is, this hasn’t suddenly made me comfortable with “God has a plan.” If someone is hurting, I’m still not convinced telling them there’s some reason for it does much good. It hasn’t convinced me that every terrible thing happens because it needs to happen. It hasn’t answered anything about God, fate, suffering, or whatever else might be running this whole thing.
If anything, it’s just made the question harder.
I’ve spent years wondering what kind of creator could care about something and still willingly let it hurt. And now I’ve done it myself.
I know it’s not the same thing. They’re characters in a story. I’m the one writing it. Maybe that’s where the comparison begins and ends.
But I knew why I hurt them.
They didn’t.
And for some reason, that’s the part that keeps getting me.
It doesn’t answer the question. I’m not sure it even changes anything I believe. But the next time I find myself asking what kind of creator could do that, I suppose I have to admit the answer isn’t quite as simple as it used to be.
