The Lie That Life Gets Easier With God’s Help

Image credits belong to: Schäferle | Pixabay

“Will life eventually get easier?”

Do you ever find yourself asking that question? I asked myself this question yesterday as I pondered my adulthood. 

Perhaps that is a vain hope, because things instead get harder as we get older. Did a specific person teach me that life eventually gets easier or did I pick that up from the culture around me?

I feel like I should trace this back to one source: Christianity. In my childhood, I felt that Christianity’s claims about a loving and caring God implied a future of prosperity and vitality for me.  

What else could you expect from me at a time in life when we all are so innocent and credulous? 

Some Christians will say “God never told us that life would be easy.” Others might say my childhood hope for better health, wealth, and social status was a deception from the prosperity gospel.

Should I have known better back then? 

Again. “God never told us that life would be easy.”

Yes. But the belief that “life gets easier” is quite difficult to avoid when Christianity promises that someone beneficent is always watching over me. 

For how many centuries has religion generally taught people that positive outcomes will follow after their good behaviors and choices?  

I agree that our wildest dreams do not have to come true as a reward for good behavior and choices. But is there ever a point at which good behaviors and choices can stop things from being exceedingly and breathtakingly difficult? In adulthood, it seems that a new crisis always emerges after the last one gets resolved, with no respite or intermission in between. 

I realize that many people have their little mantras they like to say and pass onto others: “Life is what you make it.” 

Yes...well...I did not choose my upbringing, nor my family, nor my country of origin, nor my personality, nor my genetic predispositions, nor the socioeconomic status that I was born into, etc. 

In a culture that is heavily invested in the idea of free-will, we often assume that we choose things such as our character, habits, attitudes, values, ethics, beliefs, standards, principles, mindset, rules, lifestyle, philosophies, actions, preferences, tendencies, temperament, priorities, confidence, courage, limitations, and boundaries, etc. 

The philosophy of free-will is over-simplistic. 

The act of choosing strikes me as a complex combination of biochemical and cognitive events that occur prior to what I choose. There are plenty of unconscious influences behind the mental events that translate into behavioral outcomes. So, I do not view the biology of choice as having the kind of freedom that I illusively feel while swiping left or right on a touchscreen or buying a house or my favorite ice cream. 

A human can change things in their internal and external environment, but there is a lot of pain, toil, and uncertainty in between each attempt at change. A lot can go wrong at every turn to delay or even completely prevent success. There are always unwanted tradeoffs and unforeseeable regrets. 

So, if life gets easier as time goes on, that is hard to believe as new problems arise with a constantly aging body, ailing mind, and new responsibilities. 

Some Christians will say “God never promised it would be easy, but he did promise we would never be alone.” This is a complete lie, as life has shown me that there are times when I am alone. Nothing I say nor do can change that feeling at the moment that I need the change. If God promises that help will always be on the way even though things will not be easy, that is also a lie, because there are many times when help does not arrive. The crisis wins and I regress. 

The positive illusions and mantras that we practice daily may help us get through the present adverse moment, but they will not solve the problem. As it is in our human nature to be problem-solvers, we should avoid things that lie to us about how to solve the problem. 

Every problem that I have ever solved was due to my own wisdom and coping skills that I practiced. Nothing divine, supernatural, or non-human ever reached from the other side of reality to help me. Also, nothing divine or supernatural was ever complicit in my failure to solve a problem. 

Problem-solving is better assisted by self-awareness and not waiting on divine beings.