04-13-2026, 05:00 PM
Mgr. Louis de Ségur: Short Answers to Common Objections Against Religion
FOURTH OBJECTION. EVERYTHING IS GOVERNED BY CHANCE — OTHERWISE THERE WOULD NOT BE SO MUCH DISORDER ON EARTH. HOW MANY THINGS ARE USELESS, IMPERFECT, BAD! IT IS CLEAR THAT GOD DOES NOT CONCERN HIMSELF ABOUT US.
Answer.
"Chance?" — And what is, then, this chance? It is an I know not what, that nobody knows any thing about — which no one has ever been able to define — which is nothing; a word devoid of sense, invented by the impious, to replace the name, so dreaded by them, of Providence; a more convenient sort of language, and which has the appearance of explaining things, but which, in fact, is but unmeaning nonsense.
Chance governs nothing here on earth, because it is itself nothing. God alone, the Sovereign Lord and only Creator of all beings, governs, watches over, and ordains all by His Providence; that is to say, in His infinite wisdom, goodness, and justice, He conducts all in general, and each one individually, to their final end, by the means which He knows to be the most suitable. Just as He has created all things without an effort, so does He preserve and govern them without becoming weary; and it is no more unworthy of His greatness to concern Himself about all His creatures than to make them all.
Those who say that God does not concern Himself about us are very absurd, to say no worse, for it is as impossible to conceive God without Providence as it would be to conceive light without splendor. It is impossible that an all-powerful God, knowing and seeing all things, should abdicate His Sovereign empire over His creatures, and, after having created them, should not govern them. It is impossible that a holy and just God, who must necessarily desire good and detest evil, should remain indifferent to our actions, whatever they be, good or bad.
Now, that is Providence. God does for us what a father does for his children. He watches over us; He teaches us what is right and what is wrong; He shows us the right path which we must follow, the wrong one which we must avoid; He punishes us when we. disobey Him, and rewards us when we fulfill His holy will. When He does not do it in this world, He does it in that which is to come. What can be more simple?
The idea of denying this Providence, this government of God, would never occur to us, if we did not imagine that we saw so much disorder on earth. "Why," we often say, "is there so much that is useless? Why so much that is bad? Why is this one born poor, and the other rich? Why are there so many inequalities in the condition of mankind? Why so many troubles and afflictions among some, and so much prosperity among others?" To hear us talk, all is indeed in great confusion, and we would have ordered every thing far better.
But who told us that what offends us so much is really confusion and disorder? What do we judge a thing to be useless in the world because we do not know its use? We think it is bad, because we do not know what it is good for.
This is certainly a strange pretension! If an ignorant person, not able to read, were to open a volume of Shakespeare, and seeing so many unknown letters, arranged in a thousand different ways, united one to another, sometimes eight put together, sometimes six, at other times three, or seven, or two, so as to form words; seeing several lines following one after the other, this one at the beginning of a page, that at the end of one; so many leaves arranged, one at the beginning of the book, another in the middle, another at the end; perceiving some blank spaces, others covered with printing, here capital letters, there small ones, etc.; if, I say, he were to see all this, of which he understands nothing, and he were to ask, why these letters, these leaves, these lines are put in such a place sooner than in another, why that which is at the beginning is not in the middle, or at the end, why the twentieth page is not the fiftieth, etc., he would be told: "My friend, it is a great poet, a man of genius, who has disposed all this so as to convey his thoughts: and if one page were put in the place of another, if one should transpose, not the lines only, but even the words or the letters, there would be disorder in this fine work, and the author's design would be destroyed."
And if this ignorant person were to pretend to be well-informed, and undertook to criticise the order of this volume: if he were to say, for instance: "But it seems to me it would have been much better to put all the letters that have any resemblance together, the large with those of the same size, and the small similarly; it would have been a far finer order \id all the words been of the same length, and imposed of the same number of letters; why are some so short and others so long? etc. Why is there space here and none there? It is all badly arranged; there is no order in it.
The person who had done it understands nothing of such things; "all is left to chance." We should answer him: " Ignorant that you are! It is you who understands nothing of such things. If all were arranged according to your ideas, there would be neither sense nor reason in that book. All is right as it is. A far higher intelligence than yours presided over, and still presides over this arrangement of things; and if you do not know the reason of it all, blame only your own ignorance." We are like this when we criticise the works of God!
It is His Great Book that we behold when we cast our eyes over the world. All the centuries are like its pages, that follow one after the other; all the years are like the lines; and all the different creatures, from angels and men down to the least blades of grass, and the minutest grains of dust, are the letters, disposed each in its own place by the hand of that great Compositor Who alone is acquainted with His own eternal conceptions, and comprehends the whole of His work.
If you ask why one creature is more perfect than another; why this one is placed here, and that one there; why winter is cold, and summer hot; why it rains now, and not at another time; why this loss of fortune, of health; why that sickness ; why that young child's death, while the old man near to it lives on; why that good man is carried off by death, while the bad man who does nothing but evil is spared; I shall reply to you that an Infinite intelligence, an Infinite wisdom, an Infinite justice and goodness has thus regulated these things, and that it is certain that all is in due order, although it may not seem so to us. I shall reply to you, that to judge a work correctly, you must know it entirely; you must consider it as a whole, and in its details, and compare the means with the end which they ought to attain. Now, what man, what creature has ever shared the secret of the eternal counsels of the Creator?
That would be necessary in order to appreciate the wisdom and justice of Providence with regard to reasonable and free men, destined to immortal life, capable of doing good and evil, capable of merit and demerit.
Sometimes, accommodating himself to our weakness, God deigns to justify Himself in this world by results which are either consoling or terrible. There is no age which has not witnessed these signal marks of the divine goodness or justice; crimes, which have been concealed with diabolical art, are brought to light by the most unlooked for, the most extraordinary means; audacious blasphemers are struck down at the very moment when they are defying that invisible God in whom they do not believe. In 1848, during the elections of the constituent assembly in the neighborhood of Toulouse, an impious demagogue was haranguing the peasant electors, seeking to destroy in their minds all respect for religion, that ever formidable obstacle to the projects of the wicked.
The orator attacked all belief, even denying the existence of God. "Let Him speak, then," he cried, pointing with his clenched hand toward heaven, "let Him speak, if He hears me!" He had not finished speaking, when a terrible thunder-clap bursts forth, and strikes down the blasphemer in the midst of the awed crowd! He was supposed to be dead, but he recovered his senses after a lapse of two hours. I doubt if afterwards he ever demanded fresh proofs of the existence of God.
Another wretch, more culpable, no doubt, was struck more terribly still, in 1849, at a village near Caen. It was on a Sunday during mass. This man was with one of his friends at a public house, near the church. The sound of the bells aroused his fury. After a thousand fearful blasphemies against religion and against the priests, seizing his glass, and standing before his companion and the landlord, who vainly tried to calm him: "If there is a God," he exclaims, "let him prevent me from drinking my glass of wine!" and he fell at the same instant, struck dead by apoplexy! One might add innumerable instances of this kind, of Divine justice shown forth in this world. These are but specimens, pledges, as it were, of that justice which is to come.
God bestows also tokens of His providence upon the just. How much misery is assuaged against all expectation! How often do we find that we have served as instruments of the Divine goodness! The poor, and those true Christians who succor the poor, are at hand to vouch for this. Their life is like an acting providence; it is a living proof of Providence.
Why then does not God always justify in this manner, His justice, goodness, and holiness? The reason is simple enough. It is that this present life is but the germ, the beginning of all that which relates to us, and that the consummation of God's work in us is more fitly to be looked for in eternity, where, alone, we attain to the perfect development of our being. It is that this present life is the season of faith which believes without seeing, which believes, notwithstanding appearances are against it, that which will be one day revealed to its sight when the veil shall be lifted.
We must never lose sight of Eternity, when we are forming a judgment of human affairs. It is the great restorer of order out of the apparent confusion of this world. "Why," it is said, "does not God punish this great criminal ? Why is that wicked man loaded with prosperity, and that good man overwhelmed with misfortune? What care does God bestow upon these things? Where is His justice? Where is His wisdom? Where His goodness?"
Behold Eternity, which explains the mystery! It was just and wise to recompense, by the transient prosperity of this world, the little good done on earth by that impious man, that great sinner, whom eternity was to punish. And those good men, reputed by the world so unhappy, paid, by transient afflictions, the penalty due to the minor sins, which, in their human weakness, they had committed; a happy eternity was the recompense of their virtue! It is by the standard of Eternity that we must estimate all that happens to man in this world. Without it, it is impossible to understand any thing of the designs of God in regard to us.
Let us, then, reform our manner of viewing things. Let us no more judge our Mighty Judge. Neither you nor I, rely upon it, are as far-sighted as He is. What He does is well done, and if He permits evil to be done, it is always for a greater good. Don't you remember the gardener of the fable? He was busy in his garden, and happened to be near a large gourd.
"The Maker!" cries he, "of what did he dream? That gourd he has very ill placed. For me, I'd have hung it up there, upon one of those oaks in the air; That would have been more to my taste. Like fruit and like tree! as to me it doth seem. 'Tis a pity, good Garo, thou hadst not, to teach, been present with Him whom the curate doth preach; 'Twere all so much better contrived: marry, come yon acorn, which is not so big as my thumb, in the place of the gourd I'd suspend. God made a mistake; and the more I attend To these fruits so ill placed, more it seems to Garo, that here is a plain quiproquo."
It was a warm day; friend Garo was hot and tired; he seeks the shade of one of the neighboring oaks and lies down at the foot of it. He was just beginning to sleep, when an acorn drops off, and, from the top of the tree, falls straight upon his nose. Garo, waking up with a start, cried out, and seeing the cause of what had befallen him: "Oh! oh!" he cries, "I bleed! And where would I be, if a heavier mass from the top of the tree had come down, and this acorn, a gourd it had been! God thought it not fit ; without doubt he was right; And the reason is now very plain to my sight." And praising the goodness of God with his might, good Garo returned his own cottage within. Do you act like this worthy gardener, and, far from denying a Divine Providence, be careful.
FOURTH OBJECTION. EVERYTHING IS GOVERNED BY CHANCE — OTHERWISE THERE WOULD NOT BE SO MUCH DISORDER ON EARTH. HOW MANY THINGS ARE USELESS, IMPERFECT, BAD! IT IS CLEAR THAT GOD DOES NOT CONCERN HIMSELF ABOUT US.
Answer.
"Chance?" — And what is, then, this chance? It is an I know not what, that nobody knows any thing about — which no one has ever been able to define — which is nothing; a word devoid of sense, invented by the impious, to replace the name, so dreaded by them, of Providence; a more convenient sort of language, and which has the appearance of explaining things, but which, in fact, is but unmeaning nonsense.
Chance governs nothing here on earth, because it is itself nothing. God alone, the Sovereign Lord and only Creator of all beings, governs, watches over, and ordains all by His Providence; that is to say, in His infinite wisdom, goodness, and justice, He conducts all in general, and each one individually, to their final end, by the means which He knows to be the most suitable. Just as He has created all things without an effort, so does He preserve and govern them without becoming weary; and it is no more unworthy of His greatness to concern Himself about all His creatures than to make them all.
Those who say that God does not concern Himself about us are very absurd, to say no worse, for it is as impossible to conceive God without Providence as it would be to conceive light without splendor. It is impossible that an all-powerful God, knowing and seeing all things, should abdicate His Sovereign empire over His creatures, and, after having created them, should not govern them. It is impossible that a holy and just God, who must necessarily desire good and detest evil, should remain indifferent to our actions, whatever they be, good or bad.
Now, that is Providence. God does for us what a father does for his children. He watches over us; He teaches us what is right and what is wrong; He shows us the right path which we must follow, the wrong one which we must avoid; He punishes us when we. disobey Him, and rewards us when we fulfill His holy will. When He does not do it in this world, He does it in that which is to come. What can be more simple?
The idea of denying this Providence, this government of God, would never occur to us, if we did not imagine that we saw so much disorder on earth. "Why," we often say, "is there so much that is useless? Why so much that is bad? Why is this one born poor, and the other rich? Why are there so many inequalities in the condition of mankind? Why so many troubles and afflictions among some, and so much prosperity among others?" To hear us talk, all is indeed in great confusion, and we would have ordered every thing far better.
But who told us that what offends us so much is really confusion and disorder? What do we judge a thing to be useless in the world because we do not know its use? We think it is bad, because we do not know what it is good for.
This is certainly a strange pretension! If an ignorant person, not able to read, were to open a volume of Shakespeare, and seeing so many unknown letters, arranged in a thousand different ways, united one to another, sometimes eight put together, sometimes six, at other times three, or seven, or two, so as to form words; seeing several lines following one after the other, this one at the beginning of a page, that at the end of one; so many leaves arranged, one at the beginning of the book, another in the middle, another at the end; perceiving some blank spaces, others covered with printing, here capital letters, there small ones, etc.; if, I say, he were to see all this, of which he understands nothing, and he were to ask, why these letters, these leaves, these lines are put in such a place sooner than in another, why that which is at the beginning is not in the middle, or at the end, why the twentieth page is not the fiftieth, etc., he would be told: "My friend, it is a great poet, a man of genius, who has disposed all this so as to convey his thoughts: and if one page were put in the place of another, if one should transpose, not the lines only, but even the words or the letters, there would be disorder in this fine work, and the author's design would be destroyed."
And if this ignorant person were to pretend to be well-informed, and undertook to criticise the order of this volume: if he were to say, for instance: "But it seems to me it would have been much better to put all the letters that have any resemblance together, the large with those of the same size, and the small similarly; it would have been a far finer order \id all the words been of the same length, and imposed of the same number of letters; why are some so short and others so long? etc. Why is there space here and none there? It is all badly arranged; there is no order in it.
The person who had done it understands nothing of such things; "all is left to chance." We should answer him: " Ignorant that you are! It is you who understands nothing of such things. If all were arranged according to your ideas, there would be neither sense nor reason in that book. All is right as it is. A far higher intelligence than yours presided over, and still presides over this arrangement of things; and if you do not know the reason of it all, blame only your own ignorance." We are like this when we criticise the works of God!
It is His Great Book that we behold when we cast our eyes over the world. All the centuries are like its pages, that follow one after the other; all the years are like the lines; and all the different creatures, from angels and men down to the least blades of grass, and the minutest grains of dust, are the letters, disposed each in its own place by the hand of that great Compositor Who alone is acquainted with His own eternal conceptions, and comprehends the whole of His work.
If you ask why one creature is more perfect than another; why this one is placed here, and that one there; why winter is cold, and summer hot; why it rains now, and not at another time; why this loss of fortune, of health; why that sickness ; why that young child's death, while the old man near to it lives on; why that good man is carried off by death, while the bad man who does nothing but evil is spared; I shall reply to you that an Infinite intelligence, an Infinite wisdom, an Infinite justice and goodness has thus regulated these things, and that it is certain that all is in due order, although it may not seem so to us. I shall reply to you, that to judge a work correctly, you must know it entirely; you must consider it as a whole, and in its details, and compare the means with the end which they ought to attain. Now, what man, what creature has ever shared the secret of the eternal counsels of the Creator?
That would be necessary in order to appreciate the wisdom and justice of Providence with regard to reasonable and free men, destined to immortal life, capable of doing good and evil, capable of merit and demerit.
Sometimes, accommodating himself to our weakness, God deigns to justify Himself in this world by results which are either consoling or terrible. There is no age which has not witnessed these signal marks of the divine goodness or justice; crimes, which have been concealed with diabolical art, are brought to light by the most unlooked for, the most extraordinary means; audacious blasphemers are struck down at the very moment when they are defying that invisible God in whom they do not believe. In 1848, during the elections of the constituent assembly in the neighborhood of Toulouse, an impious demagogue was haranguing the peasant electors, seeking to destroy in their minds all respect for religion, that ever formidable obstacle to the projects of the wicked.
The orator attacked all belief, even denying the existence of God. "Let Him speak, then," he cried, pointing with his clenched hand toward heaven, "let Him speak, if He hears me!" He had not finished speaking, when a terrible thunder-clap bursts forth, and strikes down the blasphemer in the midst of the awed crowd! He was supposed to be dead, but he recovered his senses after a lapse of two hours. I doubt if afterwards he ever demanded fresh proofs of the existence of God.
Another wretch, more culpable, no doubt, was struck more terribly still, in 1849, at a village near Caen. It was on a Sunday during mass. This man was with one of his friends at a public house, near the church. The sound of the bells aroused his fury. After a thousand fearful blasphemies against religion and against the priests, seizing his glass, and standing before his companion and the landlord, who vainly tried to calm him: "If there is a God," he exclaims, "let him prevent me from drinking my glass of wine!" and he fell at the same instant, struck dead by apoplexy! One might add innumerable instances of this kind, of Divine justice shown forth in this world. These are but specimens, pledges, as it were, of that justice which is to come.
God bestows also tokens of His providence upon the just. How much misery is assuaged against all expectation! How often do we find that we have served as instruments of the Divine goodness! The poor, and those true Christians who succor the poor, are at hand to vouch for this. Their life is like an acting providence; it is a living proof of Providence.
Why then does not God always justify in this manner, His justice, goodness, and holiness? The reason is simple enough. It is that this present life is but the germ, the beginning of all that which relates to us, and that the consummation of God's work in us is more fitly to be looked for in eternity, where, alone, we attain to the perfect development of our being. It is that this present life is the season of faith which believes without seeing, which believes, notwithstanding appearances are against it, that which will be one day revealed to its sight when the veil shall be lifted.
We must never lose sight of Eternity, when we are forming a judgment of human affairs. It is the great restorer of order out of the apparent confusion of this world. "Why," it is said, "does not God punish this great criminal ? Why is that wicked man loaded with prosperity, and that good man overwhelmed with misfortune? What care does God bestow upon these things? Where is His justice? Where is His wisdom? Where His goodness?"
Behold Eternity, which explains the mystery! It was just and wise to recompense, by the transient prosperity of this world, the little good done on earth by that impious man, that great sinner, whom eternity was to punish. And those good men, reputed by the world so unhappy, paid, by transient afflictions, the penalty due to the minor sins, which, in their human weakness, they had committed; a happy eternity was the recompense of their virtue! It is by the standard of Eternity that we must estimate all that happens to man in this world. Without it, it is impossible to understand any thing of the designs of God in regard to us.
Let us, then, reform our manner of viewing things. Let us no more judge our Mighty Judge. Neither you nor I, rely upon it, are as far-sighted as He is. What He does is well done, and if He permits evil to be done, it is always for a greater good. Don't you remember the gardener of the fable? He was busy in his garden, and happened to be near a large gourd.
"The Maker!" cries he, "of what did he dream? That gourd he has very ill placed. For me, I'd have hung it up there, upon one of those oaks in the air; That would have been more to my taste. Like fruit and like tree! as to me it doth seem. 'Tis a pity, good Garo, thou hadst not, to teach, been present with Him whom the curate doth preach; 'Twere all so much better contrived: marry, come yon acorn, which is not so big as my thumb, in the place of the gourd I'd suspend. God made a mistake; and the more I attend To these fruits so ill placed, more it seems to Garo, that here is a plain quiproquo."
It was a warm day; friend Garo was hot and tired; he seeks the shade of one of the neighboring oaks and lies down at the foot of it. He was just beginning to sleep, when an acorn drops off, and, from the top of the tree, falls straight upon his nose. Garo, waking up with a start, cried out, and seeing the cause of what had befallen him: "Oh! oh!" he cries, "I bleed! And where would I be, if a heavier mass from the top of the tree had come down, and this acorn, a gourd it had been! God thought it not fit ; without doubt he was right; And the reason is now very plain to my sight." And praising the goodness of God with his might, good Garo returned his own cottage within. Do you act like this worthy gardener, and, far from denying a Divine Providence, be careful.
"So let us be confident, let us not be unprepared, let us not be outflanked, let us be wise, vigilant, fighting against those who are trying to tear the faith out of our souls and morality out of our hearts, so that we may remain Catholics, remain united to the Blessed Virgin Mary, remain united to the Roman Catholic Church, remain faithful children of the Church."- Abp. Lefebvre