Answer for me this....

It is often said that there's a reason for everything that happens. It's a popular saying but just who originated the justification and did they do so as a means to explain the unexplainable, however generalized and incomprehensible the excuse might be, or simply as a way to buffer their inability to offer a rational explanation or reasonable comfort?

So, is it supposed to stand to reason that for someone who loses a child, someone who loses his money to a scam artist, someone who gets cheated on, there is a reason behind their misfortunes? For someone who meets the ideal partner, someone who wins the lottery, someone who lands the perfect job, there is also a reason for this? How does it weigh out and who determines the reasoning behind it all?

If something bad or good happens to me, am I supposed to question my actions in the past or am I to accept that there's someone controlling my destiny and pulling the strings as if I'm a marionette and I'm just following a predestined path?

I suppose it depends on what you choose to believe and where you place your faith. We comfort ourselves and rationalize our lives because there is no good reason for some things which happen. You ask yourself, "What did I do to deserve this?" Do you have to have done anything at all? Perhaps it's just the way all of life's circumstances have come together in that final moment. It doesn't mean necessarily that you've done anything to bring misfortune upon yourself or that you've done anything to deserve the sudden fortunate turn of events...it just is what it is. Why blame yourself? Why look for the why? Must all of life be explainable?

Is there a God in His Heaven who has predetermined our destination while leaving us a choice of pathways by which to get there? We do have choice, right? He's not structured our lives in such a way as to actually pull the strings like a puppeteer. He's given us leeway to fall, learn, begin again, do it right, make mistakes, and go down the wrong paths. While reading about the Bible Code, it was suggested that within the books of the Torah, the original text, are the paths for each of us hidden behind the actual words we read and that our choice of paths dictates our lives. The suggestion makes it sound as if God has the end result already and it's just the beginning and the end which he controls. The main problem I have with this is that the Torah, as I understand it, is a compilation of books chosen to be included while excluding the less favorable. If a book is incomplete, how can any path be followed or deciphered? While Christians wait for death to have all the secrets to the universe revealed, scientists seek to disprove the existence of an afterlife and atheists walk alone.

Few of us can read the Torah and few will ever see the original, ancient text so we must take the word of someone else. (Actually, today, with the release of Bible Codes 2000, any English speaking person can search the Hebrew Scriptures for hidden codes without knowing Hebrew. The user can type the search code in English, the program automatically translates it to Hebrew, searches and retrieves the text into a matrix, analyzes it and automatically translates all the found words to English! ...http://www.biblecodesplus.com/theory.html)

Is it Karma? Do we go through life structuring our existence so that our Karma might bring fortune to us? Do we suffer ill due to past or present actions as suggested by the laws of Buddhism and Hinduism? ( As we sow, we reap somewhere and sometime, in his life or in a future birth. What we reap today is what we have sown either in the present or in the past.) However, according to the Buddhist doctrine of Karma, one is not always compelled by an ‘iron necessity’, for Karma is neither fate, nor predestination imposed upon us by some mysterious unknown power to which we must helplessly submit ourselves. It is one’s own doing reacting on oneself, and so one has the possibility to divert the course of one’s Karma to some extent. How far one diverts it depends on oneself. (http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/karma.htm) If, as suggested at times that there is reincarnation, that I'll continue to live in various forms until I've reached some higher plane of existence, then what do the actions in this life matter beyond how they shall affect my next life? Will I know myself in the next life or care what I did in this one?

Is it superstition? Do we place our faith in inconsequential events which we associate with fortune or misfortune? Most people I know are not truly superstitious,they're simply hedging their bets. They follow the superstitions' guidelines "just in case."

Is it immaterial due to the fact that we exist in more than one place parallel to the existence we know as suggested by quantum physics? We create our own reality and there is nothing more than this? Are we energy that is never depleted which remains within the universe? Is it possible that I exist within many worlds which coexist with this one; that I'm sleeping somewhere while I type here; that in another of these parallel worlds those who died long ago still exist? Quantum physics is mind-boggling to most people and yet it's a fascinating subject and one which has brought about many advantages to our generation and those before it. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/manyworlds/byrne.html, http://library.thinkquest.org/3487/qp.html)

So, what is the answer?