It's In the Code Ep. 50: Right Where God Wants You to Be
What does it mean when someone assure you that you are “right where God wants you to be”? Is it intended as a word of encouragement? As an affirmation that God is control? As a message of empowerment? Or is the aim manipulative, or controlling? And regardless of the intent, what are the possible effects of this assurance, positive or negative? Dan tackles these questions in this week’s episode.
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Axis Mundi You're listening to an irreverent podcast.
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Hello and welcome to the series It's in the Code, part of the podcast Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
Delighted, as always, to be with all of you who are listening.
And as always, I want to just thank those of you who support us in so many ways, whether it's through the emails and reaching out on social media and just feedback of all different kinds, whether it is suffering through the ads that help us to keep this going.
Whether it's financially, whatever it is, we thank you.
Could not do it without you.
Always find it so encouraging to hear from you.
As always, you can reach me, Daniel Miller Swedge, DanielMillerSWAJ at gmail.com.
I do love to hear from you.
This series in particular keeps chugging along based on your feedback and great emails from people in the last couple of weeks and really value those.
Trying to respond to the ones, as many as I can.
But great insights, great feedback, great comments, great ideas for upcoming episodes.
So thank you all for that.
Picking up on that, there's another topic today that I wanted to talk about.
A number of people have reached out about the When they are told by somebody, maybe it's a pastor, maybe it's somebody else in their life, maybe it's something they remember hearing, or occasionally, again, it's the kind of thing that they've heard from somebody who maybe is from a sort of religious context, and they aren't, and it doesn't make any sense.
But when somebody tells them that they are, quote, right where God wants them to be, and maybe you've heard this, somebody who says, you know, you're right where God wants you to be.
I've heard this from people, as I say, you've had others say it to them, and they don't understand what it means.
I've heard it from people who say, you know, I grew up in a certain religious context, and people used to say this, and I used to find comfort in it, and I no longer do.
And sometimes that makes sense to people, and sometimes it doesn't.
There are those like me.
I grew up in this religious context.
I was a pastor, an evangelical pastor, for a number of years.
As probably all of you who listen know, I said this to people at one point.
I stopped saying it to people long before I left evangelicalism.
We'll talk about that in a minute.
I also, as people know, am a practitioner with the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery, working with folks who are dealing with different aspects of religious trauma.
And this is a topic that comes up a lot, this specific phrase, that you are right where God wants you to be.
And people really struggle with this and it stirs up all kinds of emotions and sometimes they know why and lots of times they don't, right?
So I want to dive into this and like we do with a lot of topics, I want to start with just sort of what does it mean when people say this?
What do they intend by it?
What are they trying to say?
So often, as we've seen with these topics, you get a gap that opens up between, I think, what are really sincere, good intentions from people who say certain things or use certain phrases, and the effects that those might have, which may not be so good, as well as those who sort of don't act in good faith, who use those same phrases or say those same things, and maybe they don't have a good motive.
So, like a lot of the things we talk about, the basic idea is straightforward enough.
Given the presumption that God is in control, that our lives unfold according to a plan God has for us, I just invite people—this is related, obviously, to an episode I did a long time ago in this series on the notion of God's will and God having a plan for your life and so forth.
This is sort of related to that.
But if we believe that, if somebody believes that God is in control, if somebody believes that our lives unfold according to a divinely ordained plan, then it follows logically that wherever we find ourselves in life, whatever circumstances we're facing, we are, quote unquote, right where God wants us.
In these terms, I think the phrase obviously relates to those other ideas, the ideas of God being in control and having a plan for our lives and so forth.
So if God's in control, then by definition, our lives are unfolding as God directs them.
And this particular turn of phrase is just a popular way of communicating this theological conviction.
And we can make the theology behind it a lot more explicit, it can get a lot more complicated, but that's the basic idea, is an expression of this theological conviction.
Fine.
That's the basic meaning.
But those of you who listen to this series know that I'm not really that interested in the kind of surface meaning of these ideas.
I'm much more interested, as I often say, in what phrases like this do, right?
In the effects or the social work that is accomplished when these phrases are thrown around.
And so that's what I want to talk about.
And I want to start with the positive.
Uses of this, because I think this one first and foremost, when most people say this, when they tell us that we are right where God wants us or where God intends us to be, this is intended to provide comfort or encouragement or solace It's intended to communicate the conviction, and for millions of religious folk, please understand, and not even just Christians here, there are lots of other people, it is a conviction, right?
It is intended to communicate the deeply held belief, the deeply felt belief, that no matter how it may seem, no matter how adrift or out of control we might feel in our lives, we are right where we need to be.
That things are not happening by happenstance, that there is a plan or whatever.
And this can be hugely comforting for those who are, say, experiencing loss.
Or experiencing extreme, you know, social dislocations of certain times.
Uh, maybe somebody has moved across the country and they've left their support network.
Maybe it's major life transitions.
Graduating from college, getting a divorce, moving somewhere and starting a new job.
Uh, maybe it's, you know, somebody has an empty nester and their kids have left and they don't kind of know where they fit anymore.
People who experienced traumatic life events and so on.
This can be hugely encouraging.
When we feel that life is radically out of our control and that we have just kind of no place within and we don't know where we fit, it can be comforting and encouraging to know or to be told that we are not in fact lost, no matter how disoriented we might be.
It can also, another positive use of this, is it can express the value that God places on all of us as individuals from within this kind of framework.
This idea that God has a plan, again referring to that earlier episode, but more than that, God has a plan for me.
It expresses a kind of infinite concern for us.
The creator of the universe and everything in it doesn't just care about big things like the universe or the planet or whatever, but cares about me.
And it communicates infinite concern for me by God.
And I think it also places an infinite value on every individual.
And in a world in which we can feel, as individuals, increasingly isolated, increasingly valueless, That can be an immensely comforting, even empowering message.
And I think that this idea of empowerment brings us to another positive use of this term.
It can be empowering.
We might feel like we're not in the so-called good place.
We're not in a good place in our life, but we can trust that we are on the cusp of something positive because God has placed us in this position for a reason.
That we are able to move forward.
We have it within us to move forward because God has placed us here and has a plan and so forth.
So I want to be open.
I want to acknowledge the intent behind this phrase, that it's often good.
And I want to also reiterate the point for lots and lots of people who hear this, that's exactly what they feel.
It's exactly what they perceive.
They feel solace and comfort and so forth.
When I was a pastor, when I would offer this sentiment, it was for these reasons.
It was because I really did care for those in my congregation, and I really did believe that God had a plan.
I really did believe that whatever was going on in their life, it must be because God had put them there.
And for me, it also provided a means of expressing that care without falling into the trap of claiming to know God's will.
And we've talked about that in this series as well.
Not this episode, but this series.
The manipulation that can take place when people claim to kind of have an insight into God's will, I didn't want to do that.
I didn't want to manipulate my parishioners.
And so it was a way of communicating something that says, you know what?
I don't know exactly what God might have in store for you, but I know and believe that whatever you're going through, you are right where God wants you to be.
It expressed a degree of humility.
That's sort of the positive side.
That's the positive set of uses.
I want to be open to the fact that there are those positive uses, the positive intent, the positive experience of this phrase.
But even with all of that being said, even when I was still a pastor, before I left evangelicalism, I stopped talking this way.
Even when I still accepted the basic theology of that statement, which I no longer do, But even when I did, I stopped telling that to parishioners.
I stopped talking that.
And the reason why I did was because the negative uses of the phrase weighed on me when people would use it, and it wasn't for these positive reasons.
But also, and for me, it was even more because of the largely unintentional negative effects of the phrase.
In other words, the fact that no matter how much I meant the best when I said it, no matter how much I wanted to encourage others or whatever, That wasn't always the effect that the phrase had.
And these are the dimensions of the phrase that I want to talk about.
These are the dimensions that, so to speak, keep me up at night.
These are the dimensions that I work through with my coaching clients.
These are the dimensions that helped move me out of evangelicalism.
So first, in this kind of negative strain, and everybody listening, you can all see this coming.
You know where this is going.
The intentions behind the phrase are not always to provide support or encouragement or hope.
And there are people who are very deceptive about this.
They will use this phrase for all kinds of other reasons.
And when pressed, they can always say, you know what, I'm just trying to offer encouragement, hope, whatever.
But the phrase can be manipulative and it can be actively disempowered.
It represents sort of a card that can be played every time somebody demands justice or a change in their situation or asks hard questions about things in their life.
So, to the woman who demands equal pay or the same titles, the same job titles as the men who do what she does, she can be exhorted to recognize that she is, quote, right where God wants her to be, so she needs to be more satisfied with where she is.
Those who are exploited or marginalized are exhorted to understand that they are actually right where God wants them to be.
Those who would ask challenging questions of their congregation or their church practices or things that their denomination does, they are exhorted to recognize that they and those in authority are right where God wants them to be.
And in every case like this, and we could multiply the examples, In every case like this, the affirmation that we are right where God wants us to be, it is actually a mechanism that undermines any attempt to rectify injustice or past wrongs or fundamental unfairness.
From the argument that we are right where God wants us to be, it's a short step to the argument that any dissatisfaction with our current state or any attempt to change our circumstances undermines God's plan.
If we are right where God wants us, then on a certain logic, any place we move can only be out of God's will, so to speak.
We are only moving to a place that God has not placed us.
And when it's used like this, this phrase becomes a powerful mechanism for maintaining the status quo, whatever it is.
Existing social circumstances, existing social dynamics, existing power structures, whatever things, including inequalities, including injustice that are in place right now, it becomes a card that is played to defend those.
I'm just going to say here, it follows from this for me that this is bad theology, right?
The whole idea of sin or justice has always meant to me that the world is not as God wants it, that not everything is going to plan and so forth, right?
But when people are acting in bad faith, this is how it's used.
So the intent can be intentionally manipulative.
Like so many of the pious sounding phrases and comments that we talk about in this series, the intention can be manipulative.
But here's where it goes even further for me, and that's that even when the intent is fine, the effects can still be negative.
So when I was a pastor, I would say to somebody, wherever you are, you're right where God wants you to be.
I was not trying to be manipulative.
I was not intending to defend the status quo.
I was not intending to defend injustice.
I was not intending to defend misogyny.
I was trying to offer hope and solace and so forth.
But even so, even with the best intentions, I think they're undermined by the effect of this phrase.
So for example, and this will resonate with some of you, and I know that some of my clients talk about exactly this, when we are where we are as the result of trauma, or abuse, or betrayal, or mistreatment, when those are the paths that brought us to wherever we are in our lives, The quote-unquote assurance that we are right where God wants us to be, it devalues our experience and kind of gives a pass to everyone who's brought us to that point.
Because no matter how awful they've been or how much they've damaged us, they were God's means of bringing us right where he wanted us to be.
It sanctifies whatever they have done.
It gives a pass, as opposed to say the suggestion that God didn't want us to wind up where we are.
It also, I think, devalues the seriousness of grief or experiences of evil or complex emotions.
It devalues everything we might really be feeling.
Anything, any emotion, any experience that doesn't fit into the box of a sort of affirmation that whatever we're experiencing wherever we are is right where God wants us to be is devalued.
That's one aspect.
So no matter how much I might've intended something good in terms of pastoral care when I would say this, that's the effect that it could have on people.
And I began to see that, which is why I stopped talking this way.
That negative effect, I'll just throw this out there again, is also part of what changed my theology, which a long time down the road is what moved me out of evangelicalism.
But here's another dimension to this.
On a practical level, this assurance is also vacuous.
Because it can actually inform us about what we should do moving forward.
When I was in a pastoral context, that was another reality I had to confront.
I experienced this on a personal level a number of years ago.
I was confronting a high level of dissatisfaction with my current life circumstances.
And I was looking at some different options and trying to sort of figure out how do I move forward?
And, you know, I really didn't know what to do.
I was out of evangelicalism.
This language was not resonating with me.
But somebody who meant well, who is still in that world, said to me, you know, just at least take comfort in the fact that you're right where God wants you to be.
And I kind of blew up at this person.
I said, OK, but what does that mean?
Does that mean that I'm in the wrong if I feel dissatisfied because right where God wants me to be means I should accept where I am?
Or does it mean that God has brought me to this point of dissatisfaction and it's God secretly telling me that it's time to do something different?
Am I supposed to stay where I am and learn to be content?
Is this the thing that's supposed to motivate me to do something different?
And the person even said, well, I don't know.
That's where you've got to seek discernment.
That's like, that's the point.
In other words, the affirmation did nothing and it was vacuous and it did nothing to help me know what to do.
So again, these are the reasons why even those who act out of good faith, when they say something like this, can bring about negative effects on the people who hear it.
And I think this is one of the reasons why some of the people I talk to say, I know so-and-so, my mom, my siblings, my partner, my friends, whatever.
I know they mean well when they say this, man, it rubs me the wrong way, or it makes me angry.
And often people don't even understand why.
I think this is why, is this experience of the negative effects of this phrase, despite the intention of those who use it.
And of course, this is simply amplified when we have people in our lives who don't use this phrase in good faith, who are using it to be manipulative, or to control us, or to determine what we do.
Right?
So, for me, I stopped talking this way even as a pastor.
I don't buy into it now, but it's a comment or a phrase that I've heard about from a lot of you, and a lot of people have asked me to explore it.
Okay?
Kind of wrapping this up, again, like so many other terms and phrases or codes that we crack in this series, there's a kind of gap that opens up between even the best intentions of those who offer this phrase And the bad intentions of some other people, as well as, again, the negative effects of this phrase, even when people mean well by it.
And I think that complexity is part of why people are confused about this.
It's why I hear from people who can acknowledge that the people who say this to them mean well, but that it still makes them angry and they don't always understand why it's because of that gap.
All right, need to wrap this up.
As always, thank you for listening.
And as always, I would love to hear comments on this, thoughts, ideas for additional episodes, upcoming topics.
I've got a list that I kind of keep going of potential topics and so forth.
I do get to them as I'm able.
Keep them coming.
Daniel Miller Swaj, DanielMillerSWAJ at gmail.com.
Would love to hear from you.
Thank you again for supporting me, for supporting the series, for supporting Straight White American Jesus.
Again, we couldn't do it without you, and I am acutely aware every time I hear from somebody that the time they spend listening to our podcast is time they could spend doing something else, and we value it so much.
Thank you all, and please be well until we meet again.
