Divine Plan – Either Everything is Determined or We Have Free Will/Agency

Everything Happens for a Reason, Does it Really?  Free Will, Agency, Divine Plans, and the Meaning of Suffering

Primary Category: Scam Victim Recovery Philosophy

Intended Audience: Scam Victims-Survivors

Author:
•  Tim McGuinness, Ph.D., DFin, MCPO, MAnth – Anthropologist, Scientist, Polymath, Director of the Society of Citizens Against Relationship Scams Inc.

Afterthought:
•  Vianey Gonzalez B.Sc(Psych) – Licensed Psychologist, Specialty in Crime Victim Trauma Therapy, Neuropsychologist, Certified Deception Professional, Psychology Advisory Panel & Director of the Society of Citizens Against Relationship Scams Inc.

About This Article

Many people find comfort in the idea that everything happens for a reason or that God has a plan, especially in the aftermath of trauma. But this belief raises profound questions about human agency, accountability, and the purpose of suffering.

If every event is part of a divine plan, then your choices and actions lose meaning. This becomes especially harmful for scam victims, who may be told their pain was necessary or divinely intended. In contrast, religious texts across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam consistently affirm that humans are moral agents responsible for their choices. Concepts like confession, repentance, and personal growth only make sense if free will exists.

If everything were predetermined, confession would be irrelevant. The story of Adam and Eve illustrates this principle clearly: actions have consequences, and responsibility cannot be separated from agency. Physics also offers a parallel—entropy shows that disorder increases unless effort is applied. In life, as in science, meaning and order require conscious action.

Scam recovery, then, is not about interpreting trauma as destiny. It is about making deliberate choices to heal and rebuild. You do not recover because it was meant to be. You recover because you choose to bring clarity, energy, and truth to what happened, and then act on it.

Everything Happens for a Reason, Does it Really?  Free Will, Agency, Divine Plans, and the Meaning of Suffering

By Tim McGuinness. Ph.D.

Please Note:

What you are about to read may challenge some of your current beliefs about divinity and divine planning. Much of what you think you know may be based on partial understanding or interpretations that do not fully reflect the core teachings. This is not an argument against belief in God, nor is it an attempt to undermine faith. It is an honest examination of meaning, drawn from the traditions rooted in the God of Abraham—Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. At the same time, this is not a religious instruction. It is an exploration of free will and personal agency within these faiths, and how these ideas affect your recovery from a scam.

If this approach offends you, it may be more helpful to seek religious counsel than to continue with scam recovery. Recovery asks more from you than belief alone. It requires agency, personal responsibility, commitment, accountability, and the willingness to act in your own best interest.

Introduction: Questioning the Popular Belief

When people say everything happens for a reason, or God has a plan, they are usually trying to make sense of suffering, tragedy, or confusion. These statements are offered to comfort, to reframe, to reassure. But if taken seriously, they raise serious questions about the nature of human existence, moral responsibility, and divine intention. If everything is predetermined—if every event is part of a divine plan—then the concept of free will becomes questionable. And if suffering is part of that plan, then what does that say about the purpose of life itself?

This is not just a philosophical dilemma. It is an intensely personal one, especially for scam victims. If you were defrauded, deceived, emotionally manipulated, or financially devastated by someone pretending to care about you, and you are told this happened for a reason, you may wonder what kind of reason could justify that kind of betrayal. The implications of this belief run deep, especially when applied to real, lived trauma.

Does Free Will Exist, or Is It an Illusion?

The idea that everything happens for a reason implies a form of determinism. In this view, every action, every choice, every outcome was already woven into the fabric of the universe—or the will of God. If that is true, then free will cannot be real. Your decisions, your moral choices, your mistakes, even your resistance to harm, would all be part of a script you had no power to change.

But if you accept that humans do have free will, then everything does not happen for a reason—it happens because of reasons. Actions have causes. Decisions have consequences. This is a more grounded and rational view, and it is the one that aligns more clearly with personal accountability.

Scriptural Views on Free Will and Responsibility

Throughout both the Old and New Testaments, there is clear acknowledgment of human agency. The Bible repeatedly emphasizes moral choice, personal responsibility, and the consequences of one’s actions.

In Deuteronomy 30:19, the message is unmistakable: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live.” This is not the language of determinism. It is the language of moral choice. You are invited to choose wisely, not follow a preordained script.

Ezekiel 18:30 states, “Repent and turn from all your offenses; then sin will not be your downfall.” Again, the implication is that your actions matter. You are responsible. You are accountable. You are not a pawn in a cosmic drama beyond your understanding.

In the New Testament, Galatians 6:7 warns, “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.” This scripture directly addresses the law of consequences. It suggests that divine justice respects individual choices.

So if scripture affirms free will, then suffering caused by scams or manipulation is not part of a divine plot. It is the result of someone’s misuse of their own agency. And that is a key distinction. Your suffering is not God’s desire. It is the consequence of human behavior.

The Problem with ‘God Has a Plan’

When someone tells you God has a plan, especially in the aftermath of a traumatic scam, it may feel hollow or even cruel. If the scam was part of that plan, then God must have intended your suffering. That is a disturbing idea.

Some believers try to soften the claim by saying the scam was allowed, not caused. But that still implies divine consent. It also raises the question: why allow this to happen to someone who was already vulnerable, grieving, or lonely? The idea of divine planning can unintentionally suggest that your pain was necessary. That can be deeply demoralizing.

Scam victims often ask, Why me? Why did God let this happen? These are real, spiritual questions. But they do not have to lead to fatalism. You are not being punished. You are not part of some inscrutable test. You are someone who was harmed by another person’s choices. That is where the accountability lies.

There is also a difference between saying God can use suffering and saying God planned suffering. The first allows for redemption, meaning, and recovery. The second implies design and intention—and that is far harder to accept.

Believing Everything Is a Plan Undermines Agency

If you truly believe that every event is pre-scripted by a divine planner, then your actions, choices, and efforts are illusions. This belief, while comforting on the surface, undermines personal agency at its root. If everything was meant to be, then nothing you do really matters. If you were supposed to be scammed, then the scammer bears no more moral weight than the sunrise. That logic erodes not just accountability, but meaning itself.

That is not what most spiritual traditions teach. In fact, the very idea of justice, morality, and responsibility depends on the assumption that you have a choice. If you can be punished or rewarded, then your actions must be your own. Otherwise, justice is incoherent. Without agency, there is no cause and effect, only performance on a stage that someone else wrote.

This contradiction is especially visible in the concept of confession. Why confess, if all was predetermined? If your lies, cruelty, betrayal—or your trust, vulnerability, and mistakes—were all part of an unchangeable plan, then confession becomes meaningless. Yet every major religion includes confession, repentance, or accountability as essential steps in spiritual maturity. In Christianity, 1 John 1:9 states, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” That verse assumes wrongdoing was a choice, not a destiny. Confession only matters if you could have done differently.

The act of confessing is not about aligning with fate. It is about recognizing that you made a decision—whether wise or destructive—and seeking to grow from it. Confession, at its heart, affirms free will. It says, I did this. Not God made me do this.

When someone tells you that your suffering was meant to happen, they may be trying to reassure you. But the hidden message is that your choices are powerless. That is not healing. That is surrendering your autonomy. And if you adopt that belief, you may stop confessing, examining, or growing at all. You may live in resignation instead of transformation.

Recovery from a scam begins when you reclaim agency. You stop asking what was meant to happen and start asking what you will make happen now. That shift is not just psychological. It is spiritual. It is the ground where confession becomes change and responsibility becomes liberation. It is how you return to yourself, not as a puppet, but as a person.

Human Freedom

In the Christian Faith

The Bible itself includes verses that strongly imply human freedom, unpredictability, and a world not rigidly controlled by God at every moment. While divine sovereignty is acknowledged, scripture does not present life as a fixed script. Instead, it portrays a dynamic relationship between human will and divine presence.

Ecclesiastes 9:11 makes this plain: “I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong… but time and chance happen to them all.” This is not a portrait of rigid destiny. It is a recognition of uncertainty, variability, and randomness—qualities incompatible with the idea that every moment is choreographed by divine design.

In Jeremiah 19:5, God laments human evil by saying, “They have built the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as offerings to Baal—something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind.” This passage is a clear rejection of the idea that God orchestrates all events. If something never even “entered God’s mind,” then it cannot be part of a divine plan. Human agency, especially in evil, stands apart from divine will.

Isaiah 30:1 similarly condemns independent human choices made without divine guidance: “Woe to the obstinate children,” declares the Lord, “to those who carry out plans that are not mine…” Again, this distinguishes between what people do and what God desires. It implies people can and do create plans outside of God’s will—and are responsible for them.

These scriptures contradict the idea that everything you experience is divinely mandated. They affirm the possibility of choice, error, deviation, and even defiance. In that light, confession is not a ritual that acknowledges you failed a cosmic blueprint. It is a declaration that you made a real decision with real consequences. And from that decision, change is possible.

In the Islamic Faith

This concept—that not everything is prewritten—also appears in the Qur’an. While the Qur’an acknowledges divine knowledge and sovereignty, it does not endorse a rigid fatalism in which every action is preordained. Instead, it affirms that humans are morally accountable for their choices.

Surah Al-Kahf (18:29) says: “And say, ‘The truth is from your Lord. So whoever wills—let him believe; and whoever wills—let him disbelieve.’” This verse underscores the agency granted to every person. Belief and disbelief are not assigned. They are chosen.

Surah Ar-Ra’d (13:11) states: “Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.” Here again, change begins with human effort. If every outcome were preplanned by God, this verse would have no meaning. The individual has responsibility for shaping their life through action and reform.

And in Surah Ash-Shams (91:7–10), we find: “And [by] the soul and He who proportioned it and inspired it with discernment of its wickedness and its righteousness, He has succeeded who purifies it, and he has failed who corrupts it.” This directly places success and failure in human hands. The soul is given guidance, but what happens next depends on what the individual chooses to do with it.

In the Jewish Faith

Judaism strongly affirms the reality of free will and personal responsibility. In fact, the foundational ethical system of the Torah depends entirely on the idea that you can choose between good and evil, obedience and defiance, compassion and cruelty. If everything were planned in advance by divine will, none of the moral imperatives in Jewish law would make sense.

In Deuteronomy 30:15–19, Moses delivers a direct message: “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil… I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live.” This is not a declaration of fate. It is an appeal to human will. You are commanded to choose life. That command assumes that the choice is yours to make.

The Mishnah, a foundational text of Rabbinic Judaism, echoes this theme. In Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) 3:15, Rabbi Akiva states: “Everything is foreseen, yet freedom of choice is given.” This phrase captures the tension between divine omniscience and human freedom. God may know what you will choose, but you still must choose. Knowledge is not the same as control.

In Jewish theology, teshuvah (repentance or return) plays a central role. It is built on the assumption that you are capable of error—and capable of returning from it. The entire liturgical structure of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, presumes that you bear responsibility for your actions and can make meaningful change. Vidui (confession) is recited aloud not to resign to fate, but to actively own your wrongdoing and commit to a different path. Confession is meaningless in a world without moral agency.

If God had scripted your life down to every detail, then the very notion of mitzvot—commandments—would be hollow. You cannot be commanded to do what you have no power to refuse. Judaism insists that you are not a puppet of divine will. You are a moral being whose choices matter.

This directly confronts the idea that everything is part of a divine plan, including your pain. From a Jewish perspective, your suffering is not a message from God or a required stage in some invisible design. It is the tragic result of human choices—yours or others’—and it can be transformed only through conscious, active engagement with healing and truth

These verses reinforce a consistent theme across major religious traditions: you have agency. God provides awareness, opportunity, and guidance—but not a forced path. Your suffering is not proof of divine design. It is evidence of a world where others also have free will and sometimes use it to harm.

That is why confession exists across traditions—not as submission to fate, but as acknowledgment that your actions matter. If everything were predetermined, confession would be pointless. Instead, it serves as a moral reset, a conscious return to personal accountability.

Adam and Eve: The Original Story of Consequences

The story of Adam and Eve is not about fate. It is about choice and consequence. In Genesis, God places Adam and Eve in a garden with one boundary: do not eat from the tree of knowledge. They are not puppets. They are not bound by fate. They are given a choice.

When they eat the fruit, the outcome is not random. It is not destiny. It is consequence.

This is the Bible’s first lesson on agency: you are free to choose, but not free from the results of your choices.

This story often gets interpreted as a tale of disobedience. But it is also a story about responsibility. The moment Adam blames Eve, and Eve blames the serpent, God responds not with fatalism but with accountability. Each person faces consequences, not because it was planned, but because their actions had effects.

That framework applies to the experience of scams. The scammer chose deception. You chose trust. Neither of you was scripted. Each of you acted. And now, as in Eden, there is consequence. But also opportunity. In the story, exile is not the end. It is the beginning of the human story. And that is the invitation: not to explain away what happened, but to live with clarity and courage on the other side of it.

To learn more about this, we encourage you to listen to our audiobook: The First Deception – A New Perspective on the First Scam – a SCARS Institute Audiobook 2025

The Purpose of Life Is Not to Avoid Suffering

Suffering is part of human existence. That is not just religious or philosophical rhetoric. It is observable truth. Every person will face loss, betrayal, grief, or failure at some point. The question is not whether suffering happens. The question is how you respond to it.

Many religious traditions—Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam—acknowledge suffering as intrinsic to life. Where they differ is how they frame its meaning.

The Christian message, especially in the New Testament, frames suffering as something that can deepen faith and build character. Romans 5:3–4 says, “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.”

But Buddhism takes a different approach. The First Noble Truth is that suffering (dukkha) is a fundamental aspect of life. The Second Noble Truth explains that suffering comes from attachment—our cravings, illusions, and desires. In this view, the way to transcend suffering is not to avoid it, but to understand it, accept it, and live in awareness of it.

This idea aligns well with scam recovery. You are not trying to erase the past. You are trying to see it clearly, without distortion. You are trying to grow beyond it.

Healing Is Not Passive: It Requires Agency

If you believe that everything was planned, you may feel passive in your own recovery. You may wait for healing to arrive instead of participating in it. But healing is not something that happens to you. It is something you build.

You make conscious choices every day—whether to isolate or to reach out, whether to blame yourself or seek understanding, whether to hide or to speak. These choices shape your future. They are acts of free will. And they matter.

Your trauma was not fated. It was inflicted. But your recovery is not random. It is built moment by moment through your decisions.

Letting Go of the Need for a Reason

One of the most liberating things you can do in the aftermath of a scam is let go of the need for a cosmic reason. Sometimes things happen not because they were meant to happen, but because people made harmful choices. Accepting that truth does not mean your life has no meaning. It means your meaning is something you create—not something you decode from an external plan.

You do not need to turn your scam into a divine mystery. You can let it be what it was: a crime, a betrayal, a human failure. And from there, you can build something real.

You can choose resilience. You can choose recovery. You can choose insight. Not because you were destined to, but because you decided to.

Entropy, Thermodynamics, and the Nature of Disorder

In physics, the Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us that entropy—the tendency toward disorder—increases over time in a closed system. Left alone, systems move from order to disorder unless energy (agency or free will) is actively applied to maintain structure. This principle, while scientific, has deep symbolic value in conversations about meaning, suffering, and chaos.

When a scam occurs, it feels like a collapse into disorder. Your assumptions fall apart. Your structure of trust dissolves. This is emotional entropy. It is not meaningful in itself. It is not part of a larger plan. It is what happens when human choices intersect with chaos.

In life, just like in thermodynamics, meaning and order do not maintain themselves. They must be created and maintained. You bring energy into your own system by choosing recovery, boundaries, clarity, and insight. That work is your resistance to entropy. It is not predetermined. It is effortful. It is your responsibility.

The universe does not owe you meaning. But you can bring meaning to your experience through deliberate action. That is how you turn disorder into growth—not because it was destined, but because you chose to apply energy and build something new.

Finding Meaning Through Action, Not Explanation

The idea that everything happens for a reason is comforting, but it collapses under scrutiny. If everything is predetermined, then free will does not exist. If free will does exist, then many things happen because people make choices—good or bad. Scam trauma is one of those things. It happens because someone chose to deceive, and someone else trusted in good faith.

That is not divine punishment. It is not a spiritual test. It is the cost of living in a world where agency exists.

But this does not mean life is meaningless. It means that meaning is not handed to you. It is built. It is chosen. It is lived.

Suffering does not need to be part of a plan to be transformative. Pain does not need to be sacred to be important. You can grow through what happened without pretending it was supposed to happen. You can reclaim your future without blessing your past.

You are not here to decode a hidden purpose. You are here to live with purpose, whatever comes. That is what it means to be human. And that is something no scam can take away.

Conclusion

The belief that everything happens for a reason can feel comforting after trauma, but it often leads to dangerous misconceptions about free will, accountability, and divine intention.

If everything is preordained, then human agency is meaningless—and the idea of responsibility collapses. This becomes particularly troubling for scam victims, who may be told that their suffering was part of a divine plan.

In reality, scripture repeatedly affirms human choice, consequences, and responsibility. You are not a pawn in a cosmic script. You are an individual with agency, shaped by decisions and capable of growth. Painful events like scams happen because people choose to deceive—not because God demands your suffering.

While faith can offer comfort, it is important to distinguish between using suffering for good and suggesting that suffering was planned. The real purpose of life is not to decode fate, but to engage with reality honestly, choosing recovery, clarity, and self-awareness over passive explanations. Suffering becomes meaningful when you act within it, not when you try to explain it away. Your healing is not destiny—it is a decision, made one moment at a time.

Afterthought by Lic. Vianey Gonzalez

For a scam victim to think that everything has to do with God is complex and can be due to several reasons, including Coping Mechanisms and searching for Meaning.

Seeking Comfort and Understanding: Experiencing a scam can be very traumatic, generating feelings of betrayal, anger, shame, and helplessness. In these situations, some people turn to their faith for comfort, meaning, and a way to understand why this happened to them. Attributing it to God’s will, a test, or a larger divine plan can give them a sense of order amidst the chaos.

Finding a Sense of Control: When someone feels victimized and helpless, believing that events are part of a divine plan can offer a sense that a higher control still exists, even if they don’t understand it.

Spiritual Interpretation of Negative Events: Some religious or spiritual beliefs include the idea that negative events can be lessons, punishments, or part of a larger spiritual journey.

Sometimes, victims of fraud may think that everything relates to God, as a way of coping with trauma. In my personal experience as a victim of fraud and a person who considers myself a believer, certainly throughout this recovery process, God was my strength, my refuge, my haven amidst all the chaos and pain I was going through. However, even within my religiosity, I was clear that God was my strength but not responsible for what happened and that I clearly had to entrust myself to him but do what was required of me, work for my recovery.

In psychology, we understand that sometimes false positivism involves leaving our responsibilities, whether it be God, time, etc., on the shoulders of others. The truth is that God can be with us; time can help as long as I act and do what is necessary. I know because I lived it, being a victim of fraud is very difficult and recovery takes time, work and a lot of commitment and it is true that our faith helps us and gives us strength but that same thing gives us the wisdom to know that we must take advantage of the resources we have to be able to overcome it, such as therapists, support groups and if possible our family, by creating all this synergy we will be able to move forward and recover from the damage that the fraud left us.

Reference

The God of Abraham refers to the singular, monotheistic God worshipped by Abraham and his descendants. This God is recognized as the same divine being in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—the three major Abrahamic religions. Each tradition traces its spiritual lineage back to Abraham and identifies his God as the source of creation, moral authority, covenant, and ultimate judgment.

In Judaism

The God of Abraham is YHWH (often rendered as Yahweh or the Tetragrammaton), the eternal and unchanging God who made a covenant with Abraham in Genesis 12, promising to make his descendants a great nation and to bless the world through them. In Jewish theology, this God is indivisible, just, merciful, and deeply involved in human history.

In Christianity

The God of Abraham is understood as the Father in the Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). Christians believe this is the same God who made the covenant with Abraham but view the promise as fulfilled and expanded through Jesus Christ, Abraham’s spiritual descendant. The New Testament describes believers as children of Abraham by faith (Galatians 3:7).

In Islam

The God of Abraham is Allah, the same singular deity. Abraham (Ibrahim) is a prophet and model of pure monotheism (tawhid). The Qur’an repeatedly affirms that Abraham worshipped Allah alone and submitted fully to His will, making him a foundational figure for Islamic faith and ethics.

Key Attributes Shared Across the Three Traditions

• • • Creator of the universe

    • Source of moral law and justice

    • Covenant-maker with Abraham and his descendants

    • Opposed to idolatry

    • Personal and relational, yet transcendent

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• A Reflection on Christ’s Suffering and Radical Acceptance of the Worst Possible Outcome – 2025
• The Suffering of Job and How This Applies to Scam Victims – 2025
• A Clean Slate – Understanding the Context of the Great Flood in the Book of Enoch and the Lesson it Teaches to Scam Victims – 2025
• Faith – What Is It and Why Does It Matter to Scam Victim? – 2024
• Cruel Or Indifferent To Suffering – What Scammers Do And Why It Is So Important For Scam Victims To Understand – 2024
• DJINN – History’s Original Scammers – 2025
• SCARS Institute Religious Statement – 2025

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