Coincidence Is Not a Property of Reality
- The Wholy Christian
- Jan 30
- 10 min read
Coincidence is one of those words that sounds harmless until it’s forced to carry real meaning.
It’s the word used when events line up in a way that feels too precise to shrug off, but too complex to explain. A delay changes a day. A choice gets made at the exact second a thought is triggered. A series of “small” inputs stack together and produce an outcome that feels almost designed.
The original question is simple, but it’s not shallow: how many coincidences have to happen before it’s no longer coincidence?
Because once coincidence is allowed to function as an ultimate explanation, it doesn’t stay contained. It expands until it becomes a worldview. And that’s where it collapses.
If coincidence can explain anything, then it can explain everything. If it can explain everything, then it explains nothing at all. At that point, coincidence becomes a blanket word for “I can’t see the full chain,” while quietly implying, “There is no chain.”
Scripture doesn’t allow that implication. If Scripture can deny it, it isn’t truth. And Scripture consistently presents a world that is governed, sustained, and purposeful under the One true God.
📝 The claim isn’t that every person can correctly interpret why each event happened. The claim is that nothing happens outside God’s governance, even when the reason is hidden.
The Limits of Coincidence as an Explanation
In everyday speech, coincidence usually means “unexpected.” But as a philosophy, coincidence means something much stronger: the event is unplanned, unpurposed, and ungoverned in any ultimate sense. Not just unknown, but meaningless.
That kind of coincidence can’t stay small. If one meaningful event can be truly purposeless at the foundation, then any event can be. And if that’s true, meaning becomes optional. Purpose becomes projection. Morality becomes preference. Even hope becomes a kind of mental coping, not a response to reality.
That’s why the question becomes unavoidable: is coincidence describing reality, or is it describing limited human perception?
Scripture repeatedly pushes toward the second answer.
Scripture Doesn’t Treat “Chance” as Ultimate
The Bible doesn’t deny that life often feels unpredictable. It denies that unpredictability is ultimate.
That’s why Scripture uses examples people naturally label “random” and then claims God governs them anyway.
📜 Proverbs 16:33
“The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.”
Casting lots is the ancient version of what many would call “chance.” Scripture doesn’t pretend humans can predict it. It says God rules the outcome.
And that isn’t a one-off statement. Scripture’s scope is sweeping.
📜 Ephesians 1:11
“In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.”
“All things” is comprehensive. It leaves no room for a category of “outside God’s rule.” If there is an appearance of chance, it’s an appearance from below, not a reality above.
📝 A governed world can still feel unpredictable, because the human mind is not omniscient. Unpredictable doesn’t mean ungoverned.
Creation Exists Within God’s Active Governance
This is where the conversation gets real. Because it’s one thing to say God is sovereign “in general.” It’s another to say God’s governance is so complete that nothing exists independently of Him.
Scripture doesn’t describe creation as a machine God built and then left to run on its own. It describes continuous sustaining.
📜 Hebrews 1:3
“He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.”
📜 Colossians 1:16–17
“For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible… all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
That phrase “hold together” matters. It means creation is dependent. The consistency of reality isn’t evidence God is absent. It’s evidence God is faithful.
This also helps answer a common confusion: “If God governs everything, why do physical laws exist?”
Because a world without stable patterns would be chaos. Natural law isn’t a rival to God. It’s the ordinary way God governs a creation that is coherent and livable. Gravity isn’t “against” providence. It’s one of the dependable patterns of God’s rule.
A classic theological way of describing this is that God is the primary Governor of reality while using ordinary secondary means within creation. In other words, God’s governance doesn’t require Him to bypass the world He made. He rules through it.
📖 Source: Westminster Assembly. (1646). Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 5: Of Providence. Read web article: A Puritan’s Mind.
📖 Source: Aquinas, T. (13th century). Summa Theologiae, I, Q. 22 (Providence). Read primary text: New Advent.
📝 The existence of “rules” doesn’t imply God is distant. It implies God is consistent.
The Heavens and Cycles Without Superstition
This section matters because it’s one of the easiest places for people to misunderstand the point.
The heavens are not spiritual authorities. They are not gods. They are not beings that govern life. They are created things. But they are not meaningless created things.
The sun, moon, and stars are part of the physical order God created. Their motion marks time. Their cycles structure life. Their presence shapes the environment of every moment. Not as mystical destiny machines, but as real factors in a real created world.
Scripture says it plainly.
📜 Genesis 1:14
“And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years,”
The “signs and seasons” language is not permission to treat the cosmos as an alternative guidance system. It’s God establishing order. Days. Years. Seasons. Rhythms. Timekeeping. Predictable cycles that make life possible.
And Scripture also states what those heavenly bodies are doing at the deepest level.
📜 Psalm 19:1
“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.”
So here’s the clean concept that needs to be unmistakable:
The heavens are meaningful because they’re governed. Their patterns are real because God authored the order. Their cycles matter because time itself is part of a designed creation. Their presence is one more layer of “conditions” within which life unfolds.
That’s astronomy: the study of real created order.
Now, here’s the parallel that matters without letting it take over the post.
There are systems that try to use cosmic patterns as a personal destiny-reading tool, as if those patterns carry spiritual authority or hidden guidance on their own. Scripture explicitly rejects divination and fortune-telling approaches to reality.
📜 Deuteronomy 18:10–12
“There shall not be found among you anyone… who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens… for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD…”
📜 Isaiah 47:13
“You are wearied with your many counsels; let them stand forth and save you, those who divide the heavens, who gaze at the stars… who… make known what shall come upon you.”
That’s the core correction.
Yes, there is divine purpose behind the patterns of the cosmos. But it’s not because the cosmos has independent spiritual power. It’s because the One true God is the Author and Sustainer of the cosmos.
So if correlations exist between cosmic cycles and human life at times, that correlation is not proof of cosmic authority. It is proof that the created world is deeply interconnected under one Governor. It also isn’t universal, isn’t guaranteed, and doesn’t fit everyone cleanly, which is exactly what exposes the weakness of treating it like a personal destiny machine.
📝 The heavens declare God’s glory. They don’t replace God’s voice. Guidance belongs to God, not to the lights He created.
The Web of Influence Behind Every Moment
A big reason “coincidence” feels persuasive is that most of what shapes a moment is invisible.
Every decision has influences behind it. Some are obvious: upbringing, beliefs, traumas, joys, habits, relationships, moral training, spiritual discipline. Others are subtle: sleep, stress, hunger, timing, tone, environment, sequences of events earlier in the day, even tiny sensory triggers that pull memories and instincts into the present.
The mind is never operating in pure isolation. It is constantly responding to inputs. The world applies pressure, and pressure shapes outcomes.
That doesn’t make life meaningless. It makes life incredibly meaningful, because it reveals how interconnected reality is. A “moment” isn’t just a moment. It’s the end of countless threads tying together.
Scripture makes room for this limitation of visibility.
📜 Proverbs 20:24
“A man’s steps are from the LORD; how then can man understand his way?”
That’s not fatalism. It’s humility. It means God can govern the path in ways the human mind cannot fully trace.
📝 “Can’t trace it” doesn’t equal “there’s nothing there.” It means the system is bigger than the observer.
Human Freedom Within Governance
This is the point where people want a simplistic answer, but Scripture refuses to give one.
Scripture affirms responsibility. Scripture also affirms God’s sovereign work. It holds both without apology.
📜 Philippians 2:12–13
“…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”
Human beings work. God works in them. That’s not coercion. That’s governance in a moral creature.
This is where the thread’s main insight becomes crucial:
Free will doesn’t require the absence of influence. It requires accountability within influence.
Even in ordinary life, nobody chooses without context. Choices are real precisely because they’re made inside real conditions that carry real consequences. That’s why Scripture can command obedience, warn against sin, call for repentance, and promise judgment without ever implying humans are puppets.
God’s presence in all that happens doesn’t mean humans are forced. It means humans are accountable inside a world that God governs.
Ecclesiastes and the Feeling of Chance
A serious biblical post has to acknowledge the verse people cite to argue for randomness.
📜 Ecclesiastes 9:11
“…but time and chance happen to them all.”
Ecclesiastes often speaks from the vantage point of life “under the sun,” meaning life as experienced from the ground: limited knowledge, limited control, unexpected outcomes. The point isn’t that God is absent. The point is that human power isn’t ultimate and outcomes don’t always match effort.
So Ecclesiastes doesn’t overthrow providence. It describes how providence feels from below when the full chain isn’t visible.
📝 Ecclesiastes shuts down pride. Proverbs shuts down despair. Together they describe one world: governed by God, experienced by finite humans.
Obedience as Alignment With Reality
If the world is governed, obedience isn’t arbitrary. It’s alignment.
Not alignment in the sense of earning God’s love, but alignment in the sense of living within God’s design rather than fighting it.
Scripture ties obedience to love and wisdom.
📜 John 14:15
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
And Scripture ties actions to outcomes built into the structure of life.
📜 Galatians 6:7–8
“…whatever one sows, that will he also reap…”
This doesn’t guarantee a pain-free life. But it does mean that aligning with God’s will makes it more likely a life will be marked by clarity, steadiness, peace, fruit, and fewer self-inflicted wounds. Misalignment tends to produce confusion, chaos, bondage, and regret.
Suffering still happens. Scripture never denies that. But Scripture denies that suffering is meaningless.
📜 Romans 8:28
“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good…”
That verse doesn’t say every event is enjoyable. It says God can weave purpose through all events, including the ones that feel like loss. Pain doesn’t disprove providence. It often exposes how badly providence is needed.
Prayer, Response, and the Weight of Silence
If God governs all things, prayer becomes more than ritual. Scripture presents prayer as a real means God has ordained.
📜 Luke 11:9–10
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you…”
God’s responses aren’t always what the human mind expects. Sometimes it’s yes. Sometimes no. Sometimes not yet. Sometimes silence.
Silence isn’t nothing. Silence can be a form of response that matures faith past control. It can restrain a person from rushing into destruction. It can force the heart to examine motives. It can train perseverance. It can deepen dependence.
📝 In a governed world, even silence has weight, because it isn’t empty.
Discernment Matters Because Not All Influence Is Holy
A world without coincidence is not a world where every influence is good.
Scripture is clear that counterfeit influence exists and can feel convincing.
📜 2 Corinthians 11:14
“Even satan disguises himself as an angel of light.”
That’s why discernment is commanded.
“Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God…”
Meaning is real, but meaning doesn’t equal trustworthiness. Not every “sign” is guidance. Not every urge is holy. Not every spiritual-feeling moment is from God. Everything matters, but not everything should be followed.
📝 The absence of coincidence doesn’t remove discernment. It makes discernment essential.
Humility About What’s Known and Unknown
Providence is true. Omniscience is not granted.
Scripture draws a boundary on what can be known.
📜 Deuteronomy 29:29
“The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us…”
The point of a worldview like this isn’t to turn life into a decoding game. It’s to place life back under God where it belongs, and to treat ordinary choices as morally meaningful inside a governed world.
Final Thought
Coincidence is not a property of reality. It’s a word used when visibility is limited.
Scripture teaches a world upheld, governed, and directed by the One true God. It teaches that even what appears random is under His rule. It teaches that natural order and physical law are not rivals to providence but expressions of consistent governance. It teaches that human choices are real and morally meaningful, made within a web of influence rather than outside of it. It teaches that obedience aligns a life with reality, that prayer matters because God responds, that discernment matters because counterfeit influence exists, and that humility matters because not everything is revealed.
So the conclusion holds without collapsing into superstition or fatalism:
Meaning is real. Governance is real. Responsibility is real.
And “coincidence” is a label for limited perspective, not for an ungoverned universe.
Ask Yourself:
What changes when coincidence is understood as limited perception rather than ultimate randomness?
How does responsibility deepen when choices are seen as meaningful within a governed world?
What would obedience look like if it were treated as alignment with reality rather than mere obligation?
Join the Discussion:
What’s a moment that felt random at the time, but later looked threaded with purpose once the wider chain became visible?
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