I admit, there are some mornings when I wake up thinking more like Woody Allen. Some days, I don't believe in God, I can't even imagine a future that seems like it could have value, and I yearn for an end with no hereafter so I can just check out of this meaningless reality once and for all. But let me tell you, if chance was really all that I had to greet me on those days, I would not be here anymore. And I would propose, neither would Boris. As David says of his character's pessimism, "How can anyone be optimistic with death looming and no belief in the hereafter?" As I would add, how can anyone see themselves or their life of value if its greatest fulfillment is mere randomness?

Sure, Boris may brush off every event in his life as luck—including the awning that deters his first suicide attempt and the woman who cushions his second—but as the woman tells Boris after she reveals that she is a psychic and Boris asks why she didn't know he was going to fall on her, "Maybe I did." As even Allen himself says about the possibility of meeting the love of your life in a chance encounter, "After that there are [still] a million things that have to fall in place correctly: you have to not get hit by a car, or not develop terminal cancer; you have to assume that your partner is lucky that way." And in the face of that reality, I ask: How can any of us be that lucky? In a reality where so many things had to fall into place just so we could exist, how can there not be a God?

As I see it, much of our lives are out of our hands. Like Allen, I believe that our greatest efforts and grandest plans can really only go so far. But unlike him I believe that the value that lies beyond our own efforts is not whatever luck may hand us, but what God has designed and planned specifically for us. Like the characters in Whatever Works, we often need to let go of our plans and ideas to ever discover those we are meant to fulfill. But unlike the creations of chance or luck, God's plans are not ones I believe we can simply miss by taking this turn instead of that. Less a fenced-in maze that only allows us a single path with absolutely no room to be ourselves, God's plans are one's made by the very being who created us, who knows us better than we know ourselves, who recognizes our free will, and who has the power to lead us to relationships and pursuits of value whether we decide to school in California or Georgia, into dentistry or politics, or out to lunch at McDonald's or Burger King. God's plans are not about depriving us of choice and imprisoning us in falsehood, but about giving us the ultimate freedom from sin and its effects that we need to be able to live our lives to the fullest.

The only questions for us is: In a world where "whatever" makes us happy works and "whatever" direction life takes us as long as it doesn't hurt others is perfectly fine by most, are we willing to believe that God might actually know better than chance and whim and seek a life that not only sheds the false ideals of our society but also the misleading desires within ourselves

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