*
Consider the basic situation.
Since we were
alive pre-mortally, we differed even before incarnation - differed in
our needs. God therefore must have placed us in particular times and
places, and with particular parents in particular situations, for some
reason concerned with the kind of experiences we could expect. This
would mostly be related by what we needed most to learn during our
mortal lives to equip us for resurrected post-mortal eternity.
So,
we were placed here on earth, in a world which God created, among
people, animals, plants and minerals that God also created. Everything
on earth was shaped from the stuff of the universe, everything is
therefore alive - albeit in different ways.
Furthermore, everything is - to widely varying extents - conscious and in communication with everything else.
Therefore
life on earth is all about relationships - the relationships between
innumerable (more- or {usually} less-conscious) entities
in-communication.
All the entities, every-thing, on
earth can be regarded as a matrix or web: each entity influencing and
responding to everything else; some entities much more powerfully than
others; and sometimes entities will align together collectively -
either defensively or aggressively - and thereby amplify their
influence.
*
Luck can be explained in
terms of the relationship between each of us and the web of other
entities. Other entities in the web respond (individually and
collectively) to our personal and collective human attitudes and
behaviours - and that is the reason for luck; whether good or bad.
Bad
luck may be a response to our own selfish, insensitive, aggressive,
exploitative attitudes and behaviours being resisted by individual or
collective responses from the matrix of living things (i.e. the web of
other-entities); or this reaction may be against some group we are in -
the species, a nation or smaller grouping. In sum, bad luck is
characterized by a relationship that is prideful, hate-driven, old,
impersonal, careless: negative.
Good luck is the
opposite - it happens when the relationship between an individual (or
group) and the matrix is empathic, care-full, altruistic, warm,
positive; that is, when the relationship is characterized by Love.
*
It
is vital to remember that this system is not set-up to optimize our
mortal health and happiness; but to provide the situation for providing
the experiences necessary for developing our post-mortal
resurrected lives.
Therefore, true luck is not referenced-to our current state of pleasure or suffering.
*
From
this above metaphysical scheme, it can be seen that there is, on the
one hand, no randomness to our lives - we are under God's care. But on
the other hand, we are free agents with choice; and so is everything
else in this world; not just the other people, but every-thing in this
world.
We are subject to the consequences of our own
choices and behaviours, and also subject to the consequences of the
choices and behaviours of the other entities of the world. And as each
of us is a sinful, weak, imperfect entity; so too (in their very
different and diverse ways) are the other things in this world.
Just as we can be spiteful vengeful, self-centred - so too ca the matrix of things with which we are necessarily in relation.
Hence
good and bad luck are not 'a matter of luck', not random, nor imposed
individually and specifically at the will of God; but most a matter of
the consequences of choices.
**
The above argument is adapted from the chapter entitled 'Justice' in A Geography Of Consciousness, by William Arkle (1974).
