Do all things always work together?

There is a nice dialogue below between Rocky and Ray and I didn't want to interrupt it so I came up here because I have some thoughts:

There seems to be agreement as to people having had some black, some white and some gray type of experiences in The Family. Not all of these experiences, positive or negative, might have been the direct result of things done by leaders but happened for whatever other reasons. Now, after the fact, we are wiser but we also want and even need to make sense of our past, so we come up with suitable theories to explain our decisions, experiences and personalities. That term of cognitive dissonance comes handy to describe the anomalous state of knowledge wherein we find ourselves. Thus we look for answers.

As a Christian now, it would be easy for me to accept that God was in total control of things back then. It might also be easy to accept the other condition for Ro. 8:28 (all things to work for the good of those who love God, which I dare say we all did back then). But the trick is in that second condition: <u>to be called according to His purpose</u>. Were we called into The Family according to His purpose? If I say yes, then I was called to join The Family because it was God's Will for me. It was part of my journey. If I say no, then I should take that responsibility as well and everything that comes with it.

I am just trying to follow the logic of these arguments and not passing value judgements as to specific events, situations or people but the variables, even as a Christian, are many.

There is yet another side in this formulation, what if I (even as a Christian) don't currently accept the premise that God was in TOTAL control of things back then? What if I claim that joining The Family was not really being “called according to His purpose”?

Mixing these variables we could have some other possible results such as that maybe SOME people were called into The Family for some purpose, unbeknownst to us, them or others. For such people, all things would be working for good, maybe even within and as part of The Family. Talk about a can of worms.

Another possible result is that we would have to take responsibility for our own actions and decisions. We would also have to place some responsibility in the leadership chain and individual leaders. If we believe in the randomness of life events and God is not responsible, somebody must be. We couldn’t say "God made me do it" anymore, could we?

So, asking Christian peers, were we called into The Family as part of His purpose or are we responsible for something?