There's No God in Chess

On planning, suffering, and the grace we’re actually given

You’ve surely heard the quip, “Make a plan, God laughs.” We do it anyway, of course, for we cannot simply drift, which must be the opposite of the attempt to follow a plan. Yet, if we look back upon our lives, we can see how many times our expectations failed to materialize, and we were derailed by the unforeseen.

When I was an adolescent at my grandmother’s house, a repairman from the government came to fix the gas meter. I followed him around and watched him work, out of a mix of curiosity and boredom. He asked me the only question anyone knows to ask children, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“A lawyer,” I grinned.

“Then don’t aim to be a lawyer now. Aim to be anything else. Nobody ever becomes what they wanted to be as a kid.”

He seemed to believe that we could achieve our dreams by failing to name them. But that only tempers disappointment. It hurts less to miss a target that you didn’t aim for.

Most of us try not only to plot our next move, but every move thereafter. We struggle over the plans of our lives like we’re sitting over a chess board, guessing at our opponent’s moves when we make ours. But there’s a difference: in chess, that works. There are limited options each turn. You have only one opponent, and if you’ve played against him before, you might even know how his personality influences his playing style and the choices he makes.

Life isn’t like that. We can’t see all of the potential moves, or even the pieces that are on the board. We don’t own the board, nor can we guess at its breadth. More importantly, we don’t have to.

In chess, there is no God. In the real world, we are given the graces to handle the battles of today, but not the imaginary ones of tomorrow. We find God with us in the present, not in the mythical futures that we can create. Our attempts to plot the future can make us forget that God will be in the hereafter too — not yet, but when we arrive.

If you’ve ever heard someone say, “I don’t think I could go through that” — know that it’s because they didn’t have to. It wasn’t their cross to bear. But had it been, they would have been granted the graces they needed. That doesn’t mean that life never feels impossibly difficult, but it does mean that we’re not alone, and therefore that it’s not impossible at all.

I remember when I broke both my arms in a car accident a few years ago, people seemed befuddled anytime I smiled. I would never choose that experience, and there were frustrations and griefs galore, but there were some true joys too. I learned a new way to pray during those months, and I discovered people who would show up for me in my weakest moments. I wrote about it in more detail for National Catholic Register, but the point is that we cannot see from the outside of a dark situation what light is within it.

When we wrestle against potential futures that seem impossible to face, we invent godless chessboards that provide cause for constant turmoil and never peace, because there’s always another possibility to contemplate. And despite all of it, what we think will happen will most likely be wrong.

In all of it, cooperation with grace is a choice, and a choice that we make in the present. We co-operate by choosing to do the right thing when something else is easier. And sometimes, simply by choosing to see and focus on the good even when brokenness and pain are louder. Regardless, there’s no darkness that His light can’t reach.