"Everything happens for a reason."
Most who subscribe to this belief lean on it when something undesirable happens. It is a positive outlook and a faith-based mentality that there is some trustworthy higher force (God, Spirit, Divine Consciousness, Divine) orchestrating the undesirable circumstance and it is happening for good reason.
It is true that in hindsight we can often see the Divine orchestration more clearly, and how those undesirable events actually led us to something that we now value in our life. However, this mentality can also trap us into believing that every undesirable circumstance is Divinely led, whereas they may just be Divinely resolved. Some undesirable circumstances are the work of the "enemy".
What is the enemy? In Christianity, the enemy is the devil or the potential for evil that exists within all of us. In New Age Spirituality, the enemy has been depicted as false light or low vibrational energies, such as greed or gluttony. Unfortunately this world isn't full of just love and light.
Sometimes undesirable circumstances are due to our own sinful or low vibrational behavior, or an act of evil upon us that led us to that undesirable circumstance. This is not the hand of God. But don’t be mistaken — the reason you can look back and see the beauty that came from those circumstances is indeed Divine orchestration, but the bad that preceded the good was not Spirit led.
For the theologians, it states in Romans 8:28 that God uses all things for good. He can take an act of sin and turn it to good. He can deliver you from any evil, whether it is evil of your own doing or evil done unto you. But to believe that it was God who led you to those awful moments is what I believe to be the source of why many mistrust God. This faulty mentality leaves us questioning why a loving God would need there to be so much evil or pain in order for us to learn, grow, and live out the Divine plan for us.
Entertain for a moment the possibility that God never wanted there to be pain or harm on Earth — that it is only our disobedience to God’s word that is causing this harm. What if all of the pain that exists on Earth is inflicted by the ego and is actually not God at all?
But then this raises the question: if God is all powerful, why can't he just end evil? Why does it exist in the first place?
Perhaps being made in God’s image also means having the multi-dimensionality of both good and evil within us. Just as God has great capacity and multi-dimensionality, so do we as his image. I think it’s important to stop placing the ownership of evil on God when as his image, we have the authority to choose good or evil. Of course we cannot control the evil done unto us, but God will always help you turn it to good. If we are consumed by our own evil, he will help to deliver us. But we have the authority to choose to listen and surrender, or to resist and try to control our own path.
So the problem I see with the “everything happens for a reason” mentality is that it lets the enemy in. It justifies sinful behavior on the belief that God has the capacity to be evil and will bring harmful experiences to you just to teach you something. This is not a good, loving God.
Would a good, loving father intentionally inflict pain on his child to teach them something important? No. But a good, loving father does know the world we live in and cannot protect us from all the evil that exists, so he guides and will try to help us avoid the pain but we don’t always listen. I do believe that some pain is unavoidable, but you can bet that he will always be there to help you through it and turn it into good.