Destiny

A simple country man changed the whole world. There was nothing particularly unusual about him- He was in the prime of his life, handsome, in good physical condition from farming his fields from dawn 'till dusk most days, married, and a Christian. Like most Christians of the time, he believed in God as an omnipotent though benign figure. He was a good man, who lead a good life.

However, several years after he was married, he began to regret it. He frequently argued with his wife, and as the years stretched on, these arguments required less and less fuel to become more and more heated. One night, the man came home drunk. When his wife started to henpeck him, he lost control. He hit her in the head with the glass bottle he was holding, as hard as he could. The glass shattered, and she fell to the floor. She wasn't dead yet, but her pupils were dilated, and there was a dent in her skull, sure signs that it was swiftly approaching.

The man didn't realize this. He had collapsed beside her onto the broken glass bottle. Luckily for him, he was wearing his thickest clothing for the winter months, and it didn't affect him. He didn't feel anything from his wife's murder until the next morning, hen he woke up with a severe hangover and saw her corpse next to him.

Although he had been raised as a simple country boy, the man did have some cleverness in him. It only took an hour to make his house look like it had been robbed, and the murder like a crime of passion on the part of the robbers. The local police were summoned, and no one even bothered to question him when they carted his wife's body away.

After everyone had left, the man sat in his quiet, empty house, thinking. As he thought about everything that had transpired, an awful feeling of guilt started to sink into him. No matter what he tried to distract himself with, his mind would always flash back to the corpse of his wife, and the broken bottle. It's all your fault, They would whisper to him. It's all your fault.

Over the course of the next three days, the whispers grew louder and louder. By the time that his wife's funeral came around, the man could hear almost nothing else. He sat in his seat, in the only formal clothing he could find, and tried to shut them out, to no avail.

After the services, his best friend of fifteen years had some profound words for him.

"You should not wish her back to life, for it is God's will that this happen. This was not premature, for it was His wish that she be invited to his kingdom early."

Upon hearing this, the whispers in the man's head subsided.

Yes.. He thought. That's true. It wasn't my fault. It wasn't. She didn't die because I wanted to kill her, but because the Lord preordained that she would die at my hands. I had no choice in the manner, so it's not my fault.

He no longer felt guilty about the murder of his wife. Throughout the rest of his life, he would use his belief in God as a scapegoat for his problems, spreading this philosophy throughout his town, and eventually the world. He had invented a belief in destiny.