God is not Your Alibi: Stop Outsourcing Accountability to God or the Universe

We’ve all seen the post. You know it. It’s got soft lighting and a nature background with a grainy filter. Or maybe it’s someone crying or a surprise engagement photo nobody saw coming. And then there’s a caption that starts with “In this season of growth…” and somewhere in paragraph two, God shows up. But not just to give thanks or gratitude. God shows up as the reason it’s all happening.

“We knew in that moment that the Universe had a plan for us to find each other.”

“God brought us together.”

“I’m learning that sometimes the universe has to break something to build something better.”

That’s cool. Or, and hear me out, you moved in with someone after three dates, ignored every single thing your therapist, your best friend, or anyone with any grounded sense could have told you, and then, shockingly, it fell apart in exactly the way anyone with functioning eyes could’ve predicted. That’s not divine timing, and it wasn’t all for a greater purpose. You aren’t that special. It was a result of impulsiveness, maybe a decision built on the back of unhealed traumas, or possibly a lack of self-awareness. Or it could have just been your shitty decision-making.

For the last decade, I’ve coached people for a living, hundreds of them for thousands of hours. And let’s be SUPER clear, that does not mean I know the right answers or I’m an expert. However, it does mean I’ve had a front-row seat to people’s mindsets, patterns, habits, decision-making, and gotten to witness how they take or offload accountability and responsiblity.  It also means I’ve seen all these things disguised and dressed up in different outfits, so we don’t even realize when we are repeating our patterns or making these wacky decisions.

What does this look like in real time? A guy torching a five-year relationship, then spending three months working hard to avoid his feelings or any actual reflection, and then posting something about “trusting the path” the same week he starts dating someone new who “just gets him.” Meanwhile, his ex, the kids, and the actual wreckage of his lack of accountability and responsibility get quietly filed under “the universe’s plan,” which is a remarkably convenient place to file things you don’t want to look at directly.

Here’s the thing nobody wants to say in the comments section: God is not your alibi.

I’m not talking about faith here, as I know plenty of deeply faithful men who take full, brutal ownership of their choices and still hold a relationship with God that’s real and grounding. This isn’t about a specific person, but more a costume that anybody, spiritual, secular, crystal-obsessed, church-every-Sunday, or even the person who doesn’t believe in anything, can put on. It’s the move where instead of saying “I made an impulsive decision because I was scared, or bored, or my ego needed a hit of dopamine newness,” you reach for the biggest, least-arguable authority in the universe and let it take the fall for you.

And nobody can push back on ” God knew.” What are you gonna do, get God to go live on your IG feed to support your claim?

To be clear, the problem was never God. It was never faith, or trust, or believing something bigger is at work in your life. I totally believe that’s real. The problem is what we use it for. “God has a plan” becomes the place we file every decision we don’t want to look at directly. It’s not a belief anymore; it’s a filing cabinet where you offload accountability and responsibility. Cheated on your partner, which led to a breakup… “Trusting God’s plan.” Not apologizing for something you did… “Some things aren’t meant to be forced.” None of that is faith. That’s a man using faith as a lid so he doesn’t have to  inside the box. And the cost isn’t spiritual; it’s practical. It’s never having to be accountable for your actions. Never having to own the impact of your choices. Here’s the thing: “God’s got a plan” has never once, in the history of the universe,  apologized, become a better partner, communicated more, been more kind, owned the mistakes you made. That’s still you.

That was always going to be you.

And look, I’ve done it. We’ve all done it to some degree. And maybe not as extreme or with those exact words, but I’ve had the version where I dressed up a fear as a “calling,” where I called something “alignment” because “I panicked” felt too small and too human to admit that out loud. It’s a hell of a lot easier to say a breakup was cosmically ordained than to say “I didn’t do the work, I avoided the hard conversation for eight months, and I blew it up instead of working on it.” One of those sentences makes you sound enlightened. The other one makes you sound like an ordinary human. Guess which one gets the good lighting and IG post.

Here’s what I actually think is happening under all that spiritual language: fear is dressed up as faith. Ego is dressed up as evolution. And a survival mechanism running the show but doing it wearing a spiritual flowy white robe.

And this part really pisses me off. All those pretty perfect IG images. All these sexy or powerful IG videos showing growth, transformation, or breakthroughs. BULLSHIT. 

REAL growth is almost never photogenic. Real growth sounds like: “I didn’t listen. I got scared, and I ran. I didn’t put in the work this relationship needed, and instead of fixing that, I found an exit and called it destiny.” That post doesn’t get the same engagement. It doesn’t get “sending you love” in the comments. It’s uncomfortable authenticity, and we are so not used to that; so it often gets crickets. It’s so real; it’s quiet, because in the realness, it forces us to be with ourselves and how we are doing the same things. In the enlightened post, we get to hide in that, too; it lets us all off the hook.

So here’s the big claim, the one I’d stand behind at a retreat with twenty guys staring back at me: some things aren’t broken by God. They’re broken because you’re not doing the work. And that’s not a punishment; it’s actually good news, because it means you’re not at the mercy of some cosmic script you can’t rewrite. You’re not a character in the universe’s screenplay. You’re the guy who’s holding the pen, and that means the next time, the next relationship, the next hard conversation you want to avoid, you get to choose differently. You get to do the work instead of outsourcing the outcome to the big guy in the sky.

I’m not asking you to stop believing in God, or fate, or timing, or whatever holds meaning for you. I’m asking you to stop hiding behind it. Because the version of you that says “I panicked and I didn’t do the work” is a hell of a lot closer to freedom than the version of you still waiting for the universe to explain your own choices back to you.

So the next time you feel that caption forming in your head, the one about how you were “meant to find each other in this season. Or about how another relationship didn’t work out, but God has a plan”… pause. Ask yourself the harder question first.

What did I actually do? And what didn’t I?

Because that’s the truth. That’s authentic, and that’s the post worth writing.