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“For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.” - Job 19:25-27
The “But it Hurts!” of It All
Creation groans, and it does not so quietly. It isn’t difficult to see what occasions this; there is yet much pain in our world. Vile criminal and military enterprise, all manner of physiological malady, the ever-present defect of our very nature; there seems to be no privation of the privation of good. But those who are Christ’s know this to be a damned lie. The Blood of the God-Man has made His world holy, and in it is His Church washed. All things shall find their end in Eden restored, or those things evil bound in outer Darkness. Indeed, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well¹."
All shall be redeemed, all wretchedness cast asunder. But then, as even (and perhaps especially) the faithful are want to ask, why? Not, “Why redemption?” But instead, “Why corruption?” If it rests in our Lord’s power to wrench His cosmos from its current state and into Paradise, certainly it rests in His power to have maintained Paradise from eternity past. Yet,
“Astonied stood and Blank, while horror chill
Ran through his veins, and all his joynts relax'd;
From his slack hand the Garland wreath'd for Eve
Down drop'd, and all the faded Roses shed ²."
A certain man of Uz had a conflict with evil of archetypal import, wherein all his creaturely wisdom was reduced to impoverished cerebral ornament. Faith-forming faculty that suffering may prove, it may just as well appear faith-threatening. We’re left to wonder how the Lord’s people are to reconcile three truths:
That “we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.³"
That the Lord could, conceivably, author our salvation apart from great suffering.
That the Lord does not author our salvation apart from great suffering.
It is here now our obligation to make a modest attempt at “thinking His thoughts after Him.”
On the Arena of Divine Majesty
The only way forward seems to be in conceiving of suffering as instrumental to good. This goes against our every carnal inclination; nevertheless, it must be true. It will perhaps prove helpful to propound our solution by way of analogy; suppose that God is pure, incomprehensibly brilliant Light (not an altogether unwarranted picture, given the scriptural language). Creation, then, is like unto a prism, its iridescent refractions the means by which the full range of God’s resplendent Glory is displayed. Integral to the beauty of that Light shining forth is that no shade of it be hidden.
Two worlds commend themselves to our consideration; the first in which the Lord establishes a universal Edenic order and maintains it. There is no fall of angel nor man, no evil is done, and all is well. Our race walks with the Blessed Trinity in Paradise as with a near friend. The second world is the one we find ourselves in. God creates a perfect order, the fall of angels, and later man introduces sin into that order and confuses it. Christ the New Adam meets the demands of the eternal Law in His death, satisfying God’s wrath on our behalf. He takes on the ragged bloody cloth of our nature and cleanses it white as snow in His resurrection. He “spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.⁴" Those who are united to Christ and His redemptive work will enjoy and glorify Him together in the eternal Elysian choirs of the eschaton.
God is Goodness, and so it seems a meet measure that whichever of these worlds has wider goods instantiated in it is the same which best displays His glory. The former has the goods of Paradise. The latter has those same goods and further all evil-overcoming goods! Here we ought to look with reverence towards the cool shade of the cross beneath which all creation rests.
A syllogism:
P1. The glory of God is further displayed by the presence of further goods.
P2. A world with Paradisal and redemptive goods present has further goods present than a world with only Paradisal goods present.
C. The glory of God is further displayed by a world with Paradisal and redemptive goods present than by a world with only Paradisal goods present.
We may add to redemptive goods also retributive (judicial) goods such as those which are in civil and eternal justice meted out.
The Counting of It All as Joy
It is this knowledge, that evil serves to glorify our King in His conquering of it, that places peace surpassing understanding and zeal as fire from heaven in the hearts of His people. It is this same sure comfort by which the primitive Church militant etched into sprawling catacombs,
“Here lies Marcia, put to rest in a dream of peace.”
“Lawrence to his sweetest son, borne away of angels.”
“Victorious in peace and in Christ.”
“Being called away, he went in peace.⁵"
Amidst the assault of spear and stake, torch and lion, the denizens of the Kingdom of Heaven did not doubt as to its triumph. They knew their sufferings to only further glorify the Lord. In the created order God’s glory must be fully displayed; from one end, the unheavenly host who have but the good of being, to the other end, Calvary upon which all good is bought with inestimable price. There must then be a wide range of evils, that God may defeat every one of them and the radiance of His glory shine down from Heaven all the more vibrantly. Each evil we now encounter is only a pronouncement of the Lord’s comprehensive Victory unto His people; all is well, and all is well, and every manner of thing has been made well.
Wherein the Reader is Entreated to Humbly Approach the Throne of Almighty God
“Almighty God, who art a strong tower of defence unto thy servants in the time of trouble: We yield thee praise and hearty thanks for our deliverance from the dangers which lately encompassed us. We confess that it is of thy goodness alone that we are preserved, and we beseech thee still to continue thy mercies towards us, that we may always acknowledge thee as our saviour and might deliverer, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.⁶"
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
Now and always, may “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all.⁷" Amen.
¹ Julian of Norwich
² John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 9
³ Rom 8:28
⁴ Col 2:15
⁵ John Foxe, Foxe's Book of Martyrs
⁶ A Prayer for Deliverance in Peril, The 1662 Book of Common Prayer
⁷ 2 Cor 13:14