God suffers evil, in both senses of the word. He allows it in his sufferance and defeats it in his suffering. His eternal will is accomplished in the sufferance and suffering of the Cross, as he tells us in the words he himself utters from the Cross itself.
We live in a world in which all sorts of evil things happen and, which is worse, a world in which all sorts of evil things are encouraged. Take fornication, for instance. A world in which fornication is fawned upon will also be a world in which the killing of babies is condoned, the latter being an inevitable consequence of the former. If fornication is favoured, infanticide must be encouraged because babies are an unwanted “toxic” by-product of extra-marital sexual relations. If the practitioners of fornication had to carry the physical burden of its consequences, they might not be quite so keen to practice it. Ergo, if they remain keen on practicing it, they must be free to exterminate the “unplanned” fruits of their actions.
This is but one of a legion of examples that could be given of the proliferation and propagation of evil in the world.
This is the way things are but is it the way things should be? Surely not, we’d be tempted to say. If everyone behaved as they should, acting selflessly and not selfishly, the world would be a better place. This is true, no doubt about it, but it’s never happened in practice. In the real world, most people seem to act selfishly most of the time. It’s always been this way. Sin, which is what theologians call selfishness, is always with us. But, and to return to our original question, is this as it should be?
The answer, which will come as a surprise to many of us, is that it is as it should be. In the light of God’s omnipresence, which is another way of saying that everything is present to God, including the past and the future, things are as they should be. God has not lost control of things. He is omnipotent as well as omnipresent. He remains all-powerful. This means that he permits these things to happen. It is his eternal will that is ultimately being accomplished. God suffers evil, in both senses of the word. He allows it in his sufferance and defeats it in his suffering. His eternal will is accomplished in the sufferance and suffering of the Cross, as he tells us in the words he himself utters from the Cross itself. It is accomplished. He does not say that it will be accomplished eventually but that it is accomplished.
But does this mean that we should be comfortable with the evil that surrounds us? Should we be comfortable with fornication and the killing of its illegitimate children? Of course not. We should be as uncomfortable in the presence of evil as Christ was on the Cross. We should be willing to devote our lives, to lay down our lives, in the struggle against evil. But we should also know that it is right and just that the consequences of evil should be evil; that a world besotted with evil should be a world bewailing the misery it has made for itself. It is right and proper that selfishness is self-destructive. This is the way things should be.
Imagine a world in which evil actions did not have evil consequences; in which the culture of death flourished and did not flounder. Imagine a world in which lust did not destroy relationships; in which wrath did not destroy lives; in which envy did not poison the communion between people; in which gluttony did not destroy the health of ourselves and others. Imagine a world in which pride did not precede a fall. Such a world would be demonic. It would not be as things should be. Such a world does not exist. Thanks be to God!
Seeing that things are as they should be enables us to see the world as we should see it. It is right and just that the modern world, having turned its back on God, should be falling apart at the seams. What else should we expect?
Those who see the forces of evil as emerging triumphant in the modern world know little about evil, and little about history.
Those living during the Reign of Terror which followed the French Revolution might have been forgiven for thinking that Christianity was finished. The French Revolution floundered, killing itself in its own bloodlust, and Christianity rose from the dead.
Those witnessing the mass extermination of Christians in the Soviet Union or Red China might have been forgiven for thinking that secularism had won and that Christianity was doomed. In the event, communism was doomed and Christianity has emerged stronger than ever from the ashes of Marxist tyranny.
Those witnessing the rise of the Nazis and the worship of the Master Race must have wondered if this was the end of civilization as they knew it. In the event Hitler’s much-flaunted Thousand Year Reich faltered and fell after only twelve years.
The racial pride of the Nazis and the proletarian pride of Marxist revolution preceded their fall. So what do Christians have to fear from the new Pride movement and its hellbent hatred of the human family? We can fear for our lives, as those in revolutionary France, Russia and China feared for theirs. We might suffer persecution or even martyrdom. We might face our own crucifixion. This is as it should be. It is the evil consequence of evil actions. What we should not fear is the final victory of Pride itself. Such a victory is not as it should be and, thanks be to God, it is not as it will be.
The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.
Editor’s note: The featured image is “The Destroying Angel and Daemons of Evil Interrupting the Orgies of the Vicious and Intemperate” (1832) by William Etty, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
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Apparently, church attendance in Russia stands at less than 1% Even lower than in Britain, a nation not usually accused of excessive piety.
I think most of us can accept that a degree of evil and suffering is acceptable in the world. But when drug cartels routinely murder people by plunging them into vats of acid; it’s impossible to accept it as God’s plan (not to mention natural disasters)
I cannot envision Christianity rising from the dead in the high-rent part of the world. In the places where it supposedly thrives, the cross is little more than a tribal badge. It pains me to state it, but I really do think it’s finished.
Apt. Very timely.
I recall the most shocking thing I ever read was in that God is Being, Being Itself, Ground of Being. Not as a philosophical toy to be played with, but as the basis of reality. I realized that God was totally Present, supporting the very atomic sub-particles of ME, but of everything 14.5 billion light years in every direction, all of space and time (the last calculation of the extent of the Universe.)
That meant that nothing — Nothing — happened that he did not support and allow, from the idle thoughts in my head to the extinction of the dinosaurs. I had read this in the Bible, but it somehow didn’t “take” until I found it in Aquinas. The comfort that it gave me was intense, almost painful. Not only was it true that, “the rain, it raineth every day”, but also, “All shall be well, and all will be well and all manner of things will be well.”
It was the day i learned to stop fretting over little things, like global thermonuclear war, or ecological collapse, or where did I lose a certain book.
“God’s in his Heaven / All’s right with the world!”
Thank you Mr. Pearce for writing about those mystical matters.
“He “allows” it in his “sufferance” and “defeats” it in his “suffering.”
He “must” (little strange to say that God “must” or “needs” to do something) allow it because He “needs” to be “faithful” to His gift of free will that, when used to choose Love, makes us the children created in His image, and when used to choose evil, makes us slaves of the devil. And God, and His chosen children, rather “expiate” than “defeat” it, in His–and His chosen children–sufferings.
Suffering in itself doesn’t make any sense, and it was never intended by God. Would any normal father without any reason impose suffering on his children? And I am not talking about soccer or boxing practice—I am talking about physical and even more so spiritual torment—One would have to be a pretty deprived man to like his children to really suffer, and his children would rightly think of him as a crazy man.
But redemptive sufferings change the picture drastically:
We can imagine a father telling his son: “There is this girl; she messed up badly—I want you to go and help her out.” The son goes and checks the situation and discovers that in order to help that girl, he would have to go through some great humiliating sufferings. He comes back to his father and tells him that it is some kind of a joke that he has nothing to do with that painful and ugly situation of that girl. And then he hears from his father: “She is my dearly beloved daughter… you know what that means? This means that she is your dearly beloved sister. Son, you are a free man—you can choose whatever you like, but would you be willing out of love to take her cross, help her and our entire family?”
In the Holy Church that is His Sacred Body, we–the members–are all brothers and sisters that have One Father.
St. Edith Stein: The restoration of freed humanity to the heart of the heavenly Father, taking on the status of a child, is the free gift of grace, of merciful love. But this may not occur at the expanse of divine holiness and justice. The entire sum of human failures from the first Fall up to the Day of Judgment must be blotted out by a corresponding measures of expiation. Everyone who, in the course of time, had borne an onerous destiny in remembrance of the suffering Savior, or who had freely taken up works of expiation has by doing so canceled some of the mighty load of human sin and has helped the Lord to carry His burden. Or rather, Christ the head effects expiation in these members of His Mystical Body who put themselves, body and soul, at his disposal for carrying out His work of salvation.
Peter Kreeft: A meaningless self-contradiction does not suddenly become meaningful and believable, and an intrinsic evil does not suddenly become good, when someone says “God can do it.” God can do what is physically impossible but not what is logically or morally impossible. That is why Christ had to die: because God could not simply pretend we had not sinned, or say “Justice? Forget about it.”
St. John of the Cross: “If the Lord should give you power to raise the dead, He would give much less than He does when He bestows suffering. By miracles you would make yourself debtor to Him, while by suffering He may become debtor to you. And even if sufferings had no other reward than being able to bear something for that God who loves you, is not this a great reward and a sufficient remuneration? Whoever loves, understands what I say.”
This, of course, does not mean that sin should be. On the contrary each sin no matter how small not only insults God, but also creates a need of expiation that Christ and members of His Body would have to painfully perform…each sin adds pain that should never be and was not indented to be (it is the result of our free will):
“And He said to his disciples: It is impossible that scandals should not come. But woe to him through whom they come! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he cast into the sea, than that he should scandalize one of these little ones.” Those little ones who later, along with their loved ones, need to suffer greatly. Who, with some honor, would not take up the sword and fight the evil to the last drop of blood?