More Thoughts on "The Missy Question"

I'm still thinking about evil in creation as it relates to the Missy question--"God, if you can't take care of Missy, how can I trust you to take care of me?" I think it might be helpful to include some very lengthy quotes from David Bentley Hart. These are taken from a collection of essays in his book, In the Aftermath.

In the first quote he's challenging the belief that Christians must believe God is behind everything--the good as well as the evil, or that God needs evil and pain to prove how good he is. He's writing about the Indian Ocean Tsunami of December 2004 that destroyed towns and villages. Let's listen to his closing remarks.

"I do not to believe Christians are obliged--or even allowed--to look upon the devastation visited upon the coasts of the Indian Ocean and to console themselves with vacuous cant about the mysterious course taken by God's goodness in this world, or to assure others that some ultimate meaning or purpose resides in so much misery. Theirs is, after all, a religion of salvation; their faith is in a God who has come to rescue his creation from the absurdity of sin and the emptiness of death, and so they are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred. For while Christ takes the suffering of his creatures up into his own, it is not because he or they had need of suffering, but because he would not abandon his creatures to the grave. And while we know that the victory over evil and death has been won, we know also that it is a victory yet to come, and the creation therefore, as Paul says, groans in expectation of the glory that will one day be revealed. Until then, the world remains a place of struggle between light and darkness, truth, and falsehood, life and death; and, in such a world, our portion is charity." (116)

I want you to listen carefully to what he's saying here. This is a very Wesleyan perspective, one that liberates us from having to believe that God sends pain to teach us lessons or even that God needs evil for some greater good. The struggle this side of heaven is real. And truth be told, we will lose some skirmishes, but we won't lose the war. The not yet victory has already been won in the death and resurrection of Jesus. In the meantime, while we wait for the final victory, our job is charity--to witness to God's grace and love.

But there's more that needs to be said. Let's listen again to David Hart:

"As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child I do not see the face of God, but the face of his enemy. It is not a faith that would necessarily satisfy Ivan Karamazov, but neither is it one that his arguments can defeat: for it has set us free from optimism, and taught us hope instead. We can rejoice that we are saved not through the immanent mechanisms of history and nature, but by grace; that God will not unite all of history's many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history false and damnable; that he will not simply reveal the sublime logic of fallen nature, but will strike off the fetters in which creation languishes; and that, rather than showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, he will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes--and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things will have passed away, and he that sits upon the throne will say, "Behold, I make all things new."

Amen to that. Let us rejoice in the hope that we have.

Peace.