"Just after the climax of the trilogy The Lord of the Rings, Sam Gamgee discovers that his friend Gandalf was not dead (as he thought) but alive. He cries, "I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself! Is everything sad going to come untrue?" The answer of Christianity to that question is—yes. Everything sad is going to come untrue and it will somehow be greater for having once been broken and lost."In this chapter Keller is addressing the problem of evil, as it is often called. Keller's emphasis in the chapter is two-fold. First, that we lack the proper perspective to see the purpose of what we judge to be evil. Second, he submits that the Christian perspective on evil is that it will not only be vanquished, but will "serve to make our future life and joy infinitely greater."
The interesting effect of this theology of suffering in my mind is that it empowers us to suffer, to be hurt, to be sinned against, and to loose loved ones. We do not need to ourselves "make things right" for ourselves, because God himself will make right what was wrong.
2 comments:
what an encouraging reminder of the hope we have through Christ. thanks for sharing
r.
If this weren't true, there'd be a lot of questions I'd want to bring before the Lord, to hold Him in account. Thanks for the encouraging word, friend.
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