Consider this paradox:
God came to earth to bring about redemption; to reverse the effects of sin that had devastated the world He shaped and fashioned to be good and beautiful, ordered and peaceful.
But instead of coming in glory and splendor, living a life of perfect peace and relative ease, love and light and life (namely, the life which man was meant to live originally), He came as Isaiah's "suffering servant." He suffered darkness, distain, hatred, bearing the worst of human nature. Of course He did bring light and good, for He healed the sick and deformed and brought wholeness to human hearts. But instead of a ministry that sent out ripples of societal peace and order, His ministry effected waves of turbulence.
A ministry of hope was bound in affliction.
Do the trials of sin and destruction cease with Christ's entrance into the world? Does even His resurrection—the very conquering of death itself—abruptly terminate the woes of human mortality?
No. But its days are numbered; its doom awaits, and Christ brought His followers power greater than sin, letting them partake in the battle and re-creation by acts deliberately opposite their original nature, for He set them free from the predictability, punishment, and power of the fallen, broken world.
And by bowing to suffering as part of an ailing world, even in a way contrary to human nature and its sense of how things ought to be (for even many atheists see problems with violence, war and general entropy), He begins to heal suffering and combat its effects. How many times in the epistles are Christians told to rejoice in their sufferings?
It seems an ironic paradox that God would use Satan's very tool of destruction against him (Satan, not God).
Through the wrong in the world, God makes His people righteous. Through living purely against trouble and evil and darkness, God perfects human hearts to shine more brightly. Perhaps the contrast of light and peace against fallen darkness and disorder makes it more striking.
And perhaps it merely shows us the power of the Most High God that He would use the twisted schemes of the evil one to heal brokenness and make all things right; that through the cacophony He would weave a marvelous and captivating harmony.
I guess I'm back to the purpose of this blog and the theme which runs quietly in the background of my musings here. But is it not encouraging to pause for a moment and reflect—to praise and rejoice—that our God brings cosmos out of chaos?
Do not lose heart, my friends. One day the battle will be over, and though He has used suffering for good, we need endure it no more! Through the ugliness of torture and death He appeased His own justice. All things will be healed. In His pain we are made whole again. For His love endures forever.
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