Evil: Beyond “A Mystery To Be Endured”

Flannery O’Connor wrote that “. . .  what has given the South her identity are those beliefs and qualities which she has absorbed from the Scriptures and from her own history of defeat and violation: . . . a knowledge that evil is not simply a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be endured.” (“The Catholic Novelist In The Protestant South”).

Often, when one encounters what is seen as evil, it is viewed as a “problem” and the immediate, unthinking response is to ask a  “Why?” question not directed to anyone and not directed to an amorphous “universe.” But often one does direct the question and one asks, “Why, God?”

Especially after one is subjected to a serious evil in any form or of any type, it can be difficult to get from the point of asking God, “Why?, or even from the point of cursing God, to the point that one realizes that ‘why’ there is evil is a mystery- something of God, understood by God, sometimes even planned by God, but that is incomprehensible to us  (as is the same with so many doctrines and beliefs, e.g. the doctrinal mysteries of the Incarnation, Redemption, Immaculate Conception,  and the Trinity).

One thing about this mystery of evil,  when the evil affects us personally, is that its effect is significantly, categorically, ginormously different from any effect of simply acknowledging and then believing a doctrinal mystery, e.g. the mystery of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

This is especially true when the evil one sees or is the object of is not the evil of a human being exercising free will to do evil to us that has a personal impact, but something seen as an evil that can have no possible source other than God (e.g., disease, catastrophes, deaths, deprivations, accidents).

Flannery O’Connor goes beyond the realization that this is a mystery to the insight that for a catholic what is perceived as evil is “to be endured.”   One path to her realization begins with the knowledge and belief that all that God does is good, perfect and loving and He has “care of all things” (Wisdom 12:13). This “care” includes care for us, each of us, and so there can be this apparent  tension between what we believe on the one hand about His care for each of us, all day everyday, always in every situation, and what we perceive to be evil that he allows or visits upon us.

On the way to getting to the point where we endure evil, we cease asking the “Why, God?” question.

Be not hasty to go out of his sight: stand not in an evil thing; for he does whatsoever pleases Him.  Where the word of a king is, there is power: and who may say to him, What doest thou? (Eccles 8:3-4).

Like Job, we realize, with Him caring for us, our questioning Him is meaningless and pointless, perhaps even an insult to Him or us implicitly questioning if He is, indeed, God – and that whatever is happening, this loving God knows what He is doing, much better than we know for ourselves, and so, like Job, we cease questioning.

Then Job answered the Lord, and said:  I know that thou canst do all things, and no thought is hid from thee.  Who is this that hideth counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have spoken unwisely, and things that above measure exceeded my knowledge. (Job 42:1-3) . . .  Then Job answered the Lord and said: Look, I am of little account; what can I answer you?     I put my hand over my mouth.  I have spoken once, I will not reply; twice, but I will do so no more. (Job 40:1-5).

 

Beyond Endure: Embrace the Mystery

Realizing that no matter how we perceive what God allows and that what He has planned for us is for our good, we can go even further than accepting and enduring all this.  Although it may sometimes be utterly difficult, what we perceive as “evil” is part of the “all” things for which we are to be thankful. We are told:

Give glory to the Lord for thy good things, and bless the God eternal, that he may rebuild his tabernacle in thee. (Tobit 13:12).

Therefore, my dearly beloved brethren, and most desired, my joy and my crown; so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved.  . . .  Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I say, rejoice. Let your modesty be known to all men. The Lord is nigh. Be nothing solicitous; but in every thing, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your petitions be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasseth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:1, 4-7).

Without specifically addressing what one might perceive to be evil with God (Our Papa) as its source, Professor William R. Cook has stated a general principle of his about how we should deal with any mystery:

“Cook’s Oversimplification 227 is this: There are two kinds of people, those who see life as a series of puzzles to be solved and those who see life as a series of mysteries to be embraced.” (“Why Every Person in the World Should Read Dante’s Commedia”).

At the end of the day, when one gets right down to the nub of this discussion, there is trust, hope, and most of all humility involved in admitting that “You, God my Papa, you are God, and I am not.” For many of us who have lived some time, there is also the profound knowledge that so many times our plans didn’t turn out so well, or resulted in complete failure, hurt to ourselves and others, or chaos; while – with humble hindsight looking at what God evidently had going on – His plan (which happened to be divine)  was infinitely better than ours. In short, His plan was that of a loving Dad constantly caring for us.

For each of us, whether we understand His plan or not, whether we feel His love or not, whether or not we even know He is there, God is our “hound of heaven” as so stunningly presented by Francis Thompson:

Now of that long pursuit

Comes on at hand the bruit;

That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:

‘And is thy earth so marred,

Shattered in shard on shard?

Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!

Strange, piteous, futile thing!

Wherefore should any set thee love apart?

Seeing none but I makes much of naught’ (He said),

‘And human love needs human meriting:

How hast thou merited—

Of all man’s clotted clay the dingiest clot?

Alack, thou knowest not

How little worthy of any love thou art!

Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,

Save Me, save only Me?

All which I took from thee I did but take,

Not for thy harms,

But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms.

All which thy child’s mistake

Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:

Rise, clasp My hand, and come!’ (Francis Thompson, “The Hound Of Heaven”).

In Book 3  The Horse and His Boy of C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, the main character is Shasta, who, as a baby, was kidnapped and enslaved in the evil land of Calormen.   With the help of a talking horse, Bree, Shasta escapes from his wicked master. After enduring many trials and tribulations,  Shasta is lost. Alone and in a fog he senses a mysterious being near him. He begins to talk to this strange presence and tells it all that he has gone through, including that he believed he was twice chased by lions. The being in the fog turns out to be Aslan,  the Lion, the King of Beasts, son of the Emperor-Over-the-Sea, the King above all High Kings in Narnia. Aslan reveals to Shasta that it was he whose presence Shasta often felt:

I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.

What Shasta perceived as evil misfortunes were planned and accomplished by Aslan, in his Divine Providence, for purposes Shasta did not, at the time, realize or comprehend.

Often, “Why, God?” is a divinely-inspired start  – sometimes begrudgingly – in coming to the point of resigning oneself to enduring what is perceived as evil. From there, with God’s help and love, we can come to embrace  Him and return His mysterious embrace of us.