He will make every sad thing untrue
Tolkien, creator of The Lord of the Rings, said there will be a day when God makes “every sad thing untrue.” But how can this be if it, the sad thing, actually happened? Why does God even allow the sad thing? Why does He allow evil?
This we know for certain: One Day, God, in His power and eternal abilities beyond the dimension of time, will undo all evil and sin in a way that it is as if we were never affected by it, and yet still know Him as Redeemer. Only God can know how to do that.
When this happens, this will usher in our glorified state, where nothing will hinder our worship of God, nor our connection with each other. When this happens, we will all rejoice in the greatest Joy to ever enter our hearts or minds, and say to each other, “This is what we are made for!”
For now, we live in a time when evil still affects us, our relationships, and society.
C.S. Lewis said, “to love at all is to be vulnerable.” I believe this is true. To be vulnerable means you could get hurt, you could be let down… but instead, you lay yourself down to give yourself to another.
When God tells us to love Him, and if vulnerability were a part of that equation, then that means that we trust God in spite of our fears …that He will let us down…or not come through, or worse, …deceive us about Himself in any way.
The reason believers do not indulge these fears is that they trust God’s word (they BELIEVE Him). Christians believe God, as His Word explains to us that even though these fears and doubts can still be present, they are not present because of truth, but because of indwelling sin and the fall.
In spite of those doubts, believers choose to believe Him and trust in His goodness, rather than listen to the accusations towards God and others that come straight from the accuser’s mouth, who is a liar.
Further, what is a lie? Often, we feel like lies are true simply because they can exist in our minds. If they can truly exist in thought or theory, how are they untrue?
Let’s go back to the garden.
The fall happened when Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The fall occurred when they became acquainted with—or were intimate with—evil. Since God is the Author of Life and Light, then evil is the absence of those things. It is a void (what’s interesting, is Buddhist call this ‘Nirvana’- see writings on Buddhism in Apologetics).
They took the dark, evil void in, also called death, and they consumed it, they experienced it – in the same way Adam ‘knew’ his wife and she conceived (Gen. 4:1), they ‘knew’ evil and fell. Their innocence was lost.
Shame set in. Terror filled their hearts. They suddenly felt alone and uncovered.
How can something that was once had, then been lost, be given again? How can that person ever be the same again? How can the memory of it ever truly be erased without being made completely new?
We were not created to be intimate with evil in that way, but with God and His creation.
But God, in His wisdom, allowed us to know evil for a time.
For...a time.
God has not allowed us to know evil just to harm us for the sake of harm. He has allowed this time so that when He returns and throws sin and all causes of sin into the lake of fire, we will experience a relief that is unlike anything in all of creation. We will worship His goodness, unlike anything in all of creation. We will experience the Restoration of all time.
What I truly believe about God when it comes to the question, “If God is good, why does He allow evil?” Even though God will allow evil, He is not the author of it. He will allow temporary evil if it means an even greater good will come from it. Look at the Cross of Christ.
Since evil has come into this world,
the objects of His mercy will rejoice unlike any angel in heaven (Romans 9:23).
we will know Him as Redeemer, High Priest, Savior, and Friend… unlike any being in heaven (1 Peter 1:2).
we will realize how we are made for Christ – for our Joy and His. (Colossians 1:16)
and yes, the redemption we wait for is beyond anything we could ever imagine.
“But, as it is written, "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.”—1 Corinthians 2:9