No Cross, No Crown
The problem of evil is really a backward question for Christians and Jews at least. The question takes the perspective of someone who feels 1) their suffering is unmerited and 2) that the best good possible is its prevention. However, both are false, since 1) all have sinned, 2) where there is sin there is suffering in oneself and others, and 3) God did not spare His own Son the suffering and death that opened the possibility of Heaven for us. Avoiding suffering so impressed upon us by the imaginative vision of the culture as the ultimate good moves us far from God's love and into the enemy's grip. On the contrary, we cannot give ourselves over to sin and expect salvation in the next breath.
The old adage goes "you cannot have your cake and eat it too". If you have had kids, you certainly witnessed the amount of strife that is taken in providing for one's family and the children taking it for granted, and further, more is expected. We do this with God, rather than taking the time of gratitude, we superimpose other wants (as though they are needs) over top of this moment of reception. We blame God rather than thank God, as though He owes us every object of our desire tainted, corrupt, or otherwise. At one moment, we expect to have every desire filled and every moment, we take corrupt action that our corrupt intellect has decided to be good. Sometimes we even, out of habit, do it without thinking. If we wish to receive the good God hopes to give us, we cannot give ourselves over to the darkness we momentarily mistake for light or the pleasure, wealth, power, and honor we mistake for salvation from, respectively, suffering, poverty, or want and necessity, subjugation to others, and judgment. However, God's providence, although ordered toward our ultimate good, never unjustly forsakes a temporal good without undue cause and/or without sin is the fault of the lack (sometimes one, the other, or a perfect or imperfect combination of the two).
In conclusion, should we lament our sufferings as though it is not a best-case scenario? "Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?" (Job 2:10) It is essential to Christian joy to receive the bad as a means to salvation, for though Christ died "once and for all" in both the ultimate and universally applicable sense, it remains our part to be joined to Christ first in His sufferings and thereby, and only thereby, are we joined to His resurrection of life (Colossians 1:24). For some sanctification/salvation is purely abstract. For others only partially, but for Catholics, it is both an undiscernible spiritual reality given by God (and is only found in Him) and concretely lived in our lives. We must be transformed from/out of our corrupt states and into the life of the new heart. We cannot follow Christ and subject ourselves to the enemy in sin lest we die. There is no other known way to heaven except through Christ and the Cross. No cross, no crown. Choosing the sufferings given to us, rather than running from them may well be the one necessary disposition for moving forward in the Spiritual life since the only retraining us is our distrust of God which sin infuses and flows from.
Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it."
May our crowns be the meritscooperating with what Your generosity has given us.
