For the three days following Christmas I built a sheep fence with my friend Kent on his farm. We worked basically sunup to sundown. The first day was dreary, rainy, freezing cold, with biting wind. My brief meals inside were sweet but meager respites from an environment I imagine must closely resemble hell. The second day was clear and beautiful. The sun made the field glow happily as it set in a golden sky; instead of razor-sharp wind, there was a soft breeze.
Some people say that evil exists for the purpose of contrasting good, so that we can really know what good is. I don’t believe there is such a simple answer to the problem of evil–that solution is lodged somewhere in the mysterious thoughts and intentions of God Himself. But now my work at Kent’s farm has turned from two days of reality into countless days of memory. In the eternal substance of memory, that day of suffering is purified and sweetened by the following day of good, until they together form a memory that is good. An experience. An adventure worth telling. A story for me to tell while friends drink it up.
But what happened there? That day of bad and that day of good seem to cancel each other out during their present reality, producing no net goodness. Yet as they pass from reality to memory, a sweet memory results from the two, which has a net value of good. The essential events that life is really made of. The mysterious moments we want and even need to live. (When we are not partaking in such a clash of sun and rain, we usually supplement this by watching movies, sports teams, and other artificial sources.)
Perhaps this in some way reflects the way in which God becomes “more than a conqueror” of evil, mysteriously overcoming it in eternity.
Ben Taylor 