The Upside of the Downside

People constantly complain ... about God. Believers and unbelievers alike. God is always letting us down, failing to meet our expectations. For the skeptic, it's proof that God doesn't exist or, if He does, is a bad thing. For believers, it's reason to doubt our faith. Someone dies, someone gets sick, someone loses a job -- God failed. I've prayed and prayed and God hasn't helped me -- God failed. It is extremely common, even among the faithful. There seems to be a crisis of some sort that comes into everyone's life that gives them pause. "This," they tell me, "is not the best of all possible worlds," and God has failed. But ...

I wonder if we're missing something ... critical. Let's try a mental exercise. Let's say I have a white sheet with a single black spot on it. I hold up the sheet to you and ask you, "What do you see?" You would obviously answer, "A black spot." Why? Because ... of the contrast. Because it stands out in a sea of white. In the same way, much of life is only visible ... in contrast. Good, for instance, is only visible when there is less than good. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to operate in the midst of fear. That is, if there was no fear, there could be no courage. God offers grace and mercy. Grace is unmerited favor which, if we all merited favor, wouldn't be possible. Mercy is the withholding of just punishment which, if there was no sin or punishment due, would have no existence. You could never experience the joy of forgiveness and the love that forgiveness produces (Luke 7:47) if you never needed to be forgiven. Love itself would be greatly diminished if that was all we ever knew.

In his letter to the church at Rome, Paul says,

What if God, desiring to show His wrath and to make known His power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of His glory for vessels of mercy, which He has prepared beforehand for glory." (Rom 9:22-23)

God's plan was to display His wrath and make His power known. His plan was to do it via "vessels of wrath prepared for destruction." Oh, that's bad. But Paul's point is that it was not bad in the final consideration. The sin of humanity, the rebellion of human beings, the individual transgressions of all people all serve as a platform for God to display His power and wrath and as a contrast to God's mercy. His patience and mercy are magnified in contrast to the wrath we've earned and He withheld. In the same way, all the "downsides" of life simply serve as contrasts to great virtues and gifts which, without the downsides, would become invisible to us. A fish, living in a lake, has no notion of water because it has nothing to compare to it. Humans, living in a perfect world, would have no appreciation for God's magnificence and gifts if we had nothing with which to compare them. Maybe God's not failing after all.