Legal Commentary

All Rivers Run Full To The Sea

By Kevin Funnell

"Nothing is random, nor will anything ever be, whether a long string of perfectly blue days that begin and end in golden dimness, the most seemingly chaotic political acts, the rise of a great city, the crystalline structure of a gem that has never seen the light, the distributions of fortune, what time the milkman gets up, the position of the electron, or the occurrence of one astonishing frigid winter after another. Even electrons, supposedly the paragons of unpredictability, are tame and obsequious little creatures that rush around at the speed of light, going precisely where they are supposed to go. They make faint whistling sounds that when apprehended in varying combinations are as pleasant as the wind flying through a forest, and they do exactly as they are told. Of this, one is certain.

And yet, there is a wonderful anarchy, in that the milkman chooses when to arise, the rat picks the tunnel into which he will dive when the subway comes rushing down the track from Borough Hall, and the snowflake will fall as it will. How can this be? If nothing is random, and everything is predetermined, how can there be free will? The answer to that is simple. Nothing is predetermined, it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined. No matter, it all happened at once, in less than an instant, and time was invented because we cannot comprehend in one glance the enormous and detailed canvas that we have been given - so we track it, in linear fashion piece by piece. Time however can be easily overcome; not by chasing the light, but by standing back far enough to see it all at once. The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was is; everything that ever will be is - and so on, in all possible combinations. Though in perceiving it we image that it is in motion, and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful. In the end, or rather, as things really are, any event, no matter how small, is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible; and, when all is perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent not as something that will be, but something that is."
? Mark Helprin (Winter's Tale)

I thought of this passage one evening last week as I sat in a "Why Catholic" session and listened to fellow parishioners struggle with the age-old problem of why God permits evil to exist. The faithful grapple with the issue in a number of ways, none of them satisfactory to me from an emotional level. Like much Christian dogma, I can accept certain propositions much more readily intellectually than I can emotionally and this is one of them. There's nothing emotionally comforting about the notion that a tsunami that drowns tens of thousands, the death of a infant from a birth defect, or the murder of millions of Jews in gas chambers serves a purpose that we cannot comprehend presently, that God makes good result from evil. Some of the answers supplied by my fellow communicants appeared to comfort them, but left me cold. The "answer" supplied by the Catechism of the Catholic Church also is less than comforting.

Obviously, each of us comes to terms with this mystery in our own way. For me, that there exists evil in the world is a proposition that I accept as a matter of faith, as I do the proposition that God has a purpose in permitting it to exist and that purpose in general and in any given situation is and will likely remain a mystery to me as long as I live. Where I find some solace is from my experience of decades during which I believed that there was no God and that "evil" was the result human beings doing what came naturally to them. There was no "good" that a god could make out of evil because there was no god. Existence was chaos, the strong ruled the weak, life was a bitch, and then you died. And that was that. If I'd had one ounce of courage and honesty in my so-called "Being" during that time of my life, I would have exercised the one truly independent act that a "free," self-aware being can take and ended my existence by my own hand. Of course, God had other plans, and, luckily for me, I too much enjoyed making my joyless enemies as miserable as me to ever seriously consider suicide. In other words, I was the master of self-deception, as many atheists accuse believers of being.

There are a few additional things that give me some comfort in living with this mystery. One of them comes from an an interview with Pope Benedict XVI when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, in which his interviewer asked him that if he could ask God one question today that God would answer immediately, what would that question be? Cardinal Ratzinger said that he would ask God why He permitted evil to have so much power in this world when good was so much stronger than evil. I decided that if the Pope lives with this question with his faith intact, then perhaps I could do the same. Obviously, that's not an intellectual argument that would convince any intelligent and committed atheist. It's merely an explanation of what comforts my pedestrian mind on an emotional level.

Another thing that has come to comfort me in the acceptance of this profound mystery is something that a Franciscan priest said during an RCIA class five years ago. He said that many people think that the decision to become a Christian, to believe the Christian faith, is an intellectual decision, but it really isn't. Rather, at its core, it's a decision of the heart, a falling in love with Jesus Christ. I didn't "get that" emotionally at the time, but I'm starting to "get it" recently. Once you experience that love, even the most difficult mysteries start to fall into place. Again, that's not something you can use to convince someone who's not a believer. It would be like trying to explain to a stranger who doesn't know your wife, why you love her and what that love means to your ability to grapple with seemingly unrelated circumstances that arise in your life. That would be impossible for a person with my limited capacity for self-expression.

A final thought that comforts me is the proposition laid out so beautifully by Mark Helprin in his book "Winter's Tale." God stands outside of time and space. All that has happened and all that will happen happens now. The play, every single actor's role in it, and the plot he has created are clear. God willing, one day, I too will see it, face-to-face, and that single hope, that proposition that I accept on faith, animates my life and propels me forward with a richness that I can't explain to a person who does not believe, a person I once was and hope never again to be.

The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was is; everything that ever will be is - and so on, in all possible combinations. Though in perceiving it we image that it is in motion, and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful. In the end, or rather, as things really are, any event, no matter how small, is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible; and, when all is perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent not as something that will be, but something that is.

Full post as published by Counseling Kevin on November 08, 2010 (boomark / email).