Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [96]
Yet we must oppose evil
However, we hear the objection: “Yes, this may hold inasmuch as sorrows and sufferings alone are concerned. But what if we are to witness the frequent triumphs on earth of willful malice; the reverses not seldom suffered for the cause of God by the soldiers of Christ; the dangers that threaten so many souls owing to the successes of the foes of God? Are we still to interpret these incomprehensible, these strictly and intrinsically bad things as an outcome of God’s love?”
Certainly these things, by contrast to whatever is sad without being evil, must not be interpreted as an expression of God’s will. They are permitted by God; and the fact that God has permitted them to happen must not by any means induce us to doubt their intrinsic badness. Nor does it in any way relieve us of the obligation to combat the power of evil wherever it confronts us. Though God, time and again, permits a temporary triumph of evil, to infer from this that we ought to accept it with resignation would be a fatal misconception. On the contrary, we ate to fight it to the best of out ability; and when we are no longer able to oppose it actively, we should sacrifice and pray that “God may humiliate the enemies of the Church”: “Break, O Lord, we beseech Thee, the pride of our enemies: and with the power of Thy right hand, strike down their insolence” (Prayer against persecutors and foes).
That God sometimes permits evil to triumph does not make that evil into goodness
It would, indeed, be the climax of perversity on our part to construe the fact of the divine permission as meaning that evil triumphant, because it is triumphant, is not merely evil and that it is our duty to find out the good it connotes and appreciate the latter. Then we could not reasonably refuse to find something good also in the conduct of those who crucified Christ. What our confidence in God impels us to believe is merely that God’s permission of an evil thing has its hidden meaning and value; a mysterious truth which does not in any degree diminish or modify the intrinsic evil of that thing—or to put it in different words, the negative value-character inherent in its content. “The Son of man indeed goeth, as it is written of him. But woe to that man by whom the Son of man shall be betrayed. It were better for him, if that man had not been born” (Matt. 26:24).
As for the positive aspect (so far as it is not essentially inaccessible to our understanding), this can reside merely in the indirect consequences of the permission of that evil. In particular, it may be meant as a test for the virtuous. But then this meaning as intended by God engages us precisely to meet the evil thing in question with an adequate response; that is, not to allow our inward rejection of evil or our profession of God and His holy truth to be confounded or bewildered by any success of the evil power; not to let us be bribed by any consideration into a compromise with evil; never to bow to it on account of its display of outward strength.
At the same time, we must be aware that this temporary prevailing of evil, too, carries a certain meaning and value, provided that we give the right response to that call of God which is hidden in the background; that God’s permission of this victory of evil does not signify that He has turned His face from us; and lastly, that the triumph of evil is bound to be a passing one, seeing that we are given the word of promise: “And the gates of hell shall not prevail [against the Church]” (Matt. 16:18).
To be sure, it mostly remains an impenetrable mystery for us why God permits such a passing triumph of evil at all. So much is certain, that this mystery is related to the part God has assigned to man’s freedom of will. But we must not presume to unriddle the secrets of God. Even though we feel tempted to