Not to the Swift

Chapter 25

Sunday morning, early in December, Bishop Simms leaned on the pulpit, preaching to his congregation. "These girls, young miss René and her friend Mikeyla, they asked me, 'Bishop? Why do bad things happen to good people?' For a school project, if you can believe it."

The congregation laughed.

René sheepishly lowered her body in the pew, sandwiched between Nana and LaTasha.

"My goodness," the bishop said. "What a question, isn't it? Almost as old as time itself. We can see how some folk answered in the Old Testament. Consider Joseph and everything he went through. At the end of it all, when the brothers who hurt him and sold him to slavery are now begging him for mercy, what does he say? You meant what you did for evil, but God meant it for good. Evil for good, what a trade, amen?"

Simms raised a finger. "But how can that be? How does a good God use evil to do good in our lives? 'The problem of evil,' they call this. We could get into the debates and doctrinal statements and such, and Lord knows many good men of the faith have done so over the years. Including the Teacher, who warns us about the search for a perfect explanation for everything. He writes, 'of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.'"

Bishop Simms read aloud from the key passage for the sermon. "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil."

He looked out over the crowd. "You see what your job is, and what God's job is? We are told to toughen up and be obedient, not to figure it all out. We're to fear God in Heaven, not demand He explain all His ways to us."

Simms paced the altar. "What's God's job in this passage? Judging is His job, not ours. We see the evil, and we get wrapped up in it, consumed by it. When tragedy strikes, when things don't go our way, we tend to see only the evil.

"But I submit to you all that the real 'problem' of evil might just be how we always view it as only a problem, never a possibility. Time and again in history, what seems hard, or cruel, or too difficult to endure, these things drive us to succeed and exceed all expectations."

Simms took off his reading glasses and faced the crowd. "I'll share with you all something that I've told very few people in my life. I suffer from dyslexia. It takes me six hours to read what might take you six minutes. A page of words is like a jigsaw puzzle without the picture on the box. I gotta stop, and think, and piece it all together... and it's like someone's constantly shuffling all the pieces around in the middle of that.

"I wouldn't wish my trial on anyone. But I wouldn't have gotten where I am today without the hard work I put in to just keep up with the rest of the class. So, likewise, I wouldn't trade my trial with anyone either.

"My grandfather served in World War Two, hopping from island to island across the Pacific. He wouldn't tell us much. He'd say his experience was so good to make a man outta you, he'd give it to you for a nickel. But yet he wouldn't go through it all again himself, not for a million dollars cash.

"He wouldn't trade his trial, but that doesn't mean he liked it."

Simms noticed Jamal's face in the crowd. "No one wants the hard times, so we call them evil, and say it's a problem with how our God handles His business. And when people do us wrong, I'm not sayin' that's all good or that they're justified or even excused.

"But the problem of evil is a paradox of possibility. When bad times hit, that's a catalyst for change, the genesis of some good in our lives—if we choose to see it so."

Heclosed the Bible on the pulpit. "With that, the Teacher ends his book and wereach the end of our series."