I pray every night for my children. Each time I ask God the same thing: Keep them safe and morally straight. Last Wednesday, God told me “no.”

When Job experienced the horror of losing all his children, and asked God “why?”, God told him “don’t ask”. Were you there? Are you going to tell me my job? It seems like a harsh and hopeless response—“deal with it.” Shut up.

Scholars have argued for centuries about predestination—free will, theodicy—why is there evil and suffering. We encounter evil and suffering in our own lives and ask the same question—why?—how can a good God allow something like O—’s untimely death to happen. 

In the end it comes down to definitions—what is “evil”—and what do we mean when we say that God is “good”. It’s a common mistake to imagine evil as a thing in itself—a substance. A preexisting quality or behavior—and that God is tainted by it when He allows evil and suffering to occur. 

In reality we have to separate evil and suffering—evil is disobedience to God’s will, not a thing or quality that God can express. Separately, allowing suffering is something that is bound up in God’s eternal council, and we are not allowed to know the reasons—even assuming our minds could comprehend his eternal plan.

As Christians we begin our thinking relying on his divine will and Goodness as paramount. And our life is a reckoning to his will: to His teaching, blessings, and discipline. In this process we grow and are brought into contact with our true selves. Obedience to our Father’s will—is what ties us to our true selves and allows us to be and truly exist as we were created to be.

He calls us his friends, sons, His children—he tells us He loves us, and promises that all this works together for good to those called according to his purpose.

The notion of the trinity itself, being persons at all and capable of knowing and working in unity with other persons bound up in this. The trinity functions without destroying or downplaying the individual members—and the individual members don’t override the trinity’s purpose. Unity working through love.

Love working in unison is the pattern for the way we should relate, both to God and each other. Because the template or idea of the Trinity is an eternal fact—Fatherhood itself is also an eternal fact. At the bottom of—the more primal part of reality—is the process of begetting. We live in the shadow of that preexisting fact or template. How we experience life, have families, marry—love – is all within or predefined to that pattern.

We are his children and how we come to know ourselves—to experience life is hedged in by the eternal fact of fatherhood. Submission in how to live, and how history unfolds, suffering included.

We are known by the Father before we know ourselves. We tend to believe that we are our own—are independent, define ourselves outright. In reality, we don’t choose out parents, nationality, the time or place where we were born. Our parents tell us “Yes” and “No” before we form lasting memories—they name us and place us in the context of the family—place us within the framework of working unison through Love.

A mother with her infant in front a mirror is testimony to being known and named before we know ourselves. The infant will recognize its mother in the mirror, but won’t recognize itself.

God tells us yes and no— just as we do with our children. In the case of this tragedy—God is telling me no—no to the joy of seeing O— grow to manhood, no to his participation in the family, no to many, many things. As we have lost O— here on Earth, our family has lost part of our identity—that life force. It is a very profound change.

So to acknowledge his will as children can be very hard—we do not yet understand why—but that condition will not always remain the same. There are some who would curse God, argue for his nonexistence in the light of apparent cruelty. But without the eternal will of God lies something much worse—hopelessness—chaotic, impersonal forces—nothing in the Cosmos but matter and energy. Denying the eternal fact of unity working through love leaves us with a silent, cold universe.

To deny our heavenly Father, and His promises puts Chaos on the throne of reality. And who we are is destroyed by default—personality becomes a byproduct of Chemical reactions—personality and its outworkings become cultural artifacts—we become temporary gatherings of matter and energy.

Fathers sometimes tell their children no—even to reasonable requests—even if only to teach us patience—or to persevere—for the good. Almost by definition those teaching moments of “no” are not understandable until the lesson is learned. The process of learning at all requires a move from unconsciousness to a greater consciousness—to a new awareness. 

A universe with no suffering–or readily available answers to suffering–is a universe where we cannot learn and grow. We’re already mature, already all-insightful, already have the answers. 

So in a very real sense true growth is not possible without the will of the Father—not possible without Fatherhood—not possible as brute impersonal robots—not possible without the ability to work together in union without losing our individual identities.

But with Fatherhood, maturity eventually comes—and in all likelihood with O—’s death—the loss, hurt, and understanding of God’s will will not be clear until the consummation of all things at the end of the age. 

What matters now is to believe in His promises and accept the Fathers’ will. What matters now is the promise that O— believed and is with the Lord, the promise of the resurrection and the life of the world to come. What is real is knowing that the Lord loves us and will work things together for good—and we need to self-consciously  LIVE in that reality. Clarity will finally come in the resurrection with the new heavens and new earth—as God’s kingdom finally comes, on Earth as it is in Heaven.