In the Bible, many of God’s choices seem odd to me.
He chose Saul for Israel’s first king, knowing that Saul would become proud and unwaveringly impervious to God’s will.
He chose Jeroboam as the first king of the 10 tribes (when the tribes other than Judah and Benjamin refused to accept Solomon’s son Roboam as their king), knowing that Jeroboam would create two idols to be Israel’s gods, establish a false church, and cause Israel to sin forever. Besides this, He also prevented Roboam from going to war to reestablish a unified kingdom of all 12 tribes.
The general principle is that God allows evil in order to bring about a greater good. This is the key to unlocking some of Scripture’s mysteries.
How did Saul’s pride and obstinacy contribute to a greater good? Well, David, the great king and lover of God, wouldn’t have been so great without the struggle against Saul. The encounter with Saul’s mystery and the effort to understand Saul’s enmity contributed to the Psalms: the great outpouring of hymnody, the repository of the Faith, the handbook of prayer. David himself was Christ’s father in the flesh – even the enemies of God knew that the Christ would be of David’s bloodline.
How did Jeroboam’s apostasy and the breakaway 10 tribes contribute to the greater good? Well, Israel’s example spurred the kings of Judah to greater faithfulness. Josiah, the great king who swept away the idols and re-established the covenant, was inspired and energized by the destruction of the kingdom of Israel, which had so recently been dismantled by the Assyrians. The memory of the 10 tribes inspired the remnant of the people – now known as Jews, after the kingdom of Judah – to rigid monotheism in the long period between the end of the Babylonian captivity and the birth of Our Lord: a key period of order and gestation.
Only when history ends, at the General Judgment, will we see how all the stories and all our actions fit into God’s great tapestry and this great orchestra of Creation. In the meantime, we know all things work together for good for those who love God. The above thoughts are only my own efforts to understand. What do you think? Email me at [email protected].
