A few thoughts on providence:

1/ The good that God brings about after evil does not justify the evil but is set against it, to expose it as evil. In the crucifixion, the just one justifies the unjust. But he does not in that way justify the crucifixion.

2/ God raised up the black church under the darkness of slavery. But that does not justify slavery. It exposes it as unjustifiable on any grounds whatsoever. And the same goes for all evils. None is necessary.

3/ I want no part of a theology of providence that suggests evil is somehow justified because God uses it to make good that would not otherwise have been possible. For God all things are possible. He creates good ex nihilo, not by using the "nothingness" of evil.

4/ I think it is better to say God raises up good *after* evil, rather than to say that he makes good *from* it. He brings about good in spite of evil, revealing that it is never necessary or beneficial.

5/ So why would God "allow" it at all? I want to say that he did not allow it because he could use it to make goods that otherwise would not have been possible. He allowed the possibility of evil in order to reveal that not even that would separate him from us.

6/ Evil is absurd. It has no meaning, no usefulness. And so God has no purpose in allowing it. But God *does* have a purpose in allowing for its possibility: in that way he assures us that nothing, not even our turning away from him, will keep him from being our God.

7/ God allows for the possibility of evil, foreknowing that it will emerge and ravage us, just so that when all is said and done, we will know that in no possible world would God have failed to draw us into a share in his joy.

8/8 So, for me, this is the worst of all possible worlds — and even so, we know in Christ that God is for us, even if it means his death. "Nothing can separate us..."

9/8 a word on eschatological hope: God in the end will happen to creation in such a way that all evils are nullified. This will not make the past not to have been, of course. But it will make the past something it was not for us when we experienced it.

10/8 I don't mean to be precious, but I take Scripture seriously when it says God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all we can ask or think. So, whatever account of the end we offer is inadequate because the reality is sure to be infinitely better than we imagined.