Matthew 13:47-52

The Parable of the Net
⁴⁷“Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish.⁴⁸When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away. ⁴⁹This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous ⁵⁰and throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

⁵¹“Have you understood all these things?” Jesus asked.

“Yes,” they replied.

⁵²He said to them, “Therefore every teacher of the law who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.”

Matthew 13:47-52

Do you ever look at the world, see all the suffering and wonder how God could allow it all? C.S. Lewis is most famous for his series of novels about a fantasy land called Narnia. However, he was one of the most brilliant writers on simple faith that we have ever had. In his book, Mere Christianity, he reflects on all the suffering that there is in the world and explains the human experience in exceptional clarity:

If a good God made the world why has it gone wrong? And for many years I simply refused to listen to the Christian answers to this question, because I kept on feeling "whatever you say, and however clever your arguments are, isn't it much simpler and easier to say that the world was not made by any intelligent power? Aren't all your arguments simply a complicated attempt to avoid the obvious?" But then that threw me back into another difficulty.

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?

…

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

What Lewis is arguing in this passage is that fish don’t long for life without water. It is all they know. So, why would humans long for a world that is just? It is because we were created for a different world, one full of goodness and justice.

Jesus teaches us that his kingdom will be a place of righteousness and that the evil that we see in the world is not meant to be here. He says that there will be a day when everything that is evil will be removed and only the righteous will remain. This is why everything that we do as Christians is important because our lives echo into eternity. This is also why we are so committed to inviting others to explore faith. Jesus teaches us that there is ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’ for those who are unrighteous.

The evil that we see around us is not a sign of God’s absence but his patience.