‘For a truly religious man nothing is tragic.’
– L. Wittgenstein
This is both right and wrong. For the Christian, there are indeed tragic things – death, suffering, loss, pain, are all tragic things – things that aren’t supposed to be there. Death is the enemy of God.
But, for the Christian, there is more to the story. Death has been beaten – creation is being redeemed, wrongs being redressed. God is making ‘all things new’. The tragedies , while no serving some ultimate purpose in a cosmic moral equation, are being redeemed. The tears are being and will be wiped away.
So in an odd sense, there is genuine tragedy for the Christian – but there is genuine hope, not optimism, but real hope.
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