One of the most fundamental tenets of monotheism is that God is all good. This seems to raise a contradiction with reality, which is that bad things happen all time and even to good people.
And from such comes the age old question that theism has been criticised for for millennia upon millennia: If God is all good, how come bad things happen to good people?
Judaism has numerous answers to this question. One such answer is that even good people do bad things sometimes. This answer may not be so satisfying since it doesn’t seem to us like justice is really being delivered, so thankfully this answer is just one.
The answer that I would like to explore here is one that I think is demonstrated beautifully in the absolutely wonderfully fantastic film: V For Vendetta (2005), Directed by James McTeigue and written by the Wachowskies.
If you haven’t seen the film, I highly recommend that you do because it is in my opinion a cinematic masterpiece. Perhaps a lesser masterpiece, but a masterpiece nonetheless!
That being said, if you really don’t want to watch the film, or you don’t have time, I suggest you read a summary online. (I wanted to link one, but honestly, I couldn’t find one that I liked. They either have too many needless details or are not comprehensive enough. Please do yourself a favour and watch the film!)
That being said, I tried to write this article in a manner that even if you haven’t seen the film, I hope that you should still be able to get the point.
You probably well remember the scene where Evey is locked up in a cell, is repeatedly tortured, starved and interrogated and yet still doesn’t lose hope.
The iconic bleak confinement of the cell juxtaposed with the bright, warm flashbacks continuously giving Evey the strength she needs in order to continue on makes the scene certainly amongst the more memorable.
It’s a pivotal scene in the film that serves as a transition from the second act to the third allowing the events of the finale to transpire by forming Evey into the person she needed to become in order to play her part in the coming revolution.
Perhaps lesser remembered though is the scene right after when it’s revealed that it was indeed V doing all of the torture and interrogation to her all along and not the oppressive totalitarian regime that Evey and the audience thought. Yes, the revelation itself is well remembered, but I think the finer details in that scene are lesser remembered.
After Evey’s final decision that she would rather be shot behind the chemical shed than reveal the information leading the government of the whereabouts of V, Evey is then let out of the prison to find not the outside world like she was expecting, but rather V’s hideout known as the Shadow Gallery.
She is confronted by him and they have an exchange whereby she realises that it was V who was the man who let her out, and only after the fact does she realise that not only he let her out but that he was behind all of it.
V: “Fortunately, I got to you before they they [the government] did” (remember that was already about 10 minutes after she was let free, and at this point they had already been talking for while)
Evey: “You got to me? You did this to me?”
It seems strange that at this point she still hadn’t put two and two together enough to work out that it was V who captured her. Until this point, V was her saviour. He saved her life twice and one time from the exact scenario he had then put her into.
He was kind and hospitable to her and treated her better than maybe anyone in her life up until that point.
Evey continues on and says “You tortured me…” followed by a few seconds of retrospection before another “you tortured me…” with more emphasis this time as though the gravity of the situation is finally coming down upon her.
But here is what I think is the crux of the scene, the point that I really want to dig into.
V’s reply to her is:
“You said you wanted to live without fear. I wish there had been an easier way but there wasn’t. I know you may never forgive me, but nor will you understand how hard it was for me to do what I did. Every day I saw in myself everything you see in me now. Every day I wanted to end it. But each time you refused to give in, I knew I couldn’t”
Evey: “You’re sick! You’re evil!”
V: “You could have ended it, Evey, you could have given in. But you didn’t. Why?”
Evey: “Leave me alone! I hate you!”
V: “That’s it! See, at first I thought it was hate to… Hate was all I knew; it built my world, imprisoned me… I thought I’d die with all the hate in my veins. […] What you felt in that cell had nothing to do with me. […] In that cell you found something that mattered more to you than life. Because when they threatened to kill you unless they gave you what they wanted, you told them you’d rather die.”
Up until this point, V was Evey’s saviour. In her eyes he was an all good protector and sustainer. She couldn’t even imagine that he would be the one behind all of our suffering.
Of course part of the nature of God is that He’s behind everything, so a person in that situation does realise He must be behind it, but then concludes that because the bad thing happened that God can’t be all good.
Evey had one big advantage though:
Evey: Panicking and hardly able to breathe
V: “You faced your death, Evey. You were calm, and you were still. Try to feel now what you felt then”
And what is the next thing Evey says right after remembering how she felt in the moment she agreed to be killed before calming down and becoming focused and collected?:
“Oh, God!”
And it was in this moment that she truly realised what V had done for her. Not to her, but for her. He had taken away her fear, made her into a new woman. A better woman. No longer did she need to be confined to the Shadow Gallery in order to survive (a point of conflict previously in the film). She was free now! Due to this horrible evil action that V who loved her committed to her, she gained a freedom, not just to be outside but to finally be herself after all of the years living in repression in order to survive such an oppressive world.
Evey’s advantage compared to most of us is that most people will “Die with the hate in their veins” as V had said. They will die thinking that God was horrible not realising that what at the time seemed like such an evil and horrible experience had such a tremendous effect on the person and was ultimately exactly what the person needed.
Consider for a moment that this result is exactly what Evey wanted; What she was “praying for” you could say. She didn’t want to be confined to the Shadow Gallery, and she didn’t want to live in fear. In the end she got exactly what she wanted and what she needed. She just didn’t realise how morbid the process of attaining that would be. If V had asked her beforehand if she’d be willing to go through all of this to attain what she wanted (assuming he could convince her that this was the only way), she would probably have said no. And even if she had said yes, the problem then is that it wouldn’t have worked anymore.
In the scene after the next one, Evey explicitly thanks V for removing her fear. Later on in the film, after much time has passed (probably the majority of a year) Evey finally returns to V after utilising her freedom, and we get this dialogue from her:
“I worried about myself [being caught by the authorities] for a while. But then one day when I was at a market, a friend, someone whom I worked with at the BTN, got in line behind me. I was so nervous that when I got to the cashier I dropped my money. My friend picked it up and handed it to me. She looked at me right in the eyes… and didn’t recognise me. I guess whatever you did to me worked better than I imagined”
Consider this: Just like V lamented that he saw himself as a villain (an overarching theme throughout the film) and hated himself for doing what he did, so does God. Yes, God (kind of) hates himself too when he tortures us. Remember that God is everywhere including within us, which means he feels our pains. Not to mention that God loves us more than we can ever know or realise. What do you think is the greater torture? Feeling humongous amounts of pain, or knowingly inflicting such pain on your own child?
And that’s the point. Why does God do bad things to good people? The answer is that he doesn’t. God is all good and therefore everything that he does is good, even if it doesn’t seem like it from our perspective.
And just like V wanted to stop every single time due to this pain of torturing a loved one, every time he saw that Evey was closer to who she needed to become he knew he needed to keep going. And just V, so too does God keep on going even though he hates himself for doing what he does. Because unlike us he knows that what he is doing is what we want, what we need, and more importantly: ultimately truly good.
Bad things happen to all of us (good or otherwise) all the time and ultimately it’s up to us to decide whether we would like to perceive the goodness in our bad experiences or whether we want to get angry at God for doing bad things to us.
Throughout her time in the simulated prison, Evey received notes with the fragmented story of Valery Page, each of which stimulated Evey with the hope she needed in order to persevere and overcome. This is demonstrated to us through imagery: When the final request is made to either give up the information or be shot behind the chemical shed the camera shows Evey’s clenched fist over the note in a final display of her keeping the hope she needs in order for her to do what she knows she needs to do.
And in this same way, so too does God give us all that we need in order to persevere through the trials that he bestows upon us. God never puts us through anything that we can’t handle, and so when he sees that what we need is too much for us, he also provides us with the extra boost we need in order to persevere and become the person we need to become.
So next time you’re in pain, think to yourself: How is God trying to develop me? What is God trying to teach me? How can I utilise this experience in order to become the best possible version of myself?
Even if it’s hard, it may take some time for you to have your moment when you drop your money and your old work colleague doesn’t recognise you… But never stop looking for it, because it will come eventually!
No Comments yet!