In Hebrews 2:10 thereabouts, it suggests that Jesus was made perfect through the suffering he endured here on earth, which seems to me a strange thing. How can God be made more perfect?
Further down in the chapter it explains that this was partly to do with Jesus' role as a mediator on our behalf and high priest, who is now better able to empathise with our sufferings, having gone through many of them.
it reminded me of something i read in a book some time back, which posed the conundrum that when God created the earth and man, He knew that it was going to descend into the sin and anarchy that we have now. But He created it anyway.
The book went on further to propose that suffering is key to greater glory. there is no glory in being a middle-class person from an average family who grew up to do something great. There is great acclamation for the boy who came from a poor and broken home who grew up to do that same great thing. It's like that quadriplegic who completes triathlons, with his dad pulling him all the way. We admire them because they had a much tougher route to get to where they are now.
Why did God allow Satan to wreck all this havoc in what was once a 'good' world? Because what comes out of the chaos has been tested and proven.
