Why It Is Sometimes Good to Be Left by God

But the blessed David recognizes that this departure we have spoken of, this desertion by God, as it were, can sometimes be to our advantage in some degree. So he would not pray never to be forsaken by God in anything at all, for he knew that this would have been harmful both to himself and to human nature in its course toward perfection. Instead, he begged that it might be within measure and limit, saying, “Do not forsake me utterly.” It is as if he said in other words: “I know that you forsake your saints for their good, in order to test them, for in no other way could the devil tempt them unless they were forsaken by you for a little while. So I do not ask that you should never forsake me. For it would not be good for me never to feel my weakness and say, ‘It is good for me that you have brought me low,’ or to have no chance of fighting. And I certainly would not have that chance if the divine protection shielded me unceasingly and without a break. For the devil will not dare to attack me while I am upheld by your defense, since he brings against both me and you the objection and complaint he always slanderously brings against your champions: ‘Does Job serve God for nothing? Have you not put a fence around him and his house and all his property on every side?’ “But I ask rather that you not forsake me utterly—what the Greeks call heos sphodra, that is, too much. For, first, just as it is good for me that you forsake me a little, so that the steadfastness of my love may be tried, so it is dangerous if you let me be forsaken beyond measure, as far as my faults and my deserts would call for. For no human strength, if it is forsaken by your help for too long in temptation, can hold out by its own steadfastness and not at once give way to the enemy’s power—unless you yourself, since you know the strength of man and set the measure of his struggles, ‘do not let us be tempted beyond what we are able, but with the temptation make a way of escape, so that we may be able to bear it.’” [a]

And we read in the book of Judges that something of this kind was mystically planned in the matter of wiping out the spiritual nations opposed to Israel: “These are the nations that the Lord left, so that by them he might instruct Israel, that they might learn to fight with their enemies.” And again shortly after: “And the Lord left them so that he might test Israel by them, whether they would listen to the commandments of the Lord which he had commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses, or not.” God kept this conflict in store for Israel not because he begrudged them peace or wished to harm them, but because he knew it would be good for them. While they were always pressed by the attacks of those nations, they would never stop feeling their need of the Lord’s help, and for this reason they would always go on meditating on him and calling on his help. They would not grow careless through lazy ease and lose the habit of resisting and the practice of virtue. For again and again, men whom adversity could not overcome have been thrown down by freedom from care and by prosperity.