Man's View of God

Struggling to deal with Chesterton’s The Man Who was Thursday, I am trying to believe and understand how Sunday is supposed to be a Christ figure in this novel. I more or less feel Sunday is representative of man’s view of God in different circumstances in life. When being pressured by horrible situations, death, hardships, and trials, sometimes it can be hard to determine whether it is Satan’s acts in a person’s life or the permissive will of God. However, during time of prosperity, it is much easier to see the provision and provident hand of God at work. In chapter eleven, the men agree that during this struggle, and of course before they find out who Sunday is, their hope rests in “the man in the dark room…the thing I never saw.” Their hope is in the idea of what is right and good according to the law written on their hearts. So at the time it is easy for them to say this suffering is of Satan and not of God who is good.


However, by the end of the book, Syme recounts his suffering and finds himself questioning Sunday; “have you ever suffered?” The question appears to be presentable in two ways. First of all, was Sunday truly the one who caused suffering and then offered hope? The second being, if Sunday did truly offer hope, how did he offer any hope if he had never suffered? Then Sunday reminds us of the sacrifice of Christ. To me it seems that this is a way of trying to digest complicated questions about the nature of God, human nature, good and evil, and why any of it has to be. Why did God allow evil and where does evil come from? Like I said, it is usually in the crisis of life that people find themselves searching for these answers because they cannot understand whether God is causing or allowing bad things to happen, but also they cannot determine if the circumstance is of God or of Satan. This is the place that I find myself at the end of the book; is it of Sunday (representative of the Christ figure), or was it of Satan?