It’s a familiar expression—which curiously enough seems to have nothing at all to do with the idea of a powerful evil spirit lurking behind the scenes to exert some kind of malign influence.
In fact, is seems to be rooted in an old Germanic proverb which actually was “The good God is in the detail”!
In any case what it often means is “something might seem simple at a first look but will take more time and effort to complete than expected”.
What brought it to mind for me was thinking about what St. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians about the Day of the Lord.
His first letter to the Thessalonians actually is the earliest written document we have in the Christian scriptures (the New Testament). It probably dates from about 20 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Thessalonica, the principal city of Macedonia, today is the second largest city of Greece. It was the first European city that St. Paul visited during his second missionary journey, after his experiences in Asia Minor (modern Turkey).
The simple folk there who had welcomed the good news of Jesus and who were looking forward to his imminent return in glory had a serious concern: what would happen to those who died before his return and would not be alive to welcome him?
Paul wrote to them (1 Thess 4:13-17):
We do not want you to be unaware, brothers, about those who have fallen asleep, so that you may not grieve like the rest, who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose, so too will God, through Jesus, bring with him those who have fallen asleep. Indeed, we tell you this, on the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will surely not
precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself, with a word of command, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, will come down from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.
“Fallen asleep”, of course means “died”; it was a common euphemism. Paul was reassuring them that those who died before the second coming of the Lord would not be disadvantaged when the Day of the Lord came.
But, with all due respect, although we share his conviction, the descriptive details he added were somewhat imaginative!
However, we still use his metaphor of sleep to describe death:
We display the body in the casket as though asleep. We place the casket in a cemetery (the word comes from the Greek for a sleeping place). We pray, “Eternal rest grant to them, O Lord.” We sometimes mark the tombstone with “R.I.P” (Rest In Peace).
A common usage in science-fiction uses the metaphor in slightly different way. The space voyager is placed in “suspended animation” for a journey often longer than a lifetime, to be awakened when the final destination is reached.
“Faith” is a curious thing. It is a certainty, but not of the same breed as “knowledge”.
With “knowledge” we usually go step-by-step with the details to get to the conclusion.
With “faith” we have certainty without the details. We have to leave them to the Devil—whoops, I mean, to God!
1 November 2020
(Available in
Spanish translation)