In his book of children's poems, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Shel Silverstein has this poem titled "The Land of Happy":

Have you been to The Land of Happy,
Where everyone's happy all day,
Where they joke and they sing
Of the happiest things,
And everything's jolly and gay?
There's no one unhappy in Happy,
There's laughter and smiles galore.
I have been to The Land of Happy--
What a bore!

Growing up, this poem was unsettling to me; to affirm it seemed somehow wrong, and yet I knew it to be true. I much preferred books, movies, and television shows that included bad guys and the people fighting to stop them over stories about people living happily and somewhat non-eventfully. I couldn't reconcile my preference with the fact that heaven would have none of this excitement; what was wrong with me that I didn't prefer the Land of Happy?

It's taken me years, but I finally see now that there's no contradiction between 1) loving, honoring, and desiring good and 2) preferring stories with bad guys over the Land of Happy. I was drawn to stories with evil and suffering not because I was attracted to the evil, but because that evil brought out the glory and character of the good that struggled against it; it was the response of goodness that I was tuning in to see. The characters in those stories who rose up against the bad guys revealed the power and beauty of goodness in a way that an unprovoked--though perfectly good--character would not.

I'm not saying that goodness needs evil to exist--that would be nonsense. I'm saying that there are aspects of goodness and God's character (which is the definition of goodness) that we would never understand, appreciate, or glorify were we not to see Him interact with a sinful world.

Let me explain what I mean. Think of all the heroes of 9/11--those who saved others, often at the cost of their own lives. The day before 9/11, those people shopped, put gas in their cars, and fed their kids. Nobody could see the depth of their character by watching them do these ordinary things; it took something as horrible as 9/11 to reveal their strength, courage, and selflessness to the world even though those traits already existed within each of them.

In the same way, God's character would have been the same regardless if sin had ever come into the world, but there would have been many aspects of Him that we would never have seen, experienced, or understood, and so we would have known Him less deeply. God would have been just (as He always was), but without judgment, would we have known? God would have been merciful and forgiving, but without our need for mercy, would we see this? The very words "judgment" and "mercy" would be meaningless to us.

The aspects of God's character we learn about now from our suffering will make our time with Him in eternity even more glorious. But after sin has served its purpose here, we won't need it to continue. We'll have all of human history on which to reflect in order to truly know God's character, and all of eternity to enjoy Him face to face in peace.

He will swallow up death for all time,
And the Lord God will wipe tears away from all faces,
And He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth;
For the Lord has spoken.
And it will be said in that day,
"Behold, this is our God for whom we have waited that He might save us.
This is the Lord for whom we have waited;
Let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation."

Isaiah 25:8-9