Does the End Truly Justify the Means?

WARNING: This post is not neccessarily a well-thought out theory, as much as my musings and reactions to various ideas concerning the problem of evil and the glory of redemption.

I recently heard a sermon on John 11:35. For those of you unfamiliar with that verse, it's the shortest verse in the Bible, consisting of two words: "Jesus wept." Context? A good friend of Jesus' named Lazarus had just died. Jesus knew that the situation was going to end alright, because He was planning to resurrect Lazarus from the dead. Yet He still cried when He got to Lazarus' tomb.

He was mourning the tragedy of the moment, even while knowing the glory of the future.

That got me thinking about the ultimate story. See, the whole of human history can be divided into three parts. I'll give a quick recap, but see my post on the Ultimate Story for more details.

Act I: Creation. Life is good; we're whole and good creatures.
Act II: Fall. Life is bad; we sin and are therefore broken, evil creatures.
Act III: Redemption. Life is good once more; Jesus saves us and we're made whole and good again.

Anyways, thinking about Jesus crying over His friend's death, though He knew His friend would rise again made me think about the proper response to Act II of the ultimate story.

We cannot diminish the horror of the second act for the glory of the third act.

Sometimes people say that you're stronger after you're broken. But that implies that your state of wholeness/goodness in the third act is greater than it was in the first act. I'm not sure if that's even possible. How can a glued-together vase be stronger than a whole vase?

Furthermore, that statement implies that the second act was neccessary for the third act [Note that I'm taking this from a fatalistic point of view, one which doesn't allow for free-will]. And that is something I have a hard time with accepting. After all, wasn't the second act, by definition, something which should never have happened? So to say that it was neccessary to achieve the third act is saying that it should have happened. Which is a contradiction. Moreover, my heart rebels against such an idea.

Why must something perfectly beautiful and pure end? That's the issue, period.

The only consolation I can find is the idea that we truly do have free will, that it was we who chose Act II, rather than God. Therefore, Act II was not neccessary to create Act III beyond that it was neccessary to allow us to be creatures living in Act I and Act III.