By Michael Warren Davis, Crisis Magazine - This principle of imperfectability dates back to Saint Augustine (another major influence on Kirk’s thinking). Ever since the Fall of our first parents, there has been war between the City of God and the City of Man, and that war won’t end this side of the Millennium. We may hope to spend eternity in Jerusalem, but sickness and poverty are facts of life here in Babylon. Yet suffering and death have a role to play in God’s plan for our salvation, even if it’s not always our privilege to know what that role is. We’re called to hope for a more perfect world in the next life—and to suffer with courage and grace in this life, in this world.