Harmony in Discord

In Pope's Essay on Man, near the beginning of the tenth stanza, he writes "Know thy own point: this kind, this due degree, of blindness, weakness, heaven bestows on us." When I first read this, I couldn't help but think that Pope must have been a pretty depressed guy to think like this. However, as I continued to read, I saw that Pope actually was not upset when he wrote this. In one of his closing lines, he writes "All Discord; Harmony not understood."

With that last statement, I realized that Pope's take on his own and many others weaknesses was actually a very biblical view. 2nd Corinthians 12:10 says "Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong." When Pope says to know thy own point, I interpret that to say know who you are and who God has created you to be. In that respect, I believe that Pope would align himself with what it says here in Corinthians largely because of what he says later about discord and harmony.

Pope's second statement; "All Discord; Harmony not Understood" is a really cool and actually very comforting thought for me being a puny, finite human being. I think that Pope, far more so than I have, had come to terms with how little he actually understood of the mystery and complexities of life. One of the first lines in the passage is "a mighty maze! but not without a plan." He, much like the rest of us, is aware of the fact that this life we are in is quite a mighty maze, but, like far fewer of us, realizes that within this maze there is a plan that is far beyond our vision and comprehension.

When I continue to think about these three statements, it is actually really cool to me how they line up with each other. Within this maze of life that we are so entrapped in, we experience discord on a daily basis in one way or another. However, all that discord we experience is actually part of a plan, the likes of which we do not understand, that will lead to harmony. Once that harmony is realized, we can then proceed to "know thy own point" and accept who we are as who we were made to be. We can then find harmony in the knowledge that the discord we experience in combination with or as a result of that weakness and blindness, is all part of a much bigger plan that is far beyond our understanding.