True tragedy

Tragedy isn't just bad stuff that happens. From Aristotle to Shakespeare, "tragedy" means bad stuff that happens to someone when it could have been otherwise, when there was some potential, when there abode something good in the person. If a character is unmitigated badness, his downfall is not "tragedy," it's good news.

Having said that, there is a little play in the concept, a little divergence between the way God sees tragedy and man sees it. Man has a tendency to over-blow the goodness part, to fancy himself a victim of forces out to get him --- including his own sin! : "I would be such a great guy if it weren't for this dang proclivity to jealousy, lust, greed I'm saddled with."

Interestingly, God does not see these "tragic flaws" sentimentally at all. On weary days I find myself siding with man rather than God in this difference of perspectives, and wallowing in a heroic victim pity party with my fellow creatures. I have to keep reminding myself that God has the clearer eye.

Tragedy is working hard all your life --- but for the wrong reason. There is a young man I keep a watch on who works very hard, in his own way. I feel bad for him because nothing good ever seems to come of it. I told him about other tragic people from over two thousand years ago: "You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes" (Haggai 1:6).

Putting money in a bag with holes in it. That's tragic.