God surveyed all that he had created and was dissatisfied. Not that everything wasn’t perfect and beautiful and blissful and harmonious, because it was. Not that everything wasn’t just as God had planned it, because everything turned out just as God had planned it. In fact, everything had turned out exactly as God wanted it, as he had fashioned it: full of love, full of goodness, absolutely and totally perfect.

But deep down God sensed that everything could be better. Call it an inkling, a godlike intuition, or an appreciation of something more.

And so God pondered. He sought for an understanding of his dissatisfaction, trying to bring substance to his ineffable intuition. He searched his deepest soul. He wondered and thought. He argued with himself. He turned options over in his mind. And he agonized.

In the end, he could see only one solution, only one option that seemed to be appropriate. Only one choice that he could choose, that somehow didn’t seem like a choice. A solution so incredible, so beyond anything he had ever conceived of before that he kept wondering about it trying to create another choice so that he would have more of a choice.

Finally in desperation, desperate for a resolution, desperate for action, desperate to make everything better, committed to make perfection more perfect, God did the only thing he could do, he prayed. God got down on his knees and prayed for guidance. He prayed for forgiveness. He prayed for any indication that what he was thinking of doing was the right course of action. But he got no response. But that didn’t trouble him, no one ever responds to God’s prayers.

Then God moved. God acted to satisfy his dissatisfaction, to make perfection even more perfect, to make everything better.
And in his movement for the first time in his entire eternal existence, God felt uncertainty about whether his course of action was right. And sensing that doubt, that hesitation, he knew in the core of his being that he was right, that he must do what must be done. That he must do more.

So God called his oldest, most trusted friend, foremost among all of the heavenly host, his most beloved primary Archangel that he loved from the pit and being of his infinitely perfect soul.
“Satan.” God said. “This is going to be very difficult, but I need you to do something for me.”

Satan looked at God’s sad, loving, eternal eyes and saw that God was deeply troubled. And Satan, too, became troubled.
Then God put his arm around Satan and they walked silently through the Garden.
“You know I love you.” God spoke. “You know I’ll always love you.”

Satan said nothing. But God knew and he knew that he did and always would and that there was no need to say anything. And Satan became even more troubled when he heard God speak the words.

“I am dissatisfied with the perfection of creation.” God continued. ” I sense that something is missing. Yes I know, everything is beautiful, everyone is happy, there is eternal bliss. It is exactly as perfect as I desired it to be. But now I feel there is a quality that is absent. That everything could be better, that what is missing is a quality ……. a quality of infinite appreciation.”

Then Satan, too, saw in his mind what God had realized. And Satan felt the attraction of that void, and he saw the implications and appreciated what it would add to creation.

Creation had been fashioned out of harmony, truth, beauty and love. So that’s all creation can be. God had fashioned perfection out of perfection. So it could only be perfect. Nothing more and nothing less.

And Satan saw that God, being God, had fashioned everything from these perfect building blocks. And God, being God, with his eternal perfect nature, his unwavering love, his patient infinite caring, had created everything based on principles. that allowed everyone to live in harmony, love and bliss, forevermore.

But Satan saw that same missing, ever deepening quality, that absent appreciation of something more, something deeper that God saw. A quality of infinite depth apprehended by God, that didn’t exist, that they both now realized was missing and necessary in the pattern of creation.

Then Satan perceived God’s solution. A conception so immense, so far reaching in its implications, that at his moment of realization, Satan felt something deep in his heart that he had never felt before: fear. An overwhelming feeling of helplessness. A feeling that erupts when one is facing the unknown and is uncertain of what to do. A feeling of inevitability. A feeling that one has absolutely no choice.

And that feeling was proof to Satan that God was right. That there could be more. And then Satan knew what must be done. What he must do.

Satan looked in God’s eyes and saw the sadness and the tears. And he saw God’s infinite pain and overwhelming suffering to come. Neither spoke a word.
They moved toward each other to make their last embrace. And for an eternal moment, Satan and God were one in their secret shared solitary compassion.
Then they stepped apart. And without looking at God, Satan turned and walked away.

God watched him go. Through eyes of infinite depth, of joy mixed with sadness, God saw the silent, lonely tears weeping from Satan’s soul, knowing the sacrifice that he must make, knowing what must be done. Both knowing that they might never be together again, both knowing the endless suffering that will come. The pain and suffering so that everything will share a deeper, infinitely deeper, appreciation of creation, of its perfection, of its harmony, of its beauty and pervasive love.

And as Satan disappeared, God sighed, “So be it.”

God and Satan, moving together in the pattern of creation, are Inextricably tied together by their unspoken secret pact. A pact of pain and suffering born of love, passion and joy. The secret pact that will remain unappreciated until the end of time.

The secret pact that God and Satan will eternally share: for they understand, to appreciate heaven, there must be hell.