SUFFERING

[fhansen]

We hate suffering and avoid it. And why not, why should anyone pursue it? And we may shake our fist at God when we experience it and ask why He allows it but it seems to me that this relatively small worldwide problem (so far, compared to the Black Plague, for example) that we’ve had lately can serve to instruct us. Generally speaking we’ve been spoiled in the west, especially in America where for a few generations we’ve had no large-scale tragedies or wars that have affected the majority of people. World wars, the Great Depression, famine, plagues.

While these and other evils are unwelcomed, of course, and to be fought against, can they serve any purpose? It seems that, on average as a country, we’re spoiled, more isolated, entitled, cynical, angrier, hedonistic, addicted, more concerned about what we don’t have (usually petty and empty stuff) than what we might appreciate instead. Character and humility and love of fellow man are in short-supply. My fear is that this current problem won’t do enough, even though we all want it to end.

What do you think? Is the experience of evil/suffering beneficial? Does God use it? Going by the bible is seems that He’s done so in the past. Can that be good? Merciful, even?

 

[Kinable]

The truth hurts, and people don't like to be hurt which is why they avoid it. The truth is that in this world where evil exists, even if you are a good person and follow the word of God, you are not immune to suffering. Jesus suffered in the end despite living a perfect sinless life, many Christians are killed simply for being Christian.

Coronavirus shaking up people's lives is revealing the truth they've been suppressing. Anyone who was more or less happy and is now unhappy and angry even from this virus now see they aren't so perfect. What is making them so upset? Who are they putting the blame on? When reality strikes that we live in a world that is still prone to catastrophes their true nature is revealed.

So I guess in a sense it can be beneficial, if you are able to be calm and have faith in God that everything will be okay then you are fine. If you are saying to yourself "Why would God do this?" or "How can God allow this to happen?" once you are outside of your little bubble then you have some work to do.

 

[fhansen]

The truth hurts, and people don't like to be hurt which is why they avoid it. The truth is that in this world where evil exists, even if you are a good person and follow the word of God, you are not immune to suffering. Jesus suffered in the end despite living a perfect sinless life, many Christians are killed simply for being Christian.

Coronavirus shaking up people's lives is revealing the truth they've been suppressing. Anyone who was more or less happy and is now unhappy and angry even from this virus now see they aren't so perfect. What is making them so upset? Who are they putting the blame on? When reality strikes that we live in a world that is still prone to catastrophes their true nature is revealed.

So I guess in a sense it can be beneficial, if you are able to be calm and have faith in God that everything will be okay then you are fine. If you are saying to yourself "Why would God do this?" or "How can God allow this to happen?" once you are outside of your little bubble then you have some work to do.

Thank you. I guess I was thinking more along the lines of a person who's been traveling the path of selfishness, trying to fill their lives with whatever pleasures, possessions, etc may be available to them, and then being turned to less petty and more spiritual interests as the result of suffering.

 

[1213]

...What do you think? Is the experience of evil/suffering beneficial? Does God use it? Going by the bible is seems that He’s done so in the past. Can that be good? Merciful, even?

I think it can be useful. But maybe it is also about how we take matters. I think it would be good to take everything so that it is useful and leads to good things.

 

[Bob Crowley]

Thank you. I guess I was thinking more along the lines of a person who's been traveling the path of selfishness, trying to fill their lives with whatever pleasures, possessions, etc may be available to them, and then being turned to less petty and more spiritual interests as the result of suffering.

When I became a Christian, it was partly due to "suffering". I had just gone through what had become the most frustrating four years of my life (and I caused suffering for others as well). I remember thinking "There's got to be more to life than this!" At the same time though I was getting this persistent sense to go back to the same church where I'd had a smattering of Sunday School years before.

So I did, and to cut a long story short I became a Christian, at least in part, due to "suffering" and frustration. CS Lewis once wrote "(Suffering) is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world."

Be that as it may. But what are we to make of World War I, the Wars of Religion, the decimation of indigenous peoples, the Holocaust, the Gulags, World War II, the slave trade, the black death, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, the 2004 tsunami? Suffering on that scale does not, to me, seem like an evangelical tool. If someone was burying their entire household during the Black Death, it would be a somewhat churlish attitude to tell them "God loves you!" or "God is love!".

In overall Christian belief, the jury is out on whether we "evolved" (old earth) or were a part of special creation (young earth). The Catholic Church's take is that people are free to hold their own opinion.

But either way, it's obvious there was at least one, and possibly five, mass extinction events, which would have involved an immense amount of suffering for the victims and those who survived.

I remember watching some of the 2004 SE Asian and 2011 Fukushima tidal wave footage. Sometimes I could see people who were clearly doomed as they frantically tried to get to higher ground, but to no avail. I'm sure the thought going through their head was "God is love!"

The West might have had a lucky run since World War II, apart from those called up to serve in proxy wars. We've come to believe it will go on forever.

Personally I think the time is running out, but what form the "corrective action" will take I don't know.

Obviously God has some reason for suffering, because there's a lot of it. He even humiliated His own Son on a Roman cross, which was an excruciating death.

He's not soft. I don't know, and probably don't want to know, why He's so hung up on "suffering".

There's too much of it just to be a by-product of our fallenness. I think He planned it from the beginning. Hell by all accounts is absolutely draconian - the complete antithesis of heaven. That's His creation as well, a place of judgement for the devil and his angels, culminating in the lake of fire, which burns forever and cannot be extinguished.

Was it necessary for it to be so hideous, and more to the point, eternal?

To my mind, suffering as a "corrective" is not the whole story, and I don't know the answer.

 

[Noxot]

To be mortal is to suffer.

 

[1213]

...Is the experience of evil/suffering beneficial? ...

At least we can take it so that it is beneficial. And I agree that bad things have often brought good things also, better understanding and order of values. And that is why I think they are not necessarily bad. And certainly, in Christian point of view people should understand that this life is only temporary and we should have focus on higher matters.

 

[fhansen]

When I became a Christian, it was partly due to "suffering". I had just gone through what had become the most frustrating four years of my life (and I caused suffering for others as well). I remember thinking "There's got to be more to life than this!" At the same time though I was getting this persistent sense to go back to the same church where I'd had a smattering of Sunday School years before.

So I did, and to cut a long story short I became a Christian, at least in part, due to "suffering" and frustration. CS Lewis once wrote "(Suffering) is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world."

Be that as it may. But what are we to make of World War I, the Wars of Religion, the decimation of indigenous peoples, the Holocaust, the Gulags, World War II, the slave trade, the black death, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, the 2004 tsunami? Suffering on that scale does not, to me, seem like an evangelical tool. If someone was burying their entire household during the Black Death, it would be a somewhat churlish attitude to tell them "God loves you!" or "God is love!".

In overall Christian belief, the jury is out on whether we "evolved" (old earth) or were a part of special creation (young earth). The Catholic Church's take is that people are free to hold their own opinion.

But either way, it's obvious there was at least one, and possibly five, mass extinction events, which would have involved an immense amount of suffering for the victims and those who survived.

I remember watching some of the 2004 SE Asian and 2011 Fukushima tidal wave footage. Sometimes I could see people who were clearly doomed as they frantically tried to get to higher ground, but to no avail. I'm sure the thought going through their head was "God is love!"

The West might have had a lucky run since World War II, apart from those called up to serve in proxy wars. We've come to believe it will go on forever.

Personally I think the time is running out, but what form the "corrective action" will take I don't know.

Obviously God has some reason for suffering, because there's a lot of it. He even humiliated His own Son on a Roman cross, which was an excruciating death.

He's not soft. I don't know, and probably don't want to know, why He's so hung up on "suffering".

There's too much of it just to be a by-product of our fallenness. I think He planned it from the beginning. Hell by all accounts is absolutely draconian - the complete antithesis of heaven. That's His creation as well, a place of judgement for the devil and his angels, culminating in the lake of fire, which burns forever and cannot be extinguished.

Was it necessary for it to be so hideous, and more to the point, eternal?

To my mind, suffering as a "corrective" is not the whole story, and I don't know the answer.

I don't either-and I don't pretend to. But I do see that suffering can be humbling, that it can break the proud, showing us our limitations and needs beyond ourselves. And one of the most important aspects of our faith to me is that God, Himself, came down and lived and rubbed elbows with us- and suffered- an excruciatingly humiliating and painful passion and death, in fact, at the hands of His own creation. I appreciate some teachings I'm familiar with, the second based on the struggles of St Augustine regarding this topic:

324 The fact that God permits physical and even moral evil is a mystery that God illuminates by his Son Jesus Christ who died and rose to vanquish evil. Faith gives us the certainty that God would not permit an evil if he did not cause a good to come from that very evil, by ways that we shall fully know only in eternal life.

385 God is infinitely good and all his works are good. Yet no one can escape the experience of suffering or the evils in nature which seem to be linked to the limitations proper to creatures: and above all to the question of moral evil. Where does evil come from? "I sought whence evil comes and there was no solution", said St. Augustine, and his own painful quest would only be resolved by his conversion to the living God. For "the mystery of lawlessness" is clarified only in the light of the "mystery of our religion". The revelation of divine love in Christ manifested at the same time the extent of evil and the superabundance of grace. We must therefore approach the question of the origin of evil by fixing the eyes of our faith on him who alone is its conqueror.

 

[Behold]

What do you think? Is the experience of evil/suffering beneficial? Does God use it? Going by the bible is seems that He’s done so in the past. Can that be good? Merciful, even?

Life hurts and everybody suffers.
Everybody hurts.
You don't have to be born again to suffer, you only have to be born.
Atheists cry out all day and night....to a God they don't believe exists.....>"WHY" "WHY"
Have you ever cried that out?

Here is the rule. : Life is not fair and it does not care.
Know that rule and save yourself a lot of frustration.

 

[fhansen]

Life hurts and everybody suffers.
Everybody hurts.
You don't have to be born again to suffer, you only have to be born.
Atheists cry out all day and night....to a God they don't believe exists.....>"WHY" "WHY"
Have you ever cried that out?

Here is the rule. : Life is not fair and it does not care.
Know that rule and save yourself a lot of frustration.

Alright. I think there might be a bit more to it than that though. I think suffering can have a purpose-and that's why God allows it; I think the knowledge of good and evil, that directly and viscerally experienced knowledge that we're all exposed to in this life, can help gain us the wisdom to recognize that we aren't the boss, even if we may prefer to think otherwise. It can make us more open to the real Boss. If we've been victimized by others, for example, it teaches all the more surely about the failure of human love, about our needfulness of something more than we humans alone seem able to provide. It can help us seek for something more, something "bigger", and truer, etc. It did for me. We need to become disappointed by a relatively god-free world, the world Adam ushered us into.

 

[bbbbbbb]

Suffering, as well as all other forms of distress, can, like everything in this life, serve a positive or a negative end. When God permitted Satan to afflict Job it was not ultimately for Job's good (in fact God soundly rebuked him) but for God's glory. The punishment of the lost in the eternal lake of fire is really not for their ultimate good, but for God's glory.

 

[Behold]

Alright. I think there might be a bit more to it than that though. I think suffering can have a purpose-and that's why God allows it;.

This world is a veil of tears combined with Thorns. If you live through it you will be harmed by it.
Also, most of the time, if you are suffering, and its not health related, its ither because of someone who is causing it, or its because you made some bad choices and now you are suffering the consequences.
"reaping what you have sown".

Sometimes, God brings something to bear down on you, to change you into something better.
And it can be that Hebrews 12:6 has found you, again.

 

[bbbbbbb]

This world is a veil of tears combined with Thorns. If you live through it you will be harmed by it.
Also, most of the time, if you are suffering, and its not health related, its ither because of someone who is causing it, or its because you made some bad choices and now you are suffering the consequences.
"reaping what you have sown".

Sometimes, God brings something to bear down on you, to change you into something better.
And it can be that Hebrews 12:6 has found you, again.

While this may be true for many people, it is hardly true for everyone. If you remember the story about the man born blind in John 9, he had suffered blindness for over forty years for the simple reason that Jesus would heal him and God would be glorified.

 

[fhansen]

While this may be true for many people, it is hardly true for everyone. If you remember the story about the man born blind in John 9, he had suffered blindness for over forty years for the simple reason that Jesus would heal him and God would be glorified.

Now that's a good one! And it benefited us all, who're are willing to learn from it. But there are also some evils experienced by people that are so atrocious and intrinsically evil that we still can't help but wonder what good they could possibly bring.

 

[Behold]

While this may be true for many people, it is hardly true for everyone. If you remember the story about the man born blind in John 9, he had suffered blindness for over forty years for the simple reason that Jesus would heal him and God would be glorified.

IN this world you will have Tribulation........saved or lost.
And in case you have not noticed, no one gets out of here alive, so far.

 

[bbbbbbb]

Now that's a good one! And it benefited us all, who're are willing to learn from it. But there are also some evils experienced by people that are so atrocious and intrinsically evil that we still can't help but wonder what good they could possibly bring.

I agree wholeheartedly. i gave up attempting to spin all suffering as having a positive reason about the time I developed full blown fibromyalgia. No matter how one wants to slice it or dice it suffering is part of most people's lives and death will happen to everyone.

 

[fhansen]

I agree wholeheartedly. i gave up attempting to spin all suffering as having a positive reason about the time I developed full blown fibromyalgia. No matter how one wants to slice it or dice it suffering is part of most people's lives and death will happen to everyone.

And it just drives our real hope farther ahead, into the next life. The fact that Jesus also suffered goes far in making our suffering here on earth endurable-and even of value perhaps. And the resurrection caps & completes it all praise God-His intentions for our future are nothing but good, beyond our ability to begin to imagine!

 

[bbbbbbb]

And it just drives our real hope farther ahead, into the next life. The fact that Jesus also suffered goes far in making our suffering here on earth endurable-and even of value perhaps. And the resurrection caps & completes it all praise God-His intentions for our future are nothing but good, beyond our ability to begin to imagine!

Yes, I praise God daily for the blessed hope I have through Jesus Christ, my Lord.

 

[Noxot]

Suffering is one of those things that can really make you question if God is or not. The Atheist logic that religious people cope with a horrible reality by a belief in God is reasonable enough. And many people reason that a good God would not make a world such as this where suffering and evil can be. The conditions of this reality can color how we see God.