Suffering


"self-pity, is the twin sister of self-love. They both make one forget the world and only see themselves." 
(from "Elements - PART II - WATER: The Transfiguration of Elijah" by A Priest Of The Oriental Church)

I think we have forgotten how to suffer as Christians. 

The suggestion that we could find meaning in suffering is offensive to many. Some even hear it as adding suffering to those who are already hurting. The voice of suffering is the loudest and most authoritative. 

Perhaps this is due to a rebalancing, from times when it has been ignored. If that is the case, then I think there may have been an overcompensation. Based on the way we seem to view suffering now, Job's voice matters more than God's.  

But, the alternative to meaningful suffering is meaningless suffering. And I think that makes for a nearly unbearable kind of suffering. Nihilism is the alternative to meaningful suffering. 

Look at how these Christians spoke about suffering-

https://revchrisroth.blogspot.com/2023/01/advice-from-spiritual-masters-about.html


 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Theology of Sex

Image
I spoke about abortion and the unborn in recent posts so I thought I should probably be clear on my theology of sex just to give it all a context.               When people found out that I was in seminary a common topic they would bring up for discussion was Dan Brown’s novel “The DaVinci Code”. They would look at me with scandal in their eyes and ask me about what I thought of Jesus being married.             One of the contradictions in the book was that it was somewhat based around a 12 th century Gnostic group in France sometimes called the Cathars. Gnosticism was a Heresy that has been with us for a long time. One of the main points of Gnosticism is that they deny the goodness of creation. In Gnosticism an evil god created the world, and it was a better and more pure God that came to rescue us from this evil physical material world. The Gnostics believed that the body was a kind of prison for the soul and that the true Gnostic found a way to free the soul from its sla
Read more

Christmas with the Grinch

Image
The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season! Now, Please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason. It could be his head wasn't screwed on just right. It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight. But I think that the most likely reason of all may have been that his heart was two sizes too small. But, Whatever the reason, His heart or his shoes, he stood there on Christmas Eve, hating the Whos,             Christmas seems to always include a Grinch. There is always someone who just doesn't get caught up in the season. The decorations are offensive to their eyes. The music annoys them. They feel busier than they want to be. There are more people in the stores. There is no parking. The streets are slippery.  And, they are resentful at the social pressure to conform to the season.  In response to "Merry Christmas" inwardly they "Bah Humbug".             Of course some of us have good reasons to not be in th
Read more

Fight Club and Buddhism

Image
This is a paper I did in university in 2003. I presented it at the University of Lethbridge at the Religious Studies Conference. The Violent Vehicle:  Fight Club as a Buddhist Path to Enlightenment 4/1/2003 Fight Club  is a 1999 American film based on the 1996  novel of the same name  by  Chuck Palahniuk . The film was directed by  David Fincher  and stars  Edward Norton ,  Brad Pitt , and  Helena Bonham Carter . [1] Besides painfully obvious utterances by Edward Norton’s character, such as “I was the Zen master” [i] and his haiku writing, the movie Fight Club has many Buddhist parallels.  Edward Norton’s character is unnamed (hinting at Anatman ) and will be referred to as ‘Jack’.  His life loosely parallels the Life of the Buddha, as he begins to realize that there is something oddly not right about existence ( Dukkha ), he sets forth on a journey to learn how to quench his discomfort.  On this journey he must deal with the ideas of self, suffering, and possible
Read more