So it is not the suffering that is evil, but the creation of suffering?
But what about people that bring suffering into their own lives for a greater good? Artists that suffer for their art. MLK suffered to get a message out. Immigrants suffer to bring a better life to themselves and their families. This is a kind of righteous suffering, isn't it? because it is justified?
So, if someone allowed you to suffer knowing that you would come out the other side a better person, would that justified? or evil? As a parent, I did this thing called "tummy time" with my babies when they were first born. You lay the child on the ground and the child gets a chance to work out muscles that will later help him/her to sit-up on their own and swallow. It is not the most pleasant time for the child and they mostly ended in crying out.
The baby would mostly likely be fine without "tummy time", i mean, I could have avoided the crying out if I had skipped it for my little ones, but they were able to start doing other things earlier because of it.
Humans are more that beings of reason. We have emotions and imaginations and desires, and they don't always go together. Sometimes our reason muscles are so strong we say no to emotional values "I'll never love again." Sometimes our desires get the best of us and we ignore our reason. And imagination is a flight all its own. Suffering, though not always a reasonable aspect of life, taps into our other strengths, reminds us that there is more to human life than what makes it a reasonable pursuit.
I'm sure you've heard, "nothing worth doing was ever easy." It would be reusable to live a life that was as easy as possible, doing enough to get by, but this is a flabby life. I don't know about you, but every funeral I have even been to, no matter how hard, always made me stronger. I always came out of the other side of my grieving with a different understanding. I could have ignored that grief, just accepted that people die, eh, just what happens, it only makes sense that Fred died, it was his time. But there is nothing gained in that. No muscle worked.
It is easy to criticize pain in the world when you do not see the end to it. If the only thing that exercise got you was tired then no one would do it.
Now, you'll call me an insensitive ass hole because I am basically saying that the little boy in Africa starving of food is justified suffering. But you misunderstand me. Because that little boy in his suffering triggers my emotions and makes me desire to help him. And my imagination figures out how to do it. The world of strict reason says, "Sucks to be you, but I cannot afford to leave my cushion right now." or maybe "Here's a few bucks, hope it helps."
Religion calls us to go further. To sacrifice and suffer for the little boy, with the little boy, because it taps in to the aspects of human nature that act outside of reason.
But what about people that bring suffering into their own lives for a greater good? Artists that suffer for their art. MLK suffered to get a message out. Immigrants suffer to bring a better life to themselves and their families. This is a kind of righteous suffering, isn't it? because it is justified?
So, if someone allowed you to suffer knowing that you would come out the other side a better person, would that justified? or evil? As a parent, I did this thing called "tummy time" with my babies when they were first born. You lay the child on the ground and the child gets a chance to work out muscles that will later help him/her to sit-up on their own and swallow. It is not the most pleasant time for the child and they mostly ended in crying out.
The baby would mostly likely be fine without "tummy time", i mean, I could have avoided the crying out if I had skipped it for my little ones, but they were able to start doing other things earlier because of it.
Humans are more that beings of reason. We have emotions and imaginations and desires, and they don't always go together. Sometimes our reason muscles are so strong we say no to emotional values "I'll never love again." Sometimes our desires get the best of us and we ignore our reason. And imagination is a flight all its own. Suffering, though not always a reasonable aspect of life, taps into our other strengths, reminds us that there is more to human life than what makes it a reasonable pursuit.
I'm sure you've heard, "nothing worth doing was ever easy." It would be reusable to live a life that was as easy as possible, doing enough to get by, but this is a flabby life. I don't know about you, but every funeral I have even been to, no matter how hard, always made me stronger. I always came out of the other side of my grieving with a different understanding. I could have ignored that grief, just accepted that people die, eh, just what happens, it only makes sense that Fred died, it was his time. But there is nothing gained in that. No muscle worked.
It is easy to criticize pain in the world when you do not see the end to it. If the only thing that exercise got you was tired then no one would do it.
Now, you'll call me an insensitive ass hole because I am basically saying that the little boy in Africa starving of food is justified suffering. But you misunderstand me. Because that little boy in his suffering triggers my emotions and makes me desire to help him. And my imagination figures out how to do it. The world of strict reason says, "Sucks to be you, but I cannot afford to leave my cushion right now." or maybe "Here's a few bucks, hope it helps."
Religion calls us to go further. To sacrifice and suffer for the little boy, with the little boy, because it taps in to the aspects of human nature that act outside of reason.
". . . let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist." -G. K. Chesterton
