Tags
blogging, faith, grief, insanitybytes22, longsuffering, opinion
Many people around me right now are dealing with a great deal of grief, anxiety, and uncertainty. We have a horrible addiction epidemic going on in our area and a lot of families have lost friends and loved ones. The anxiety over people who are still alive and still out there using is really tough to deal with, too. There sure seems to be an uptick in other health problems too, but I won’t go there right now.
So something that has really helped me is understanding that long-suffering is actually a virtue and a fruit of the spirit. It’s a desirable quality to have. God is actually in the saint making business! That revelation was so profound for me because for whatever reason, I somehow got the impression that suffering was bad, that suffering burdens others, that suffering signifies failure and punishment so clearly if you’re suffering you’ve done something wrong. Now in addition to the suffering itself, you get to experience feeling guilty about not being the life of the party.
Sometimes our modern Western protestant Christianity can be so positive and prosperity focused that it reinforces these false notions. Everybody has always just got to be finer than frogs hair and bragging about how blessed we are. It’s true, we are blessed, but are we blessed because all our circumstances are favorable and no one is suffering or are we blessed because we have a Rock to hang onto and a Friend who sticks closer than a brother when things aren’t going so well?
Something else that has helped me in the midst of suffering and grief is gratitude. It can be challenging, but learning to thank the Lord for trusting us with this experience, can really change one’s perspective. I knew a mom once who had a terminally ill child who eventually passed away and she told everyone that she was so grateful, so honored that God chose her, that He trusted her with this grief. It was a beautiful testimony that really helped to change a lot of perspectives. Often when a lot of suffering falls on us, we want to wail, why me? We feel put upon or guilty. It can be difficult to change that mindset to chosen. God trusts you with this experience and you have been purposefully chosen because you actually are worthy to carry this load.
God honors our suffering. We should do the same.
See, there's this thing called biology... 
Why does Christianity have so many mixed messages and people who claim THEY know the Bible and how to interpret it? We seem to align ourselves with an “interpretation” of it… largely from the loudest of voices who proclaim they know. Nothing much to do with what you wrote in general, perhaps your last sentence strikes a chord. You see the suffering around you and suggest that’s some kind of divine honor God recognizes. Perhaps. Not for me to say one way or ther other. But what I’ve seen around me… suffering and death, accidental or by illness (my stint in the funeral business)…. in battle (my stint in the military and witness to history)…. and the horrors inflcited upon our young by the people they innocently trusted (my stint at a CPS facility).. you’ll have to pardon me because from my vantage point I prefer not to appreciate God’s “appreciation” that all that suffering is necessary to believe in Him. I’ll pass on that one.
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“Why does Christianity have so many mixed messages and people who claim THEY know the Bible and how to interpret it? ” This is an interesting point. This also occurs with the US Constitution. In both cases, there is a written entry, but it means different things to different people.
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That’s a good point, Rob. I guess reading is like a relationship, it’s a two way street, a subjective and objective dance.
You also have to listen with the intention of understanding what someone is trying to convey, rather than listening for the sole purpose of launching a rebuttal. So grasping the spirit and intent of the Constitution plays a significant role in how it is applied and defined. Probably true with the Bible, too.
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You are quite correct. But presumably we have SCOTUS to “interpret” given we pledge allegiance to defer to that institution as a final arbiter.
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And, perhaps the Vatican plays that role for the Bible.
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I can’t recall the scripture and verse that affirms that role for the Vatican.. but I am most certainly not anywhere close to the theologians that inhabit this blog to confirm nor deny that.
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I’m not sure either, but there have been things like the Council of Nicea that seemed to have dispute resolution as the impetus for convening.
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Ahhh.. the Council of Nicea! I was out sick that day and no one took notes for me. Honestly… you sound much better at this than me. 🙂
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Probably not better, but I did have a grandmother who would come into my bedroom while I was out with my friends, and she’d sprinkle holy water everywhere. 😀
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Gota love grandmothers. Likely what she did has protected you to this day. 🙂
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Well, I think we have to understand that God did not intend for us to die. He did not design disease and death. Those things came into the world long ago when we literally ate them and took them into our bodies.
God empathized so much with our self inflicted suffering, that He Himself came down and suffered and died for us. Then He rose from the dead as we are all invited to rise above death ourselves.
What we ate was actually the knowledge of good and evil. Unfortunately here we are now, learning about the difference between good and evil, gaining that knowledge. So child abuse is evil and we grieve over it. If we don’t grieve over it, we don’t really care. If we don’t suffer, empathize, and grieve over what is done to innocent children, then we kind of exist in that psychopathic state of not feeling and not experiencing the difference between good from evil.
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I suppose then.. pick your grief…. no waiting.
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“Well, I think we have to understand that God did not intend for us to die. He did not design disease and death.”
If God designed the species we see in the world today, then God designed millions of species – both microscopic and macroscopic – which are very well designed to cause pain, suffering, and death. So, the above statement seems unlikely to be accurate.
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Is that what you believe the purpose of millions of species is? To cause pain, suffering, and death?
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I’m not sure that what you’re asking here addresses my point. Perhaps I’m not following or understanding your question.
Let me try again.
There are countless species which cause pain, suffering, and death. This is not just pain, suffering, and death in humans, but also pain, suffering, and death in countless other living organisms.
You believe that God designed and created these species, these species which have features which enable them to cause pain, suffering, and death. And I would add that these species are very well designed to do exactly what they do.
This would seem to contradict the position that God did not intend for us to die, that God did not design disease and death. Designing pathogens, parasites, and predators is the very definition of designing for disease and death.
At the very least, it seems quite odd that God would simultaneously (a) “not design disease and death” and (b) design creatures which are very good at causing at causing pain, suffering, disease, and death. This would seem to be working at cross-purposes.
So, your above statement about “not designing for disease and death” seems likely to be inaccurate.
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Right, but if we are going to ponder your theory, that God deliberately designed critters simply to spread pathogens and cause pain, suffering, disease, and death, it seems only fair to ask, is that their sole purpose? You are basically accusing God of having deliberately caused a bunch of pointless misery and suffering in the world and then proclaiming that asking about His motive is irrelevant.
I would suggest that something like Covid would have quite likely remained a rather benign virus, had we not been doing gain of function research and trying to turn it into a biological weapon designed to kill people. And a bunch of people would not have died in the 1918 flu epidemic if we had not sent troops all over the world to lie for weeks in wet fox holes, crowded barracks, all while suffering from malnutrition. It probably would have helped if we hadn’t been mega dosing them with aspirin grains, too. And what of today’s chronic diseases, obesity, type 2 diabetes, skyrocketing cancer rates?? Are these all “God designed diseases” or did human beings have some hand in it?!
My statement about God not having designed death and disease stands and is likely quite accurate. I really can imagine a world where human beings were not running about disturbing the harmony of nature and attempting to weaponize disease for fun and profit.
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I believe that most of what is in your comment is tangential and not relevant to the point. And by focusing on human disease, you miss the broader point that the species I’m talking about also cause pain, suffering, disease, and death on many other species as well.
(As aside, my great-grandmother died during the 1918 pandemic. In Texas. Not in the trenches. You didn’t have to be in the trenches to die of the flu. She didn’t die because “humans had a hand in it.”)
Let me try again.
Sharks, snakes, spiders, tigers, jellyfish, rabies viruses, smallpox viruses, Streptococcus pyogenes, and on and on and on and on.
Do these species, in fact, cause pain, suffering, disease, and/or death in other species? Yes.
Is their ability to cause pain, suffering, disease and/or death a result of or product of their design? Yes.
In the case of many of these species, could they continue to exist if they didn’t cause pain, suffering, disease, and/or death? No. As designed, these species must cause pain, suffering, disease and death. They must. It’s what they do. It’s how they survive, it’s how they produce offspring, it’s how and why they are with us today.
And who designed these species? According to you, God did.
What difference does it make if these species might have some other “purpose?” You can try to find a “point” for the suffering of humans if you like, although that doesn’t explain why non-human animals should suffer and die as well. But whether there’s another reason for designing disease and death is irrelevant. None of that changes the reality that these species are designed, built, created, and adapted to causing pain, suffering, disease, and/or death.
Whatever the reason for their creation, you cannot design these species without simultaneously, unavoidably, and inevitably designing for disease and death. You know when you design these species that the result will be pain, suffering, disease and/or death, and not just in Homo sapiens. You know this with absolute certainty. Therefore, whatever the motive, God did indeed design for disease and death.
If I may steal from Monty Python:
All things sick and cancerous,
All evil great and small,
All things foul and dangerous,
The Lord God made them all.
Each nasty little hornet,
Each beastly little squid
Who made the spikey urchin?
Who made the sharks? He did!
All things scabbed and ulcerous,
All pox both great and small,
Putrid, foul and gangrenous,
The Lord God made them all.
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Josh, you have no desire to communicate with me and everything I say, on my own blog no less, is just dismissed as not relevant.
I get it, you live in a Godless world, where Christians are clearly dellusional, and you just want to argue and glorify in your vastly superior intelligence. You win, pat yourself on the back. I could not care less about such games if I tried.
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I did not simply dismiss what you said as irrelevant. I addressed what you were saying, and I made an effort to explain specifically, precisely how and why it was irrelevant. I considered what you were saying and explained in detail why I disagreed. I don’t just make claims about irrelevancy, I try to back them up.
When you disagree with what I’m saying, I don’t dismiss this by saying that you have “no desire to communicate with me.” But if I don’t accept what you are saying, then you conclude that I have no desire to communicate with you. Oh, well, so it goes.
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I’ve learned to shift from “Why me?” to “Why not me?” Trusting God has a plan and the pain is as important as the joy. Like the poem “The Weaver” that in the tapestry of life the dark threads are as vital as the gold ones in completing the picture. I want to learn to be grateful for God’s trust in me, which I’m most assuredly not yet. I’ve moved from being angry with God to questioning His sanity. 😀
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Amen! Well done. 🙂
I also used to lament, “why me?” Then I moved onto, “Lord I really think you’re overestimating my capabilities here!” Now I just say, “Lord, I am a weak and fragile vessel,” and we just laugh and laugh because we both know that’s not true at all. God often gives His biggest battles to His strongest warriors. Also, we don’t have to be strong all on our own, we can totally lean into Him.
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❤
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I belong to a men’s religious group called, you guessed it, The Man Club.
We just finished a rather difficult study on suffering as it relates to divine providence.
Catholic doctrine holds that God’s divine providence works its way even in the most gruesome, horrifying suffering.
We are shaped and molded by suffering. My bold addendum to that is, “if we survive it.”
Many people do not survive what they are put through. Their suffering kills them. They are randomly killed by a robber, rapist, drunk driver or resident lunatic.
In my case, I am a survivor. I lived long enough to come out the other side.
“Here I am Lord. I come to do your will.”
1Sam 3:8. Ps 39: 8-9
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Great comment, Silence. I’m glad you are a survivor and have lived long enough to come out on the other side. There is stuff we just can’t understand, it’s too painful and our line of sight in this world is too small, but I absolutely believe God’s Divine providence works its way, even in the midst of some pretty horrific suffering.
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that’s a deep subject. Suffering then longgggg suffering. From self induced, to things out of your control, things govt causes, things neighbors cause, families, friends, suffering is on the menu and prob. inescapable.
then there are the thousand ways suffering is called upon in the name of the Lord, for the gospel’s sake, which few are customers?
I know one thing, that God is extremely long suffering in light of what’s become of Eden.
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It is a deep subject! It can be really good to study the lives of those “few customers” you mention, who did willingly suffer for Christ. That really is the essence of our faith. Jesus did not say, “follow me,” to wealth, power, people favor, social status, and perpetual comfort….
On the bright side, we do have these sentiments to hold onto, “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.” God’s intentions towards us are honorable and it really isn’t going to be all about pain and suffering all of the time.
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Important point there, that suffering is part, just as prosperity, in so many ways. Just like the biblical account right? The life and times of man, w/ warts and grace.
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Suffering confers depth. That is its gift to those who can receive.
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