A recent and engaging comment exchange with a regular reader on the subject of suffering really brought home the imperative to sort out, make sense of, contend with, and make peace with suffering at the level of metaphysical assumptions.
Human suffering, in its seemingly infinite forms, is unavoidable and everyone is forced to grapple with it throughout their mortal lives -- some, on a daily basis. The unwelcome physical and mental challenges suffering inflicts are undeniable. Equally undeniable are the spiritual challenges suffering presents -- challenges that can overwhelm even the most ardent of believers.
For leftists, suffering is ultimate evil. On the one hand, they strive to avoid it and eliminate it at all costs. On the other hand, leftists have used suffering as a battering ram against all sorts of injustices -- real or otherwise -- and as a veritable nuclear bomb against religious thinking. I can think of few things that have damaged Christianity as much as the leftist hijacking of suffering as a rallying cry for social justice and transformation (inversion).
Fyodor Dostoevsky was acutely aware of this hijacking of suffering. In The Brothers Karamazov, he offers an incisive examination of the thinking fueling the outrage via Ivan Karamazov who implicates God as the cause of all suffering and declares that the enormity and needlessness of some suffering -- exemplified by tortured and abused innocent children -- grossly exceeds any metaphysical justification for suffering, thus rendering the "necessity" of suffering unacceptable and irredeemable. Consequently, Ivan declares that although he accepts the reality of God, he cannot, in good conscience, agree to the "higher harmony" of God's plan and, therefore, opts to "return his ticket" for salvation.
Dostoevsky's prescience concerning the evolution of the leftist rebellion against the Christian understanding of suffering is still visible in the likes of vapid celebrities and scholars who vehemently boast about their virtue of not believing in a god that would create various parasites or fatal childhood diseases. Although this sorts of virtue-signalling strikes the average mindless drone modern as noble-minded, it does nothing to address the problem of suffering. The rejection of God as the cause of suffering does not eliminate the suffering itself. All the rejection does is render the suffering meaningless.
Leftists only ascribe meaning to suffering when it facilitates and propels their various Ahrimanic control and surveillance schemes or destructive anti-God and anti-Creation agenda issues. And of course, leftists always present themselves as the only means through which suffering may be alleviated or eliminated. Otherwise, leftists consider suffering to be a meaningless evil that must be avoided at all costs.
It's one thing for leftists to view suffering as either a rallying cry for social justice or a meaningless evil; it's quite another for Christians to espouse the same or similar views. Suffering cannot be meaningless to Christians. Nor can it merely be an impetus that fosters world improvement. Suffering has to mean something to Christians, and this meaning has to extend down all the way to the level of metaphysical assumptions -- to the big questions, questions for which most conventional and traditional theologies and metaphysics provide unsatisfactory answers.
I won't delve into my beliefs about suffering here. I believe the meaning of suffering is something all individual Christians -- with the help of God -- need to work out for themselves. Moreover, they must take full personal responsibility for the answers they discover and decide upon. "Must" because a misguided or ill-formed understanding can present serious metaphysical obstacles for Christians -- obstacles that could drive a Christian to fear, despair or, ultimately, rejecting salvation and God altogether.
I mention all of this now because I feel we will see a rapid acceleration of human suffering in the next year or two. The suffering the 2020 global coup has unleashed is but the tip of the iceberg. The big, yet-unseen part is fast-approaching.
The unprecedented nature of these times makes the scale of suffering difficult to predict or determine. Suffice to say it will be "unprecedented".
I believe some will experience far more suffering than others. Nevertheless, no one will be left unscathed. It will touch us all in one way or another. However, even if we, as individuals, do not experience terrible suffering firsthand, we will certainly be witness to its manifestation in the greater world, which is why sorting out and making sense of human suffering at the level of metaphysical assumptions is imperative . . . now!
Human suffering, in its seemingly infinite forms, is unavoidable and everyone is forced to grapple with it throughout their mortal lives -- some, on a daily basis. The unwelcome physical and mental challenges suffering inflicts are undeniable. Equally undeniable are the spiritual challenges suffering presents -- challenges that can overwhelm even the most ardent of believers.
For leftists, suffering is ultimate evil. On the one hand, they strive to avoid it and eliminate it at all costs. On the other hand, leftists have used suffering as a battering ram against all sorts of injustices -- real or otherwise -- and as a veritable nuclear bomb against religious thinking. I can think of few things that have damaged Christianity as much as the leftist hijacking of suffering as a rallying cry for social justice and transformation (inversion).
Fyodor Dostoevsky was acutely aware of this hijacking of suffering. In The Brothers Karamazov, he offers an incisive examination of the thinking fueling the outrage via Ivan Karamazov who implicates God as the cause of all suffering and declares that the enormity and needlessness of some suffering -- exemplified by tortured and abused innocent children -- grossly exceeds any metaphysical justification for suffering, thus rendering the "necessity" of suffering unacceptable and irredeemable. Consequently, Ivan declares that although he accepts the reality of God, he cannot, in good conscience, agree to the "higher harmony" of God's plan and, therefore, opts to "return his ticket" for salvation.
Dostoevsky's prescience concerning the evolution of the leftist rebellion against the Christian understanding of suffering is still visible in the likes of vapid celebrities and scholars who vehemently boast about their virtue of not believing in a god that would create various parasites or fatal childhood diseases. Although this sorts of virtue-signalling strikes the average mindless drone modern as noble-minded, it does nothing to address the problem of suffering. The rejection of God as the cause of suffering does not eliminate the suffering itself. All the rejection does is render the suffering meaningless.
Leftists only ascribe meaning to suffering when it facilitates and propels their various Ahrimanic control and surveillance schemes or destructive anti-God and anti-Creation agenda issues. And of course, leftists always present themselves as the only means through which suffering may be alleviated or eliminated. Otherwise, leftists consider suffering to be a meaningless evil that must be avoided at all costs.
It's one thing for leftists to view suffering as either a rallying cry for social justice or a meaningless evil; it's quite another for Christians to espouse the same or similar views. Suffering cannot be meaningless to Christians. Nor can it merely be an impetus that fosters world improvement. Suffering has to mean something to Christians, and this meaning has to extend down all the way to the level of metaphysical assumptions -- to the big questions, questions for which most conventional and traditional theologies and metaphysics provide unsatisfactory answers.
I won't delve into my beliefs about suffering here. I believe the meaning of suffering is something all individual Christians -- with the help of God -- need to work out for themselves. Moreover, they must take full personal responsibility for the answers they discover and decide upon. "Must" because a misguided or ill-formed understanding can present serious metaphysical obstacles for Christians -- obstacles that could drive a Christian to fear, despair or, ultimately, rejecting salvation and God altogether.
I mention all of this now because I feel we will see a rapid acceleration of human suffering in the next year or two. The suffering the 2020 global coup has unleashed is but the tip of the iceberg. The big, yet-unseen part is fast-approaching.
The unprecedented nature of these times makes the scale of suffering difficult to predict or determine. Suffice to say it will be "unprecedented".
I believe some will experience far more suffering than others. Nevertheless, no one will be left unscathed. It will touch us all in one way or another. However, even if we, as individuals, do not experience terrible suffering firsthand, we will certainly be witness to its manifestation in the greater world, which is why sorting out and making sense of human suffering at the level of metaphysical assumptions is imperative . . . now!
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