soma Posted January 25, 2012 Share Posted January 25, 2012 In India when a person dies, they sing and dance as they escort the body down to the river to be cremated. They are happy for that person leaving the suffering on the physical plane. The question about sexual bondage is horendeous. How much suffering does it take for us to act, to step up to the plate? It shows the need to be pro-active in our service and action. I don't feel we can do everything, but I feel we must choose what we can do or how can we live with such horendeous crimes? In my case service of some kind is important not to get drawn down in the well. I feel to help someone get out of the well I must help. I feel I can best do this on the positive side helping others get out of their situation. I started a half-way house for prisoners, managed a half-way house for mentally disturbed and now am working in a deprived at risk school. I never once felt sorry for the individual involved, but respected their strength as survivors. I saw that they usually took advantage of the the people who felt sorry for them and were enabling to them. Most seemed to respond to someone who believed in them and climbed out without my assistance. They just needed someone to believe in them. I feel everyone has to find their unique individual service and then enjoy it. Every ripple in the pond affects everyone and thing in the pond. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaulS Posted January 25, 2012 Share Posted January 25, 2012 In India when a person dies, they sing and dance as they escort the body down to the river to be cremated. They are happy for that person leaving the suffering on the physical plane. The question about sexual bondage is horendeous. How much suffering does it take for us to act, to step up to the plate? It shows the need to be pro-active in our service and action. I don't feel we can do everything, but I feel we must choose what we can do or how can we live with such horendeous crimes? In my case service of some kind is important not to get drawn down in the well. I feel to help someone get out of the well I must help. I feel I can best do this on the positive side helping others get out of their situation. I started a half-way house for prisoners, managed a half-way house for mentally disturbed and now am working in a deprived at risk school. I never once felt sorry for the individual involved, but respected their strength as survivors. I saw that they usually took advantage of the the people who felt sorry for them and were enabling to them. Most seemed to respond to someone who believed in them and climbed out without my assistance. They just needed someone to believe in them. I feel everyone has to find their unique individual service and then enjoy it. Every ripple in the pond affects everyone and thing in the pond. Again Soma, that all seems to work well and good for us, those who observe the pain and suffering and desire to do something about it. Of course we can see the detrimental side effects of a society that doesn't step up to the plate. Of course we must choose to do what we can (and I know you're not seeking compliments but full credit to you for your activism). But my question goes down to the line of thought that "we" (that is the individual experiencing the suffering) has something to learn from the suffering as though we are going through that suffering so that a lesson may be taught to us. I struggle with this and still don't undersatnd your answer when it concerns what an innocent child has to 'learn' from such circumstances. What are they being taught? Maybe I'm missing something, but I just don't get it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JenellYB Posted January 25, 2012 Author Share Posted January 25, 2012 It seems to me that to believe God always has a purpose for suffering, that suffering is Gid's will, that it is either self-inficted or otherwise desrved, or for the purpose of forcing one to turn to God, teaching them something, entirely negates any effort/action on the part of others reaching out to help those suffering, try to mitigate, stop, their suffering, as being an act against God to do so. Unfortunately, that does in fact seem to be used by some as a religious-based reason or justification for notdoing so, and even opposing others that would do so. So the idea of anyone's suffering as God's will for them, toward accomplishing God's purposes in them, has some real problems for me. Matt, re your long cited reference post...I can't see any way to respond to all that, there's just too much, its just all over the place, and the text references given, mostly in single verse snippets, don't seem sufficient for really examining any one of the elements of this matter that might be considered...perhaps you can select more specific elements to focus questions and discussions on in more detail. Actually, many of us here are quite well studied in and familiar with what is in the bible. Jenell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeorgeW Posted January 25, 2012 Share Posted January 25, 2012 If we are going to call ourselves Christians, whether PC or not, we have to start with what the Bible says about suffering. If you don't believe that anything in the Bible is true, well, not even as the Word of God, but as the word of people whose faith in their time and place in history we have no right to question, well that's your choice, Matt, You start with the presumption that a Christian must believe that the Bible is the revealed word of a theistic god. I don't agree with that premise. I am aware of what the Bible says, but I think it expresses the thoughts of a number of human authors according to their own experiences and perspective, and were 'inspired' to find meaning. I also think (no, make that know) that there are many problematic translations of these texts. While I respect and find value in the Bible, I am also guided by reason and objective scholarship (not apologetics). George Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JenellYB Posted January 25, 2012 Author Share Posted January 25, 2012 There is a common phrase encountered within religious communties to the effect of..(I've even heard it presented as "in the bible", though it isn't) "God (or the Holy Spirit} comforts the discomforted, and discomforts the comfortable." It expresses something of a basic level idea long evidence in Christianity, at point in history and among certain groups, it has emerged rather prominently, that there is something inherently "wrong with" being in comfortable circumstances and state of being and mind. The "peace" the Lord gives is in this argued as a peace with one's state of eternal salvation, while we are to at the same time to never be at peace in our lives here, but rather always in a state of discomfort in our life in this world. This has often led to people, and religious teachings that promote and support, believing and feeling every kind of negative thing, from shame to fear, about experiencing comfort in their circumstances, or allowing themselves any pleasure or enjoyment or personal satisfaction in their lives. How many might express such ideas in comments to the effect of, things have been going just too well for them in their lives, something bad MUST be going to happen, lest they get too comfortable. This in addition to being subjected to, feeling, shame and guilt and questioning their own responsibility in their suffering. This can be very cruel, as I witnessed such things said to those suffering things like terminal cancer, why do you think you got cancer? Why do you think God caused/allowed you to get cancer? Or, what do you think god wants you to learn in becoming paralized, or even loosing a baby or child? It seems to me that idea is intricately woven into a lot of common religious doctrines and ideas about suffering. As if, we are SUPPOSED to suffer. Even that being made to suffer is God's gift to us for growth and learning. While I agree that at least sometimes, what we make of our suffering or that we see in other's lives CAN be something we might make use of toward leanring and perosnal growth, I can't accept it is brought upon us for that purpose or intent. As others have noted here, there's no way to fit that into such horrible suffering as little children abused or people born into circumstances of extreme deprivation and abuse. Or many other ways in which people might be brought to suffering and misery. After having browsed Matt's reference post and the website link, and some of the points and scriptural references associated with them, I found nothing new or unfamiliar to me, from my own previous expereinces within the Evangelical religious community I was born into and still live among, or my own previous experiences studying upon what have been basically the exact presentations as I find in said link. And they are ideas I've seriously explored and cosidered before, and discarded as invalid. In my own consideration of the idea that God "discomforts the comfortable", my own conclusion has been, and opinion is, such a statement is only valid if conditioned by matters in which our or anyone's comfort is of a nature and sort that NEEDS to be discomforted. That when we have been comfortable in something, some way, we shouldn't, it is to our best interest and growth to be discomforted in it, toward re-examining and reconsidering our comfortable position or circumstance. And that this need to be discomforted in something we have become comfortable with in a way we shouldn't, is as applicable to any ordinary matters of our lives as it is to our spiritual growth. I am just this past two weeks brought to be extremely discomforted in my having become "too comfortable", and therefore too casual and lax about, matters of security in and around my home and property. I am feeling not only extremely upset at how someone nearby, a neighbor I don't even know, had only ever spoken with casually and briefly, as few times, over the distance of two property line fences, as her property does not actually adjoin to my own, has been violating my privacy, my securty, legal rights, and even my reputation as a caring and responsible animal owner in my community as well as with local law enforcement and humane officals through false reports of neglect, but at my own part in having myself made that too easy for them to do, for my own having become too comfortable in my own sense of security and use of good common sense about my security. .I have experience having my comfort in some practical, moral, or spiritual matter in which I had become too comfortable, too complacent, more than once and in many different matters and ways. Sometimes, we really do need to have our comfort discomforted. And i try to find the positive in it when it happens. Just as now, i am hoping for a positive outcome in this recent matter of violation against me, that the person involved is now discomforted in her own sense of self-righteousness, and self-appointed crusade to save my horse from suffering and maybe even death by lack of water....and by her own foolishness at having spent months repeatedly and regularly entering my property in my abcence to fill a leaky old tub in my side pasture I haven't even put water into myself in years! The only "comforting" part of that for me is that she had obviously not actually intruded so far into my property as to discover my horse's actual water souce, located 20 feet from my back porch steps. So sometimes our own being discomforted can be a part of a positive discomforting for another, as well. But our discomforting does not always serve any really positive purpose, and our state of being comfortable is not always something there is any "need" for discomforting. I went through a period some years ago, in the aftermath of a closely spaced series of late night phone calls relating to family tragedies, of having become extemely discomforted not only any time the phone rang at night, but even anticipation of it ringing that interfered with my rest and sleep. I could then, nor now, see any good purpose served by that discomforting. I cannot believe those family tradegies happened as they did just so, or even partly so, I would be shaken out of my comfort with the phone ringing or my trying to go to bed and sleep. Sometimes, it just happens. Jenell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soma Posted January 25, 2012 Share Posted January 25, 2012 I struggle with this and still don't undersatnd your answer when it concerns what an innocent child has to 'learn' from such circumstances. What are they being taught? Maybe I'm missing something, but I just don't get it Paul, I can't answer your question, because my suffering is not along those lines. From my suffering I learned many things about myself, the world, and the situations I was in. In fact, I am greatful that those things happened to me in the exact ways they occured. I am talking about the big things such as rejected from family, country and the people closest to me because of a different ideology. I learned and evolved and feel I want and can help others because I went through such experiences. I find my service is even selfish because I get so much from the experience. It seems the service causes the same stimulus for physical and spiritual evolution that suffering caused. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matt67 Posted January 25, 2012 Share Posted January 25, 2012 George I have failed in this and other posts to accurately articulat my belief. I don't believe in a theistic God the way someone in the Reformed or even conservative vein of the evangelical movement might. I don't see God as Christopher Hitchens saw it as these conservatives which is a ruler sitting on a literal throne wielding power. I am more of a process/existentialist. That said my considering God as a "person" involves my experience through the natural world, through my mind (meditation and prayer in the Benedictine tradition), through my direct experience with the shared "imago dei" in others and myself and through the depiction of Jesus in scripture (and I don't really get concerned about who thinks what is real or made up about Him). That is why the scriptures are as valid to me as the rigveda is to a Hindu or some other text is to any adherent to another tradition (and I think those works have a gold mine of truth in them). But I stick to the symbols and language I am most familiar with. I am also guided by reasonable inquiry and scholarship as well as apologetics. I do set some limits on my exposure to these though because it makes me feel like I have disconnected my heart from something vital to my experience in God. Despite doing that i try to take in as many opinions as I can whether I agree with them or not to see how much I can stomach those I might oppose and to test my own discernment. I don't know if that makes my views any clearer. I hope I never agree with anyone too much. Some scripture is crystal clear to me some completely baffles me but I don't say it's irrelevant. It may not be valid to me but valid to someone else or was to someone at the time it was written. I just try and decide what is or isn't applicable to me and leave it at that. I don't opine that it needs to be expunged from the canon. Thats why I like translations so I can dig deep into what it can maybe even should say. I also consider myself to be a universalist when it comes to salvation issues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JenellYB Posted January 26, 2012 Author Share Posted January 26, 2012 Matt wrote: "I have failed in this and other posts to accurately articulat my belief. I don't believe in a theistic God the way someone in the Reformed or even conservative vein of the evangelical movement might." That can happen easily in an attempt to communicate in a forum such as this, where we are speaking in scattered places in snippets of conversation about ideas set out from the usual context in which we might encounter them. I've aprantly misunderstood your views in some matters, such as where it seemed to me you were presenting what I felt a false dichotomy, and either/or dilemma, of either belief in a theistic god, or on the other hand a Buddhist view of the cosmos involving karma and reincarnation. and perhaps you've misunderstood some of mine or others' here. It is only over time any of us, in this setting or elsewhere, can start kinda getting a handle on one another's postions, understnadings, and beliefs. Jenell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matt67 Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 And in confessing my sins, I admit that if I slide in that direction of the "either/or" is because I want to get a better sense of where others are coming from, moreso that what we say about ourselves on our profiles. My desire to connect with others on these topics outweighs my patience to allow people to, as you say, Jenell, reveal themselves "over time." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeorgeW Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 Matt, Thanks for the clarification above. I think I was thrown off when you started quoting scripture to reconcile a loving god with the suffering of innocents. BTW, I apologize if I have come across as contentious. Your faith is as valid as anyone else. It is when someone makes (or seems to make) universal truth claims that I tend to get a little stirred up. Sorry. George Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
glintofpewter Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 suffering Job is a truly modern man because he realizes that he is not suffering because some evil or good god spirit or spell or curse is causing it and he is not suffering because he was morally deficient. He knows that there are diseases and accidents - and that ###### happens. spheres of influence When times are hard it means that God wants you to learn something - drink lots of fluids, call the doctor, or change your expections for your newly adopted child because she has fetal alcohol syndrome. This is a personal journey. What does God want the child starving in Africa to learn is not a question that can be answered by anyone unless they are accompanying that child; unless they make it their personal journey. Some will accompany that child and say I don't believe in a God that lets this happen. some will accompany that child and report many sightings of God. there are two kinds of people I guess. Dutch Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NORM Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 If we are going to call ourselves Christians, whether PC or not, we have to start with what the Bible says about suffering... I appreciate your efforts here, Matt, but I simply reject your premise. The first followers of Jesus - the "heroes and heroines of the New Testament" - did not have the Bible, and were mostly illiterate, so how does that square with your thesis? Should we disallow ourselves to call them Christians? Actually, I would argue that they were Jews, but that's another thread. Christians traditionally identify the disciples of Jesus as Christians. I skimmed through your biblical selections, and while they are interesting reading, they don't represent a complete treatise on suffering. You left out Song of Solomon, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Ecclesiastes (the rest of the book - particularly chapters 1 and 2), Joel and the rest of the minor prophets, and all references to the Babylonian captivity. In much of this literature - in fact most of the Hebrew scriptures written between the fall of the First Temple and the destruction of the Second Temple - is rife with "worthless" suffering. IOW, there is no redemption. There is no good outcome. As the preacher in Ecclesiastes suggests - all is futile under the Sun. And, mankind is as fleeting as the summer grass. When you tour the great cathedrals of Europe, you will discover two versions of Christ: 1. The condemning Chist: normally depicted casting humans into hell, or scourging someone. 2. The forgiving Christ: depicted with arms open wide, perhaps a sheep in his arms, welcoming everyone into paradise. Toward the end of my experience as a Christian, I sought to embrace this second Christ that did not have the baggage of the vengeful G-d fiction. I find that suffering is entirely meaningless as far as the natural world is concerned. There is no point to it. It simply happens. I have found peace in this understanding, for I no longer find myself struggling to reconcile a supposed G-d of love who could allow such pointless suffering. If there is a being or entity we could reasonbly call "G-d," then it is aloof to the concerns of the living inhabitants of its creation. I can see no other reasonable interpretation of the way of the world. NORM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matt67 Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 Okay, then there's nothing more to discuss. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeorgeW Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 If there is a being or entity we could reasonbly call "G-d," then it is aloof to the concerns of the living inhabitants of its creation. I can see no other reasonable interpretation of the way of the world. Maybe the concern is at a higher level than the individual human - species or world or universe or cosmos. George Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeorgeW Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 Okay, then there's nothing more to discuss. Matt, Don't give up now. If we all agreed, there could be no learning or growth. George Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JosephM Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 If there is a being or entity we could reasonbly call "G-d," then it is aloof to the concerns of the living inhabitants of its creation. I can see no other reasonable interpretation of the way of the world. NORM Norm, I think perhaps that is a logical and reasonable conclusion that one eventually comes to that itself does not exhaust the possibilities but calls for a re-examination of the original assumptions concerning relationship of the world , i and God . Joseph Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matt67 Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 If I come up with something to contribute I will. I have learned much from the insights offered and I think everyone is right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JenellYB Posted January 26, 2012 Author Share Posted January 26, 2012 Dutch, good reminder about the book of Job. Job is an often misunderstood book, and much is commonly excerpted from context from it and inappropriately used, often even in direct opposition and conflict with meaning that would be intended if considered within context. Many people think of the book of Job as about suffering per se, but read carefully and as a whole, is it entirely an argument AGAINST such ideas as that suffering has anything to do with what we've done. That suffering just is. One thing that bothers me about a lot of ideas about suffering is that so many people, at least of our society, seem prone to trivialiizing suffering, and to in the same light, equating even the most insignficant annoyances and inconveniences with suffering. As in somewhere mentioned here, suffering can be something as mild as a mosquito bite or an annoying gnat, and that simply isn't by any stretch what is truly suffering. Nor are such ordinary and common discomforts and even pain as we might suffer with an occasional headache, toothache, or ear infection, even if the pain really is bad, is still relatively brief and fleeting. Suffering implies extreme pain, lack of basic needs such as starvation and thirst, that is continuing and unremitting over a signficant period of time, often with ouut option for releif or recourse. To equate trival annoyances as mosquito bites or gnats, unless one is trapped in hordes of them eating you alive, just isn't suffering. I have to agree with those that would suggest America has become a nation of petulantly complaining and whining wimps and woosies. To suggest telling your kid or anyone, when they complain of minor things, they need to just suck it upand stop whining is NOT cruel, it is toward helping them be more functional, and even more happy in life, to not let little things get treated like a big deal. But to me, even worse, when people are so self-focused and self- absorbed with such petty annoyances in their lives, they aren't like to ntotice, recognize, or feel any realcompassion for those that might expereicnes real, serious suffering. Again, I reference to experiences common for those actually suffering severe and unremitting pain of something like terminal cancer, its really quite unbelievable how many will counter what may be even extreme pain and other physical and emotional suffering connected toit with such comments, supposedly as if sympathizing, as that "I know exactly how you feel, I have frequent headaches" of some such ordinary discomforts and ailments. Discomforts is a good word for it...I think a lot of people that haven't experienced real suffering mistake mere discomfort with suffering. In relating any of this to religion, I think a lot gets mixed up into ideas about religious beliefs that are not really about religious bellefs at all, but simple common sense and dealing with ordinary life expereinces. To me, ideas about Jesus's death and ressurection, and matters of salvation, are relgious beliefs. Ideas about suffering and pain and other ordinary experiences of the human condtion,are just that, and nothing actually about religion or religous beliefs. Jenell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matt67 Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 Jenell I like that analysis of Job. That suffering just is. God coming in the whirlwind doesn't provide him with an answer other that "You don't understand." This makes it seem almost like a cosmic joke especially since we the readers are the conversation between God Nd the Adversary. We are told that God restores Job's prosperity but maybe Job just accepted his lot and got on with his life. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JenellYB Posted January 26, 2012 Author Share Posted January 26, 2012 Matt, some bible scholars actually posit that the unkown author of the book of Job atually wrote it as a social/polical parody toward demonstrating the absurdity of some ideas and beliefs about God's role in human suffering that were widely accepted amongthe Jewish religious of the tiime. That is why one must read Job in it's entirity, as Job and his friends banter back and forth these ideas about God's role in our suffering, and our supposed part in it, these common ideas are presented, examined and effectively shot down as nonsense. I was introduced to this idea of the actual nature of the book of Job in one of my Religious Studies courses, and I later took some time to study Job pretty intensely. I actually used a set of colored highlight pens to go through Job, and mark the words and actions of each of the "role players" involved, a different color for Job and each friend, and then also making margin marks to identify which argument that section was involved in. Then I read Job again several times, observing those notations to follow just who said what and i response to whom and what. My conclusion from that excercise is to fully agree with that theory. And I've often encounter within religious community, parts of the text of Job being excerpted from context, and use as supposed support for some of the very ideas and beliefs that IN context, they are part of the faulty ideas presented by Job's friends, that are then torn down! Jenell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matt67 Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 That makes more sense than taking it as a serious treatise. The fact that is supposed to be placed chronologically during the time covered by Genesis and references to "sons of God" as if there is a band of them running to and from earth makes it seems it's an ancient myths. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JenellYB Posted January 26, 2012 Author Share Posted January 26, 2012 Actually, scholars date the book of Job, at least in its finished form as we've received it , as somewhere between the 7th and 4th centuries BCE. There is evidence it was reworked at least a few times before it was set into the form we now have. so it isn't generally dated back to the time of Genesis and other early books. References to 'sons of god' continue in Hebrew literature into much later perods of Hebrew literature. Jenell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeorgeW Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 We are told that God restores Job's prosperity but maybe Job just accepted his lot and got on with his life. And, he got double compensation for his pain and suffering. George Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeorgeW Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 Matt, some bible scholars actually posit that the unkown author of the book of Job atually wrote it as a social/polical parody toward demonstrating the absurdity of some ideas and beliefs about God's role in human suffering that were widely accepted amongthe Jewish religious of the tiime. Professor Hiers in The Trinity Guide to the Bible says that the author was challenging "Orthodox Wisdom Theology" which essentially held that we are rewarded (in this life) for righteousness and punished for wickedness. This notion persists even today in some corners of Christianity (see explanations for Hurricane Katrina, the earthquake in Haiti, etc.). George Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matt67 Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 No offense to anyone but God should be sued for negligence. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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