Suffering
19 posts
To the ‘why’ of suffering we get no firm answer. Of course some suffering is easily seen to be the result of our sin: war, assault, poverty amidst plenty, the hurtful word. And maybe some is chastisement. But not all. The meaning of the remainder is not told us. It […]
A friend recently shared this quote from James Finsley and I am still not sure what I think of it. On some levels, it rings true. We are not protected from the vicissitudes of the world, the “effluvia of the fall,” as Carson calls it. But then, I am not […]
History does provide distance, but it does not erase the reality of what happened. Nor can changes in ideology or a desire for it to have been different. Yes, it is the nature of humans to harm one another, to be self-centered, and this leads to everything from petty grasping […]
“The Son of God suffered unto the death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His.” George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons. First Series. As cited in CS Lewis, The Problem of Pain, (New York: Macmillan, 1947), p. vi. Cited by CS Lewis in the frontispiece of The Problem of Pain. I am not sure what I […]
…when pain is to be borne, a little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all. – CS Lewis, “Preface,” The Problem of Pain.
In preparing for our Foundation Course this fall I am reading (for the first time, I confess) Nietsche’s On Truth and Lie in the Extra-Moral Sense. In it he makes the comment that intellect was given so to the “most delicate, most evanescent beings in order to hold them for a minute […]
I saw this pop up on Facebook today. Even St. John Chyrsostom agrees with me, the Church should be a hospital. A place of remission of sins and healing, not a place of palliative care simply to ease our inevitable death.
The Archangel from Tobit, as retold by Frederick Buechner, explaining how we blame suffering on everyone but ourselves. “When terrible things do happen, they fail to understand that for the most part they have brought them down on their own heads. They prefer to think that it is time itself […]
Yesterday I was reading the morning office and Ps. 118:22, one of the most familiar passages in the psalms to Christians, struck me differently. 17I shall not die, but live, * and declare the works of the LORD. 18The LORD has punished me sorely, * but he did not hand […]