Orthodoxy.

People want to “avoid suffering”, but to “overcome challenges”. To me, facing and overcoming challenges is a huge part of being human. People run marathons and climb mountains for the experience of having challenged themselves successfully.

The concept of striving for a place where there are no challenges, where everything is handed to you on a silver platter – is not my idea of eternal bliss.

The Reform Jewish concept of a Messianic Age where we have eliminated the extreme forms of suffering such as war and abject poverty, but the world still has challenges such as being a parent (the Christian tradition teaches there will be no more children, ever, after the Resurrection – Matthew 22:23-33) – resonates much more with me.

The whole issue of evil and suffering, which is a stumbling block to so many, actually played a key role in my conversion. In my previous life (pre-Christian), my philosophy was mostly based on various Eastern traditions – Hinduism and Buddhism, both of which I still greatly respect. Suffering is a big issue with these traditions, especially Buddhism – “all is suffering” is the Buddha’s First Noble Truth, the starting point for all his teaching. However, I always felt that something vital was missing. To the Eastern traditions, suffering is just the result of ignorance, to be avoided, ended, transcended in some way. They do not, as far as I can see, invest suffering with any kind of meaning. And when I started to go through the Middle-Aged Meat Grinder in earnest (deaths of both parents and all three brothers, open-heart surgery, car wreck, illnesses, teenage kids, etc), I badly needed for it all to mean something. Only Christianity provided me with a framework by which to understand my experiences of suffering in a meaningful way – the other traditions, great as they are, gave me nothing I needed when the going got really tough. In fact, I have come to believe that Christianity is truly unique in this regard. The Cross, with all that it stands for, is something that only Christianity offers to the human race.

The pain we experience serves to make the joys we experience better than they would have been otherwise, that we sometimes tend to take the joys for granted.

Great post.

I often read blogs that mimic my own thoughts yet describe them much more coherently and thoroughly than I ever could. I bookmark the great ones to fall back on in tough times. I have to say I have found myself bookmarking every post that finds its way onto this website. Thanks for the inspiration and hard work.