“… Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?…” Job 2:10
I found this blog from CathNews titled The temptation to opt out of suffering an interesting response to my recent questions of Why is there suffering? And, if there is a God who is supposed to be loving and all-powerful, then why does He allow suffering?
At the heart of Western culture we have an important battle over the nature of human life and suffering. On one side we have people who seek to provide solace and comfort to patients who are sick and dying, while on the other side we have people advocating euthanasia.
(this attitude about) euthanasia is something seemingly typical of the utilitarianism of modernity, in which it is increasingly difficult to make sense of suffering, and so, it must be avoided.
It seems that modernity, with its struggles between cold rationalism and sentimental romanticism, can make little or no sense of suffering. From a theological perspective, the modern notions of the human person, with their emphases on individualism, relativism, and affluence, seem to be lacking a relational understanding of what it means to be human. It is this relational understanding that lies at the heart of Christianity…The split between romanticism and rationalism – between reason and faith – continues to plague the West; and it impacts in real ways on Western notions of human suffering and life that form how we live and even who we allow to live.
Suffering for many affluent Westerners does not fit into their picture of human life: it must be cut to out to make a nice, neat system in which we can control our lives.
Yet, the gaping holes in this Western worldview are manifested in many modern Western problems that show how we find it hard to cope with suffering (e.g. drugs, alcohol, suicide, etc.).
Human dignity is being degraded because the West struggles to make sense of human life and suffering.
the battle for the West lies: between the rejection or fear of suffering (in an individualised, self-sufficient notion of human being); and, the effort to seek and bring good out of evil and suffering with faith that God is moving life toward good ends. In the Christian tradition, God comes to a world plagued by suffering, violence and death to bring good out of it: the Cross is the symbol of this par excellence. It is the symbol that the West no longer wants to face – that suffering and evil can be and needs to be transformed into good, no matter the initial pain, cost and self-sacrifice that this involves.
See also Answering the problem of suffering and Christians respond to suffering #1, Christians respond to suffering #2, Christians respond to suffering #3, Christians respond to suffering #4, and Christians respond to suffering #5
