A Passion for Pain

The Autonomist ^ | Feb. 26, 2004 | Reginald Firehammer

[Hank Kerchief]

 

A Passion for Pain

There is a peculiar aspect of all religions that glorifies and embraces pain, suffering, and torment as virtues. The glorification of suffering is certainly not missing from the Christian religion, recently and wonderfully illustrated by Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.

In my criticism [Passion Prattle] of Rebecca Hagelin's praise for the film as an, "artistic achievement beyond any scale you could imagine," I compared the brutality of Gibson's created images to the real thing depicting the atrocities of Sadam Hussein and the Taliban to point out how the religious, revolted at images of today's sadistic murderer's excesses, are positively delighted at watching hours of much worse.

"The center-piece of the movie is an absolutely disgusting and despicable piece of sadism ... It shows a man being flayed alive - slowly, methodically and with increasing savagery. We first of all witness the use of sticks, then whips, then multiple whips with barbed glass or metal. We see flesh being torn out of a man's body. ... Then we see pieces of human skin flying through the air. ... We see blood spattering on the torturers' faces. We see muscled thugs exhausted from shredding every inch of this man's body. And then they turn him over and do it all again. It goes on for ever. And then we see his mother wiping up masses and masses of blood."

This is how Anrew Sullivan graphically describes this, "artistic achievement beyond any scale you could imagine." [We do not often agree with Andrew Sullivan, but thank him for this honest description, and for having the fortitude to watch this horror in order to provide it.]

This pathological fascination with suffering in religion is not an anomaly, it is fundamental to the whole superstitious perversion which are "religious" values. Pain, suffering, and human torment are regarded as positive values, to be embraced and fostered.

I do not know Scott Holleran, but was surprised to see this astute observation in his article,"Jesus Christ Superscar" from Box Office Mojo:

"... Actors have always used celebrity to promote their principles. Redford's environmentalism – Cruise's Scientology -- animal-loving starlets (Bardot, Hedren, Novak, etc.) -- what's the point of fame if you can't use it to apply your ideals?

"In Gibson's case, that means spreading religion in its fundamental sense. The Passion of the Christ's theme is that suffering, not joy, is man's proper fate." [Emphasis added.]

Pain Lovers

This despicable inversion of values, that evil (pain and suffering) is good and good (pleasure and joy) is evil, colors the Christian's perspective on everything. H. L. Mencken once defined puritanism as "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." The Christian perspective is worse than that, they are terrified by the suspicion that someone, somewhere, might not be suffering and actually enjoying their life.

Worse than Marx's perversion that based the value of things on the labor required to produce them, the Christian regards the source of value of all things, not the human pleasure they give or suffering they relieve, but very opposite; the value of a thing in the Christian value system is how much pain, suffering, and self-deprivation it requires.

Recent comments to my previous article illustrate this perverted view. "It is apparent," one commentator said, "that the writer knows absolutely nothing about Christianity or faith or sacrificial love. Parents endure pain and suffering all the time for their children - if they truly love them," as thought it were the "sacrifice," "enduring pain," and "suffering," that made the love real and valuable.

It evidently does not occur to Christians, it is not the cost of what one provides one's children that determines its value, but how much real benefit it is to the children. There is something sinisterly evil in the view that the measure of love is how much pain and suffering it costs. There is hardly any other way Christians measure the value of anything. Consider what they "value" in, The Passion of the Christ.

Pain Promoters

Another comment was this: "It's not exactly a Christian discovery that good and virtue are frequently paired with the enduring of pain and suffering. Considering the way everyone of us comes into the world, that shouldn't come as a surprise to even the most secular minded."

It is certainly no surprise that Christians are opposed to anything that relieves suffering in this world, and if Christians had there way, not even the suffering accompanying childbirth would ever be relieved.

Ronald Bruce Meyer, in "Religion v. Anesthesia" records, "The controversy over the use of anesthetics has a sad history of clerical opposition, especially when suggested for women in childbirth. The clerical prohibition issues from the Bible, Genesis 3:16, and from the very mouth of God: "Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children."

The article, The Under-treatment of Pain - Part I, some history records, "This divine curse [Gen. 3:16] was taken so literally by religious fanatics that in 1591 King James VI of Scotland had burned at the stake a gentlewoman named Euphanie Macalyane who secretly used a remedy to relieve her pangs of childbirth." An example of Christian "compassion" and intolerance for anything that relieves the human suffering they worship.

If you are tempted to think this hysterical hatred for anything that relieves human suffering or provides human pleasure is limited to history, remember the disaster that, the mostly Christian driven, prohibition of alcohol foisted on this country, or worse, consider the untold suffering the so-called, "war on drugs," wreaks on the innocent today. Whatever their motives, it is not concern with human suffering.

"Torture, despair, agony, and death are the symptoms of "opiophobia," a well-documented medical syndrome fed by fear, superstition, and the war on drugs," begins this article, "No Relief in Sight" from Dr. Alexander DeLuca's WEB page.

"Superstition," is the author's kind word for religion. Here are the stories of real living human beings with chronic intractable pain, suffering continually and unnecessarily, many driven to suicide, by the grace of the Christian driven WOD. This is real horror, not a movie creation.

Virtue is What Virtue Does

While the Christians talk about compassion and, "real love," they promote the very policies that punish those who are actually doing something about human suffering. Katherine Eban Finkelstein, in "Deadly Morals", subtitled, "The DEA is Busting Doctors for Prescribing Drugs - and Patients are Dying in Pain," describes the persecution and prosecution of those truly compassionate doctors who risk their professions and freedom to help those suffering chronic and debilitating pain. Include in that number of persecuted, Dr. Bruce W. Wilkin, a rural physician in Nevada, whose ordeal I noted in my article, "Doctor Faces License Revocation."

All this human suffering and persecution of the innocent is the direct result of that ideology that glorifies suffering and hates human happiness, that psychology that can watch hours of crafted unspeakable horror which they call "uplifting," and "inspiring."

Evil is What Evil Does

While Mel Gibson's film may be shocking to some and bewildering to others, who cannot understand how Christians, who claim the moral high-ground and concern for the welfare of others, can take such delight in such horrid depictions of gratuitous bloody and sadistic cruelty, it should not be surprising at all.

My mother used to say, "if you want to know what people really believe and truly love, don't listen to what they say, watch where they spend their time and money." Those who really believe in human happiness and truly love what is good and wholesome and benevolent will not be wasting their time and money on that glorification of torment and suffering called The Passion of Christ. You know who will.

—Reginald Firehammer (2/26/04)

[Hank Kerchief]

no one in their right mind can possibly love humanity in it's sinful, fallen, and depraved state

Wow, that is a very interesting statement. If it were true, it would mean Christ was not in His right mind:

Romans 5:8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Are you sure that's what you meant to say?

Hank

[ahadams2]

no human in his right mind can love fallen humanity. I mean exactly what I say, and it does not contradict Scripture.

[Hank Kerchief]

Enjoy...

I am, thank you.

Do the same.

(You are not far from the truth. Watch.)

Hank

[Ramius]

I am not far from the truth, eh?? *do tell*... :-)

I'm sure you're having big fun, but just in case...

I guess I'm not real clear on your obsession with suffering and pain as some kind of spiritual objective. It isn't. I feel like I'm painting the obvious here, but it isn't that suffering is the objective. Spiritual clarity is the objective. Sometimes, this happens during periods of suffering and pain, just as fire sometimes burns away the wood to reveal the steel beneath.

It's not about the suffering. It's about the spiritual clarity. Sometimes people even reach such clarity without the suffering. With some, you don't get their attention without it. Dunno why. Not my problem.

[Hank Kerchief]

Many of us see where your logic leads you astray ...

Please, to not be reticent. No one is preventing you from presenting the truth.

If you deny that suffering is a virtue and know that, the purpose of Christ is, "that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly," (John 10:10) and that, the "living God, ... giveth us richly all things to enjoy," (1 Tim. 6:17) why do you not say so. Why do all these Christians defend the view that suffering is a virtue, then claim the article is wrong, since that is all the article says, that it is what Christians believe?

Hank

[Hank Kerchief]

no human in his right mind can love fallen humanity

While I totally reject the Augustinian heresy of the fallen nature of man, even if it were true, your statement would require you to reject either the humanity of Christ (plainly taught in Scripture) or that He loved fallen humanity.

Hank

[Ramius]

It is curious to me that you seem to care so much about something you reject.

Me, I would move on.

[Sloth]

And then we see his mother wiping up masses and masses of blood.

Sullivan's full of crap. The amount of blood depicted in that scene might be a pint or so -- it ain't "masses and masses."

[conservonator]

Once again Hank, the virtue is not in the suffering, it's in how we deal with the suffering. A concept devoid of meaning to "Brights" who serve no one but their own ego. And I might point out that instruction on bearing suffering patiently hardly demonstrates that suffering is man's prescribed "proper fate" either in the movie or scripture. The author’s opinion does not render fact.

Christianity is not the root of all evil, contrary to the author’s opinion. If that were true, atheistic regimes would be paradise by comparison. If you want to see a system of suffering as a prescribed fate look no further than material liberalism: suffering in action. Atheism is the ultimate expression of material liberalism. Talk about suffering, you must believe that this is as good as it gets. What a burden, what a cross to bear...

Hank, you've traded an imaginary reverence for physical suffering for a very real worship of mental and even spiritual suffering. This is as good as it gets and as bad as that may be it's made worse because you have traded slavery to your own Id for slavery to the collective superego. All so you can be rewarded with what ever the collective decides to leave you as payment for your labor and submission to the collective will. And in the end you die...Congratulations on your ability to see this as superior to the Christian belief of and eternal joy.

[Just another Joe]

Whether this man knows anything about the movie, I don't know. I haven't seen it yet.

That this man know nothing about Christianity is obvious. At least not the Christianity I know.

Christianity is not about suffering. Sacrifice, perhaps, but sacrifice is not the same as suffering.

[ahadams2]

LOL! first of all the fallen nature of man is clearly demonstrated in both the Old and New Testaments. So let's be clear on this - you aren't rejecting *Augustinian* theology, you are rejecting Biblical theology viz:

---

Romans 7:14-25

14For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. 15For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. 16If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. 17But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. 18For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. 19For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. 20Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. 21I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. 22For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. 23But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. 24O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.

---

So before we go any further we need to make a determination. It's quite simple, really, either Holy Scripture is the inerrant Word of God written (where all apparent contradictions are due merely to the limits of our human intellect and attribute no fault to the original texts) or it is not. Obviously I hold to the former view - the question is do you? If you do not, then there is no further point in continuing the discussion, since we have no common ground on which to argue. Note carefully, I did not say that one could never find apparent difficulties in Holy Scripture, but rather that those apparent difficulties are due to the fallen and limited nature of our (that's yours and mine) intellects; nothing more.

However, so as not to attempt to predict your answer one way or the other let me explain your mistake about the dual nature of Jesus Christ.

Your mistake is in assuming that Jesus, being the only sinless one, and yes both True God and true Man was limited by the same fallen nature we have in ourselves. That's your point of error. Certainly He could and did Love fallen humanity enough to die for us and rise again from the dead. However because of *our* fallen and sinful human nature (which Paul so well describes in the passage above) we are in and of ourselves as human beings completely unable to love others, most especially in the manner in which Christ calls us to love them. Indeed it is only by the Power of the Holy Spirit within a Christian that he may ever love *anyone* in the manner Christ intended. Again please note carefully that I did NOT say that no human ever tries to love another, nor did I say no human being ever tries to show love for another. Rather, it is that no human being, fallen and sinful as we are, can even hope to comprehend how Jesus Loves us and how He wants us to love others, without the empowerment of the Holy Spirit who comes into our hearts when we accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Indeed those who have not accepted Him, and yet claim to love fallen humanity in the way He intends for us to love them, are only fooling themselves.

[1 spark]

Questions:

Isn't it true that humans are so innately sinful that they need an outside sinless agent to redeem them from sin?


What are the implications of the Christian doctrine of original sin?



Go here and click on the questions to get the answers.

http://www.jewsforjudaism.org/web/faq/faq-os.html

[Campion]

The Passion of the Christ's theme is that suffering, not joy, is man's proper fate.

I'm sorry, but that's just the stupidest thing I've seen here in a long time.

The point of the movie is that God's beloved son endured unspeakable pain in order to free mankind from sin and death.

The warped minds you admire don't know the difference between that and "worshipping suffering". That, far from being a key to "joy", I find truly sad.

"Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by his death, and on those in the tombs, bestowing life."--Easter Troparion, Byzantine Rite

[ahadams2]

It is absolutely true Jesus the Messiah, conceived of the Holy Spirit, by the Virgin Mary; being without sin and both True God and true man was (from the perspective of the sinful and fallen universe in which we live) 'an outside agent'...both in the sense of His Dual Nature, and in the sense of His Sinlessness.

:-) I have to grin at your question about the question of original sin, since books have been written on just one small portion of that question. Bottom line, though, is that *all* of creation is fatally corrupted by sin and only throught faith in Jesus Christ's Atoning death on calvary, completed in His is Resurrection and victory over Sin and Death, can anyone have hope to escape the final and just punishment of Almighty God.

[beckett]

A truly offfensive, severely myopic article which deliberately misrepresents the Christian message.

Real garbage.

[dsc]

"Please, to not be reticent. No one is preventing you from presenting the truth."

Well, I guess I'll start with what I posted before. The remarks in quotation marks are yours.

"suffering is evil."

That is absolutely incorrect. Suffering is as morally neutral as a paperclip.

It is only the circumstances surrounding it, and the sufferer's reaction to it, that impart any moral quality to suffering. That character can be good as easily as it can be evil. For that matter, it can be both at the same time--having an evil effect on the soul of an inflicter, and a beneficial effect on the soul of the sufferer. Or even vice versa.

"Pain and death are not virtues, they are the opposite of all human life is about."

To quote notorious potty-mouth junkie Lenny Bruce, "For a Catholic, death is a promotion."

What human life is about is passing this course and getting promoted. Getting promoted, of course, means spending eternity with God. Viewed against the backdrop of eternity, our suffering in this world and our deaths don't amount to a single grain of sand on a beach.

---

Now, as to the rest of this latest post...

"If you deny that suffering is a virtue"

I don't think you understand the nature of a virtue. Neither pain nor pleasure could possibly be virtues. In "Introduction to the Devout Life," Saint Francis de Sales does a great job of describing just what a virtue is. I recommend it.

A *response* to either pain or pleasure can be virtuous, vicious, or neutral, but pain and pleasure are experiences, not virtues.

"Why do all these Christians defend the view that suffering is a virtue"

Nobody is doing that. You are insisting that there are only two alternatives, and when people try to introduce you to a third, you refuse to understand.

What suffering *can* be is redemptive. When I am in discomfort, I try to remember to ask Our Lord to accept that pain or discomfort in reparation for my many sins.

If you are voluntarily suffering for a good cause--for instance, donating a kidney to save a life--your action in accepting the suffering is virtuous, and the suffering itself can be redemptive, but no one would argue that the suffering itself is virtuous.

You are arguing, quite conspicuously and flamboyantly, against a proposition that is a gross oversimplification embraced by no one. That you apparently think this gross oversimplification to be the entirety of theology on the point shows only one thing: you are woefully uninformed about what you seek to oppose.

Here's a little something from C. S. Lewis, "Mere Christianity," that I think is to the point.

"A child saying a child's prayer looks simple. And if you are content to stop there, well and good. But if you are not - and the modern world usually is not - if you want to go on and ask what is really happening - then you must be prepared for something difficult. If we ask for something more than simplicity, it is silly then to complain that the something more is not simple.

Very often, however, this silly procedure is adopted by people who are not silly, but who, consciously or unconsciously, want to destroy Christianity. ***Such people put up a version of Christianity suitable for a child of six and make that the object of their attack.*** When you try to explain the Christian doctrine as it is really held by an instructed adult, they then complain that you are making their heads turn round and that it is all too complicated and that if there really were a God they are sure He would have made 'religion' simple, because simplicity is so beautiful, etc.

You must be on your guard against these people for they will change their ground every minute and only waste your time. Notice, too, their idea of God 'making religion simple'; as if 'religion' were something God invented, and not His statement to us of certain quite unalterable facts about His own nature.

Besides being complicated, reality, in my experience, is usually odd. It is not neat, not obvious, not what you expect. For instance, when you have grasped that the earth and the other planets all go round the sun, you would naturally expect that all the planets were made to match - all at equal distances from each other, say, or distances that regularly increased, or all the same size, or else getting bigger or smaller as you go further from the sun. In fact, you find no rhyme or reason (that we can see) about either the sizes or the distances; and some of them have one moon, one has four, one has two, some have none, and one has a ring.

Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed."

[dyed_in_the_wool]

Are you sure you're not confusing Faith and Reason? Pope John Paul II wrote an excellent encyclical called 'Fides et Ratio' (Faith and Reason) which attempts to delineate the role of Philosophy as compared to the role of faith. I do not think one should ever eliminate the need for the other. Regardless of how strong one's faith is.

[dukeman]

I have never, never seen an essay more breathtakingly ignorant or hateful. How sad.

[Red Boots]

Pain and suffering are part of humanity.To love humanity is to love all parts of the human experience, which includes pain and suffering. Great love comes with great suffering.They are two parts of a whole. I don't enjoy suffering, but I have learned things about myself, and God, that simply couldn't have been learned any other way.That learning is what life is all about. Therefore, I don't try to run from suffering, nor do I help others run from it, nor does God. That would be a grave diservice to humanity.

[Diamond]

...This pathological fascination with suffering in religion is not an anomaly, it is fundamental to the whole superstitious perversion which are "religious" values...

The author, presumably based on nothing more than a presupposition of the totality of random, impersonal evolution as the source of all things, gives no accounting for his use of such words as "pathological", and "perversion" in the first place. Without a coherent accounting of such notions his moral judgments and outrage are laughably self-refuting.

... It is certainly no surprise that Christians are opposed to anything that relieves suffering in this world...

A statement that is flatly false on its face. I could go on, but it's not worth it.

Cordially,