To: dsc
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
To: Hank Kerchief
It is curious to me that you seem to care so much about something you reject.
Me, I would move on.
27 posted on
02/26/2004 8:39:04 PM PST by
Ramius
To: Hank Kerchief
"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."
36 posted on
02/27/2004 12:00:46 AM PST by
dsc
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