What is the deal with God??

[pianoperformer]

Except that you said, Christians are supposed to undergo suffering. As though the rest of us don't, or as if you undergo more.

Also you fail to see that there is some suffering that is just meaningless and that there is no lesson from, especially the type that lasts for years, which is what you were responding to.

[MrNotebook]

Originally Posted by pianoperformer

Except that you said, Christians are supposed to undergo suffering. As though the rest of us don't, or as if you undergo more.

Typically when one accepts Jesus as Lord and decides to become Christian Satan likes to throw a myriad of problems in our path to discourage us from staying faithful. It's easier for him to sway a new Christian versus a well-rooted Christian with a strong foundation.

Originally Posted by pianoperformer

"...Also you fail to see that there is some suffering that is just meaningless..."

Or............you fail to discover the joy behind suffering. I believe there is meaning and purpose behind ALL suffering. Just because we can't find the meaning does not mean that there is none. Looking at suffering as mere suffering can potentially trap us into a victim mentality. Oh, woe me.

[SonoranBob]

Originally Posted by MrNotebook

"Once we find the meaning in our suffering, it ceases to be suffering"

I have quoted M. Scott Peck in this space, who opened The Road Less Traveled (a generally excellent work, IMO) pretty much the same way. I respect the sentiment.

However, suffering to me is a sunk cost. Presently, I'm not actively suffering. To the extent I suffer in the future it will no longer be unexpected. In that sense suffering has ceased to be suffering and I have transcended it. Transcendence, though, is over rated. There is no triumph in it. It is just lowered expectations, nothing more. It is acceptance. It is the end of struggle.

Originally Posted by MrNotebook

Satan oftentimes sets us up in a way to deceive us into thinking that we won't suffer because we have accepted Jesus into our lives. Many Christians buy into that lie (I did).

Satan doesn't need the help. The church does it for him. My expectations came strictly from what the church taught me, overtly and implicitly, in a zillion ways large and small.

Evangelical Christianity (my branch of it at any rate) sells Christ as the Answer to everything. This is, arguably, a perversion of pure Christianity, but it is all too common.

Originally Posted by MrNotebook

We are to expected to suffer as Christians.

...and that is the other extreme. And it hinges upon your definition of suffering. Jesus said those who suffer "for his name's sake" are blessed. That is taking it on the chin for having the courage of your convictions -- standing up for what is right. It's about unjust persecution. It has nothing to do with pointless misery upon pointless agony.

Originally Posted by MrNotebook

What I am about to say may not be easy for you to accept, however could it be that you have become bitter in some sense in regards to the suffering of your wife?

What, me bitter? Hahahahahaha! You underestimate me. Of course I was bitter. I can admit to that. It's the most natural thing in the world under the circumstances. I would have to have been some kind of automaton not to have been bitter.

Am I still bitter? No, I'm very disappointed, but bitterness serves no useful purpose. I don't have to like or approve of what happened, but I have to accept it. This acceptance has come more from Buddhist thought than Christian thought, however. And acceptance doesn't mean that I buy the lie of what I was taught or that I don't speak out against it.

Originally Posted by MrNotebook

Could it be that Satan is having you clutch onto this bitterness in an effort to have you miss the gift to emerge from her suffering? Have you tried looking beyond the suffering itself to identify the gift?

This perfectly illustrates what happens when Christians are confronted by something that doesn't fit their preconceptions. There is no acceptance of reality, just looking for ways to tap dance around it. Invent hobgoblins if necessary.

My. Wife. Is. Dead. She died horribly, slowly, in searing pain. This is not and can never be made into a "gift". To try to make it into one is to disrespect her suffering and to excuse it. At least you didn't try to suggest it was all her fault because of some secret sin or character flaw or lack of love for God or something, because I would have reached through this monitor and choked you for suggesting that.

All of this isn't to say that I am not better off for having known her. That I don't carry much of her within me, or that I have many of the benefits in my life because of her love and selflessness. Or that I can not and do not experience positive things despite the gaping hole her death left in my life. It doesn't mean that there is nothing to look forward to.

But to call these things a "gift" whose necessary vehicle for delivery was what she went through? Nonsense. Those positives came into my life because of who and what she was in SPITE of what happened to her. They would have been even sweeter WITHOUT the suffering.

Originally Posted by MrNotebook

This is part of where I feel your bitterness toward God. I at one point in my past felt very angry at God for certain conditions in my life. Have you tried expressing these concerns to God?

The time for expressing them to God is long past. The damage is done. I don't care to think about the brutal and cheerless hours I spent expressing my petty, unimportant "concerns" to God, and the endless silence of the response. I won't recount the "prayer warriors" who literally spent hours a day imprecating on her behalf, only to have things leap from bad to worse to unbelievable. At some point the rubber has to meet the road. Not only hasn't it, but both the tires and the pavement have long since disintegrated.

One of my wife's doctors was something of a sage. He said that most human suffering comes from trying to make life into something that it's not. I have come to the conclusion that the application of this is that life is not a play with me at center stage. It doesn't exist for my edification. It just is. I am not only unimportant in the Great Scheme of Things, but expendable in the Great Scheme of Things. I no longer take life seriously. I treat it as the absurdity that it is. And in doing so, I have finally, after 50+ years of screwing around, found peace. My problem was trying too hard and caring too much. As Elbert Hubbard said, "Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out alive."

I am a tiny part of an enormous whole. As such I inherently cannot accurately comprehend the whole. I embrace that uncertainty. I wish I had done it 35 years ago. It would have served me much better. I don't believe man is meant (or equipped!) to know as much as most religion purports to reveal. You can choose to believe certain things by faith so long as you know at some level that it's just a story you're buying into as a framework for living and not some kind of revealed truth. I'm convinced that legitimate and useful "faith" is simply a best intuitive guess about something we can never be sure of. The problem with conservative evangelical Christianity is that it's presented as a certainty and as the final word. I have come to view that attitude as a pernicious and dangerous lie.

--Bob

[MrNotebook]

Originally Posted by SonoranBob

My. Wife. Is. Dead. She died horribly, slowly, in searing pain. This is not and can never be made into a "gift".

With all due respect I am deeply and sincerely sorry to hear this is the case of your wife. Although I have not experienced losing a wife, I do see how this life situation can be difficult to bear. I am deeply sorry to hear this.

Instead of making her death into a gift in and of itself (which is not what I'm implying), I would say at least extract whatever spiritual lessons may come of it. I'm not saying this is easy. The reason I use the word gift is because I consider spiritual lessons (forgiveness, patience, understanding, humility, gratitude) to be gifts from God that we attain once we learn to grow/mature past our various life challenges that he puts in our paths. In other words, when a person who has been working twenty or thirty years to forgive someone finally reaches a point of forgiveness, they then can appreciate that forgiveness on a deeper level as a long-awaited gift from God. Sometimes reaching that point of being able to receive that gift involves necessary tremendous pain and suffering and getting to a point of spiritual maturity and true humility. Uh yeah, I know....its hard, almost impossible.

Please be patient with me as talking about this with you is not easy for me.

Originally Posted by SonoranBob

At least you didn't try to suggest it was all her fault because of some secret sin or character flaw or lack of love for God or something

That is another kind of Christian that I cannot stand. I'm definitely not that.

[SonoranBob]

Originally Posted by MrNotebook

Instead of making her death into a gift in and of itself (which is not what I'm implying), I would say at least extract whatever spiritual lessons may come of it.

I have, and will continue to do so. I know how to make the best of a bad job, as the British like to say. But it's still a bad job.

I am certainly more empathetic and compassionate as well as clueful about responding to those who experience grief and loss, than I was, for instance. I understand soul-crushing futility very well now. There isn't much to fear anymore in life once you have experienced the unthinkable.

Was this worth what she suffered? Meh. I'll take a pass on that one. I don't see how, but I acknowledge that it's not impossible. In the Great Scheme of Things, anyway.

But the best thing to come out of this, I think, is that I have shed a great many counterproductive illusions that have ill served me. I think I deal in reality better. And I think I am better able to separate people from their egos and hot buttons and love them anyway. At the end, when her mind started to go, that was the final lesson.

If these be gifts, then I suppose I've received them. They are certainly not gifts I would bestow upon anyone else, including my worst enemies.

Originally Posted by MrNotebook

Please be patient with me as talking about this with you is not easy for me.

Don't worry, nothing was taken personally, or meant personally. I was being hard on pop Christianity, you were just the unlucky conduit ;-)

Originally Posted by MrNotebook

That is another kind of Christian that I cannot stand. I'm definitely not that.

I'm glad to hear that. It's usually a judgment that's waiting in the wings. That at least is not unique to Christianity. It's a feature of the medical profession (diseases we don't yet understand = blame the victim) and new age dogma (you brought it on yourself somehow through your faulty thinking) and cults (sickness is an error of mortal mind). Maybe it's a human weakness. Sometimes it keeps our own fears at bay by trying to make sense of the senseless.

At any rate ... my best to you.

--Bob

[Rafael Perez]

Originally Posted by Angela

I've gotta say, Rafael, each time I see the title of this thread come up, it makes me laugh. "What is the DEAL!?"

isn't great, such a touchy subject, too many people take this whole life thing so seriously.

[Rafael Perez]

I have noticed that a lot of times when we go into a discussion about any type of religion it seems that Christianity will dominate in trying to supply an answer. Although I will not soley put this burden on Christianity but it is something I experience more often than not, but of course that is the reality I create for myself and it is only my perspective.

I believe that too many times Satan is used as an excuse for the inability to meet the perfection behind the expectations of the religion (Any form of Christianity will do - there are several different expectations) Satan is the reason for this and that. What if there was no Satan, would we be perfect.

Is it possible that we are already perfect and the sin or (Pecado) which translates to lie (hence satan the prince of lies) is that we have been fooling ourselves into thinking that we are born flawed. I don't understand the logic.

Everything that God created was perfect, yet his highest creation, the creation that is in his own image is flawed.

We are told that we have free will, yet God gives us rules to follow hence taking our will away and setting specific guidelines to follow.

We are told that God is vengeful and we must fear his wraith yet God is love and Jesus fill us in on the fact the love is unconditional (no expectations) but yet we believe that in some way shape or form we can anger God, as if we could hurt Gods feelings.

I'm just wondering where the logic is?

I just don't unde....

um, I just heard to two older women (my mom and her friend) talking in my kitchen about sex toys- they've had a few drinks. I think I'm going to go and throw up.