Bruce Charlton's Notions

Insofar as it has any positive program (and in fact this is a double-negative, not a positive) the alleviation of suffering could be regarded as the focus of leftism - arising at its early roots in abolition, pacifism, socialism, feminism etc. 

My Glasgow friend, the writer Frank Kuppner, used to intone the phrase "Suffering? I'll show you suffering!" whenever some leftist, feminist journalist (invariably upper class, public school, Oxbridge educated; then straight into a prestigious and high profile newspaper job) embarked on yet-another account of the abuses, adversity and prejudices of her hellish life...

For modern people the problem of suffering in the world; and the socio-political intent to eliminate or reduce suffering (or, at least, the suffering of particular groups such as workers, women, or blacks), has come to seem The Primary problem of Life - the primary objective of life. 

Yet, suffering cannot coherently be made the centre of a moral system. And indeed 'suffering' itself is an incoherent abstraction of billions (at least) of individual responses to billions of different - labile, fluctuating and often utterly specific - situations. 

As so often, there is a colossal but unacknowledged and denied assumption at work here - that all these billions of adverse feelings to billions of specific instances and circumstances - can, should and ought to be considered together; and dealt-with by one or a few generalized socio-political solutions of the type that constitute leftist politics and ideology. 

And, even give that all these assumptions were true and reflected reality; the resulting ethic of diminishing suffering is one that has many consequences which would be considered self-contradictory if clearly apprehended and comprehended. 

Because when reducing the suffering in this-life becomes the priority, it trumps life-itself; as with the mainstream acceptance and advocacy of abortion; where the priority is to reduce the suffering of the mother and or the child - even at the cost of killing the child. 

It is quite normal to express the ethic that it is better not to be born, than to be born to suffer; not to live, than to live in (presumed) great suffering - and this also justifies the grossly sub-replacement reproductive rates that characterize the entire developed world.   

It is quite normal to envisage a massive (but suffering-free!) reduction in global human population ("giga-death") as a mechanism for reducing global suffering due to some imputed cause or another; or even to save the 'suffering planet'. 

There is no great mystery to all this. Suffering (like pain, fear, humiliation or any other of its subtypes) is a consequence of many possible causes of many types; and furthermore is not a fixed quantitative result but varies according to attitude, explanation and treatments. 

A person can be - often is - made to suffer by evoking resentment against real or imagined persecution for supposedly class, race or sex (etc.) reasons. And then more people can be made to suffer 'vicariously' by empathic identification with (alleged, often fictional) supposed-instances of such suffering! 

The left has developed an 'economy' of suffering. Suffering can be imputed to some groups while others are blamed for that suffering; suffering can even be imputed to the planet, biosphere, ecosystem or environment. 

After a couple of centuries of expanding and permeating leftism, and especially since the explicit emergence of a leftist world government last year; Suffering is now Big Business.

Indeed, suffering is now the biggest of all world enterprises! With multiple and linked agencies and bureaucracies engaged in the identification/ creation/'raising awareness', validation, and allocation of suffering on one side...While on the other side is a vast and ramifying state-media-charitable-corporate apparatus for (allegedly) preventing and alleviating suffering. 

Leftism has become a global machine for creating, amplifying, and spreading suffering; even as it claims to be alleviating - or, at its transhumanist extreme actually abolishing - suffering. 

Modern Leftism is - insofar as it has any positive content - a meta-ideology of suffering. 

We can regard this 'meta-ideology of suffering' as an almost inevitable consequence of abolishing God, the spiritual and the after-life. 

If this mortal life really is our only experience - then its rationale can only be related to our current state of experience. 

The ideology of suffering has therefore been made public and socially-manipulative by the bridging concept of altruism; so that ethical persons are supposed-to-be concerned primarily to alleviate the sufferings of as many others as possible. (i.e. the philosophical system termed Utilitarianism.) 

But when the transcendental and spiritual have been wholly removed from public discourse and life (ignored, excluded, denied, forgotten); now we can observe an accelerating centripetal tendency towards short-termist certainty rather than long-term strategy; and a focus on the experienced-self rather than the inferred and alleged suffering of others. 

Therefore the terminus of the leftist ideology of altruistic is selfish negative impulsive hedonism. 

And the only way to be sure of avoiding suffering is to die (either immediately or as soon as suffering is too great) - die painlessly and quickly. 

Hence my prediction of a (imminent) mass epidemic of fear-motivated, resentful-spirited and despairing suicide. 

And this leads to damnation - not because it is suicide as such; but because such attempted self-annihilation was motivated by the sins of fear, resentment and despair; which amount to rejection or  denial of the reality and Goodness of our loving God the creator. 

*

Since we are creatures of this world, we are motivated by a desire to attain pleasure and to relieve suffering; yet since we are transcendentally-orientated creatures this desire cannot be primary.

*

So long as we perceive suffering in the world - even if that suffering is just insufficient pleasure or mere boredom - then we will be motivated to end it.

Indeed, we are motivated to end suffering everywhere and for everyone for all time - simply as a matter of security.

(Because so long as suffering happens, it could happen to us - and if there is no more suffering, then we need not fear it.)

*

But suppose that there was no such motivation to end suffering - either because all suffering has been ended, or because all suffering as been ended so far as we know.

What then?

*

Do we imagine that when all suffering has been ended then we can shift our aspiration to higher things?

Do we really think that is what would happen?

*

Is this, in fact, what we observe?

Are the societies that suffer least, those which aspire highest?

Are those individuals who are most free from suffering, also those individuals who have their sights set on the highest ideals?

*

 Do we, in a word, conceive high ideals as luxury goods?

*

(And what is our society's idea of higher things, anyway? Well, obviously we don't mean religious ideals, because as a society we don't believe in God, nor even the immortal soul. And spirituality without religion is just psychotherapy - so just another way of seeking pleasure; not higher at all. Like the lifestyle arts - restaurants, clothes, holidays... merely fashions, therefore the opposite of 'high'. Ummm - The Arts?  Shakespeare, Beethoven, Rembrandt - that kind of thing... oh, I forgot, we are beyond all that now; shock, disgust, subversion - that's what we like, isn't it. Not exactly 'high'. Philosophy and Science?... well, this is just getting embarrassing, we've just got rid of these and replaced geniuses with committees of sensible bureaucrats. How about having unrestrained and passionate political discussions in bars and cafes, is that it? Exploring new forms of sexuality and morality - are these the higher things? Somehow it doesn't seem right... Simmering self-loathing and slow cultural suicide? -Now you're talking! Those are the sort of high ideals that we love.)

*

Or could it be that high ideals are, in some way or another, a product of suffering - or, if not exactly suffering, of a state of discontent?

Um - yes, that is right.

Isn't it?

It is our suffering that prompts us to look beyond the mundane.

(Prompts us - but does not force us.)

*

Is suffering then good?

Obviously not.

As worldly creatures we are, and must be, motivated to escape suffering in some sense.

But suffering is - if not good - surely necessary in this world.

And - surely - a primary devotion to the elimination of suffering (i.e. the new religion, the new 'Christianity' indeed) is therefore not merely utopian or futile - but is actually evil.

*

Repeat: although suffering is obviously not good; a primary devotion to the elimination of suffering is actually evil.

Because suffering is a prompt to look higher, to look beyond.

*

I am saying that it is - not that it ought to be: suffering just is that which prompts us to transcendence; suffering that ultimately derives from the perceived insufficiency of the world.

We just are creatures who perceive the world as insufficient.

And the only way we can get rid of this perception is to kill it.

*

We cannot make the world sufficient, we can only kill the perception that the world is insufficient.

But we can do that: for most of the people, for most of the time.

And that is, of course, precisely what we are doing.

*

Indeed, although we are, and must be, and should not try not to be, creatures of this world; a primary devotion directed at anything of this world (including the elimination of suffering) is evil.

Our primary devotion must be The Good - the transcendental Good, a something not of this world.

*

Or else we (and everyone else) might as well be dead, or never live in the first place, as the surest means of avoiding suffering...

... just as we 'put down' a suffering animal; whom we suppose not to have a soul, and whose role is to serve humans and/ or be happy - and if the animal can no longer serve humans nor be happy and is suffering, then it might as well be dead

- so we kill it.

And anything else we suppose not to have a soul - from humane motives - to eliminate suffering.

*

Here is the hard bit.

The real sin here is not in the killing, whatever its scale, but in the reason for killing.

A soul-less society of soul-less individuals (that's how we perceive ourselves), killing soul-less entities as and when... necessary; because it is rational to kill soul-less entities when they suffer, or will suffer, or may cause suffering...

Note the paradox.

*

It is not the Christian view; but it is very common among both secular/ atheist/ materialists and those of an "Eastern religion"/ oneness/ perennial philosophy type - to regard the sufferings of this mortal life and earthly-world as The Main Issue of Life. 

This is often true implicitly, even when it not stated and affirmed. 

If the suffering is the Main Issue, then its alleviation and elimination are the primary concern. But there is a contradiction between believing that quantitative alleviation of suffering is worthwhile - or whether partial alleviation is meaningless/ actually futile; and only the qualitative elimination of suffering is a valid goal. 

Mainstream politics and its majority-adherents can never seem able to decide whether what they regard as quantitative improvement in (for instance) racist attitudes is worth having; or whether this makes no essential difference, and after some 70 years of active social engineering things are just as bad as ever. 

The tone flips back and forth between self-congratulation at the huge improvements (as the left sees it) since the middle 1960s; and assertions of here-and-now massive, vicious, endemic, 'systemic' racism that permeates and distorts every social institution in The West (and which it ought to be the number one global priority to address immediately). 

I regard this deep incoherence as a modern, secular version of a deep confusion and incoherence that permeates the metaphysical-religious stance which focuses on suffering. Whenever Christianity has focused on this-world conditions, it enters an identical contradiction. 

It is due to the assumption of an objective and subjective world: once this is assumed as reality then there can be no coherent answer to the problem of suffering. 

One reason is because suffering is subjective, yet all action taken to alleviate or eliminate suffering is objective. We live in a world that regards thinking as private, having no effect outside the brain and body; yet we purport to dedicate the world to alleviation of the subjective state of suffering - when thinking (including suffering) is something about which outsiders can know nothing 'objectively'.

Another reason is that we partly believe that suffering is quantitative, such that being imprisoned under harsh condition is worse suffering than somebody saying something mean to us. Yet at other times 'micro-aggressions' (i.e. somebody saying something mean, that hurts another person's feelings - allegedly) is treated as an absolute offence for which no punishment can be too severe (loss of employment, social vilification, violence...). 

Modern Man affects to be focused on suffering as The Evil that must be addressed; but cannot decide whether suffering is quantitative, such that mass genocide is worse than a single death, and enslavement worse than suffering subjective micro-aggressions - and such sufferings can be diminished over time; and this is "progress"...

Or; whether suffering is qualitative and absolute - such that all suffering is equal, and there can be (and has been) no "progress" in the elimination of suffering in this world or in individual persons; and only the 100% elimination of all forms of suffering is really worthwhile. 

Furthermore, anyone who thinks deeply and consecutively on the subject will realize that much suffering is innate to the human condition of this mortal life: disease cannot be eliminated, neither can degeneration, neither can death - and the sufferings caused by the death (etc) of others. And there are many natural disasters and constraints. 

And - of course - much suffering is a consequence of humans living together in society such that we impinge-upon each other's gratifications in a multitude of ways; yet for individuals to live utterly without society is not just impossible, but also a nightmare of suffering.

My conclusion is that to focus on suffering on suffering as The Problem of this mortal life and the world is not just wrong but incoherent; and will lead to permanent frustration and meaningless contradictions. 

If we do - at present - regard suffering as the primary problem of existence; then we are in error. 

And we therefore need to examine and change our fundamental assumptions. 

Note added: It may not be at all easy to change our assumptions regarding suffering. For modern people in the conditions in-which we find-ourselves; it is often quite spontaneous to focus-upon - and be overwhelmed-by - the vast scale of suffering in life: of human, plants, animals, and even for the planet. This applies to self-identified Christians, as to everybody else. What I am saying is that this focus is incoherent, hence futile, consequently counter-productive. We ought not to accept the suffering-focus; but should fight against it - even though this likely will lead to subjective guilt - at least initially; and almost certainly accusations of being 'uncaring'.  

Although I harp-on about the dangers of double-negative theology for Christians; nonetheless the positive achievement of Jesus Christ (and his 'message') would not have much traction unless people felt that there was some-thing basically, fundamentally, ultimately wrong with The World - some thing which Jesus (at least potentially) set right.  

And what I mean here is at the level of our personal feelings of what is wrong: What is it (what kind of a thing) that we personally feel is wrong about our life and the world?

(What problem to which Jesus offers a solution?)

There are probably any number of things that might in theory be thus regarded; but I think there are just two apparently common but distinct wrong-feelings that seem to dominate people. 

Probably the commonest (in the Western civilization at any rate) is that suffering is the main problem, the main thing wrong with the world. So widespread and powerful is this idea that it hardly requires explaining - but anyway...

Any or all kinds of suffering might be meant: pain, misery, disablement, fear, despair, humiliation -- different people mostly experience, are most susceptible to, or focus on; different kinds of suffering. 

And the wrongness of suffering my be my suffering, the suffering of particular loved others - whether human, animal, or something else; it may be the totality of suffering in the world; or it may be the wrongness of suffering of any Beings anywhere, ever (i.e. that there ought never to be any suffering).

In sum: this is the idea that the suffering - whether its existence, its prevalence, or its severity - is what is basically wrong with this world. 

This seems to be a hugely powerful and widespread conviction - it is apparently the basis of several religions, and what they claim to cure. Suffering as the main problem to be addressed is the basis of almost all public moral discourse nowadays; the rationale of preventing, reducing, or stopping various kinds-of-suffering (or putative suffering) is the basis of a great deal of all mainstream policy and political action.  

But there is another idea of basic wrongness - less often expressed, but just as real; and that is that the main thing wrong with this world is that nothing lasts.   

Anything that we value will not last; everything will die, or in some other way be destroyed. 

...No matter how large, strong, how long it has existed - it will crumble, it will come to an end. 

All that we value the most - our love, those we love the most, whatever we most love doing, our achievements - will change, will end. All that is most virtuous or beautiful will end. 

And Be Forgotten Utterly.

We ourselves will die, everybody will die; all the animals and plants will die; our living planet, and the mineral planet, the sun and solar system - all will change, crumble, end.  

This aspect of the nature of our world, I often term 'entropy'; and entropy in this sense, is a rival to suffering as the major candidate for what is wrong with the world. 

The "weight of entropy" may be the tragedy of life.  

Yet suffering and entropy as the main problem of life, are each very different in their nature and consequences. 

For example, a selfish person might feel there is nothing wrong with the world at times when he is personally completely-happy (i.e. when he personally is not suffering); and someone might also assume that if suffering could be abolished from the world - then there would be essentially nothing wrong with it. 

But someone who believed that entropy was the main problem would perhaps be most aware of the wrongness of the world at exactly those times when he was most happy, and did not suffer. Because he would realize that this state could not last. 

(Have we not felt this ourselves, in the first full flush of falling in love? Perfect happiness... all-too-soon undercut by the fear and conviction that it Will Not Last?)

Indeed, the more 'successful' was a Man's life - the more joyous and fulfilled, the more loving and creative -- the more strongly would the fact of entropy weigh upon him; because he would be ever-aware that all this would, for sure, be lost.  

One who regards entropy as the main problem in this life, this world; cannot envisage any this-worldly way in which the situation could be cured - because this world is 'ruled' by entropy. 

No conceivable political program or psychological treatment would make any difference. The better that things became - the more tragic the sense that none of it would last...

This circles back to Jesus Christ; because Jesus did not claim to eliminate or even diminish suffering in this world...

Or, even if you think Jesus did claim this, then the past 2000 years have (surely?) been a massive refutation that He could deliver it! 

Consequently; those who focus the most on suffering as that which is basically wrong with the world, are often those most hostile to Jesus and Christianity. 

But Jesus did claim to offer a way of escape from entropy: this is what Jesus meant by resurrection, eternal life, and heaven. 

I have little doubt that for most people in the modern world, evil is defined in terms of inflicting suffering upon other people. 

Modern attitudes to abortion and euthanasia suggest that the infliction of suffering is regarded as worse than killing*; and even the grossest harms of the transagenda - mutilation, poisoning, physical suffering of children - are 'justified' in terms of supposedly reducing mental suffering. 

Christians - or at least, strongly self-identified Christians - have often felt the same way; despite whatever contrary lip-service they pay to Christ's Kingdom being "Not of this world". 

As well as personal hopes, there has been a vast and complexly-abstract theology purporting to explain how this-world is to be "redeemed", re-made in ways that include the elimination of all suffering - or indeed assertions that the resurrection of Jesus Christ has actually already improved this world by ways including the reduction of suffering.

(i.e. The common Christian belief that there has been less suffering in the world because of Jesus than there would have been without Jesus; or that there has been less suffering in Christian societies than in non-Christian.)  

The belief that suffering is the worst evil is certainly sincere, heartfelt - and indeed seems often to overwhelm people with an urgent craving for the elimination (or at least substantial reduction) of suffering in this world; or to overwhelm them with despair that this is no so, and that suffering continues.

So far as I can tell, the only answer to such a conviction, to this state of being overwhelmed by the horror of suffering that afflicts so many people; is to stay with the conviction and take it further, until you come out of the other side. 

The only convincing answer is to imagine - as fully, realistically, and honestly as possible - what kind of a world there would be, or would Not be, if the elimination of suffering really were the primary value. 

Because Not Being is, indeed, the destination of a morality that intends to eliminate suffering in this world, as this world is constituted - which is, a world in which entropy rules, and death will always eventually prevail.  

How it is that the imperative of Not Suffering interacts with our actual mortal world to produce an ethic of Not Being, is something that each person needs to work-through for himself; because humans have an infinite capacity for resisting arguments they do not want to be true. 

Nonetheless; such is the insight that awaits anyone who allows himself to step out-from that state of being overwhelmed, and either frenzied or paralyzed, by the pervasiveness of suffering. 

I think that only then can we properly understand what Jesus Christ actually offered Mankind; which was not directed at this world, but at another. 

Jesus is indeed reported as saying as-much, many times, in the Gospels; but that other-worldliness, that fulfilment in Heaven and only in Heaven, that Second Creation, needs to become the basis of our Christian understanding.

*This is true, even though the amount of evil is commonly measured in terms of dead bodies: e.g. the evil of Hitler or Lenin-Stalin is asserted or compared primarily in terms of the numbers of people they deliberately exterminated. Political power, nowadays, is mainly rooted in the authority to define whose suffering matters the most; because this suffering (and its purported alleviation) is the basis of most of the major leftist agendas such as socialism, feminism, prohomosexualism, the transagenda, and antiracism. 

*
Christians call Jesus Christ "our saviour", or simply The Saviour - but it is not clear to secular modern people what we mean by this; indeed, I believe that the meaning (or emphasis) has changed over the centuries, because Christ did not save us from just one bad fate; but from many, many bad things - and different people at different times feel themselves in need of different savings: so that what I understand Christ as saving-me-from may not be your understanding.

*

At the time of his ministry and for many centuries, Christ was understood as saving us from death; and by 'death' people meant that the soul would usually endure in a (literally) nightmarish underworld (Sheol, Hades etc) where we would persist forever as demented, gibbering, desolate ghosts.

In effect, death meant death of 'the self' - death of consciousness and the will - but not an end to existence.

*

Christ was also saving us from sin; and it seems clear that through most of history Men felt this to be necessary: felt that we absolutely needed to be saved from our sins; and that if we were not saved from our sins, then we would be tormented by them forever. 

*

But modern Western Man does not feel himself in need of saving from death - because he regards death as extinction and therefore the end of suffering (not death as the doorway to endless suffering, as in the past).

And modern Man does not feel he needs to be saved from sin, because he regards 'sin' as an arbitrary cultural category - and Modern Man has redefined many sins as virtues, virtues as sins.

So in effect, Modern Man 'saves himself' from sin by promoting, enforcing, and believing, legislation and propaganda to abolish any sin he cannot stop or does not wish to stop; and making new sins from whatever threatens the continuation of this process.

*

But Modern Man still needs to be saved - he needs to be saved from meaninglessness, purposelessness, existential isolation, alienation, and nihilism (the sense that all truth, beauty and virtue are 'relative'; that values are 'subjective', that nothing is really-real).

Modern Man needs to be saved from the retrospective pall cast by the meaning-destroying pseudo-reality of death-as-extinction; and the nothingness of a world where profundity is repeatedly dissolved and remade, and where Man is become a mere conduit for ever-changing psychological manipulations.

*

Another thing Man always has needed saving-from is suffering; the suffering of this world.

And Christ saves us from this suffering in two ways, at two levels. In the first place he offers a significant, albeit partial, alleviation of suffering in this world - mainly by putting suffering into a perspective of eternal hope.

An analogy would be the suffering of childbirth. Childbirth can be agony: in a purely physical sense childbirth may be as painful as torture - but the suffering is put in the perspective of a parent participating in the birth of a child and this makes a very big difference. Indeed, the perspective utterly transforms the meaning of pain, and drastically reduces the suffering.

And secondly, the long-term effect of suffering is likewise transformed by Christ - because there is the prospect of complete healing from all the ill effects of suffering at the resurrection.

So all earthly sufferings are re-framed by Christ as temporary.

*

Christ is still our Saviour, as before; but now Christ is perhaps primarily (upfront) most-often our saviour from the void.

Christ is now, mostly, our saviour from the denied but pervasive existential terror that nothing really matters.

*

With salvation it is not a matter of either/ or; but a matter of all-this-and-more.

Because death, sin, suffering and alienation are all facets of the same evil fate - therefore Christ is The Saviour.

However, maybe when we state this great truth to non-Christians, we need to consider what they personally most need saving-from.

*

*

Hedonism is the mainstream modern morality.

This is the idea that the focus of socio-political policy ought to be increasing happiness and reducing suffering.

*

But, while this sounds hard-nosed and practical (especially in comparison with alternative foci of public policy), hedonism as a basis for policy has serious, indeed insoluble, problems. Here are a few:

*

1. Uncertainty

Uncertainty about whether and to what extent a person or group is happy or suffering.

After all, these are subjective experiences, individuals lack a basis for comparison and self-reports are of hedonic state are prone to be shaped to enhance a person's hedonic state: when hedonism is the primary ethic, it is rational for people to lie about their hedonic state in order to enhance their hedonic state.

This means that happiness and suffering require to be operationalized in an objective and material sense - in terms of things like wealth, leisure time, and sex being equivalent to happy; and poverty, war, disease being equivalent to suffering etc.

*

2. Trade-offs

Trade-offs between people or groups whose happiness is increased by a policy, and those whose suffering is increased.

This means that happiness and suffering require to be operationalized in a material and measurable sense in terms of favoured and disfavoured people or groups; those of whom the alleviation of their suffering is a matter of priority; and those of whom the increase of their suffering is a matter of indifference, pay-back or just-deserts.

*

3. Quantification.

Happiness and suffering are not just uncertain and subject to trade-offs but they are qualitative.

In a sense, the maximum of happiness or suffering is that of which an individual is capable; yet policy is not about specific individuals but about 'the public'. And happiness and suffering do not cancel-out or compensate.

This means that happiness and suffering require to be operationalized quantitatively, in terms of numerical measurements of things like wealth, leisure, poverty, war, disease, gender, race, sexual activity and orientation.

*

At the end of the process, happiness and suffering are no longer subjective experiences 'owned' by actual human beings; but instead abstract statistical data: owned by those who have the resources and propaganda apparatus to create and disseminate this 'information'.

Public policy then becomes the creation and manipulation of objective, quantitative information pertaining to hedonic variables.

*

Creativity means bringing original (i.e. originating is us) thinking from one's own self to problems -- not, therefore, merely mix-and-matching among what (we suppose) others to have said on the problem. 

And the big problem for Christians, in the past couple of centuries, has been the problem of suffering. 

It is a real eye-opener to realize just how Big a problem suffering has been. I've been re-reading Robert Frost's poems and biographies lately, and he was yet-another Christian of recent engagement (Philip K Dick was another) who expended decades of serious effort (trying-out this and that scheme or suggestion) in trying to understand the problem of suffering in this mortal life on earth; and without ever attaining a satisfactory or satisfying solution. Or even one an answer that was clear and comprehensible, and avoided confusion and contradiction. 

This strikes me as a pretty damning failure - at least for Christianity as it has been conceptualized whether traditionally, or in more 'modern' way -- and it applies too, to 'Old Testament'-dominated Christians (like Frost) - who end-up with a God who barely resembles that described and exemplified by Jesus Christ; but instead an incomprehensible tyrant who (in practice) inverts the truth that God is Love, to the opposite of "Love is God" (that is, the un-Christian assertion that whatever 'God' does is Love by definition - and without regard to Man's understanding and experiences of Love). 

When intelligent and creative people grapple for many years with a problem they fail to solve and yet - by its nature - is one that needs to be solved by every Christian*; this, for me, is prima facie evidence that they are clinging to at least one false fundamental-assumption that is blocking what would otherwise be a straightforward solution.  

(*I'd have thought it was obvious that every Christian needs to be able to understand why a wholly-Good God who is the creator; permits suffering, including (apparent) extreme suffering and early deaths innocents such as young children, in this world. This is not trivial, and it needs a solution that is clear and satisfying - or else, loss of faith in such a God is logical, perhaps entailed.) 

My answer is that these creative and intelligent people have applied their intelligence but not their creativity to the problem! 

In other words, they have accepted the problem as defined by their predecessors, instead of evaluating the formulation of the problem. 

A wrongly-formulated problem is insoluble, no matter what intelligence and resources are applied to it; while a well-formulated problem is always soluble when that solution is necessary to salvation (because that's the way that a Good creator God will naturally set-up his universe).

I have been through this trajectory myself. When I became a Christian I was determined that the truth was already known (revealed) and stated, by some or other church - or at least some individual within a church; and my job was to find it, understand it, believe it, and obey it. 

I therefore made a pretty determined effort to switch-off my creativity when it came to Christianity: my effort was to discern for sure, maybe to select (albeit as little as possible); but not to change anything, and certainly not to add anything! 

It was only after I found that crucial problems were not soluble, never had been solved satisfactorily and clearly, and that no amount of selection and recombination - at least, not when ruled by established principles) would work; that I was compelled to get creative about Christianity. 

(Either that or knowingly to accept swirlingly-abstract fudges, or known pseudo-answers). 

As I have often described, I discovered a couple or more false assumptions that trapped Christianity, and prevented a solution to the problem of suffering. 

One of the first and worst was the very common assumption that God was omnipotent and omniscient so that creation was entirely a product of God's positive will; and another assumption was that Jesus Christ's teaching and efforts were directed at "making a better world" - at improving this mortal life - perhaps even perfecting this mortal life at some point. 

Once I realized that God instead was (no matter how vastly powerful in creation) engaged in a creative war of Good against evil in reality; and that Jesus's primary achievement was to make-possible eternal resurrected life; did I realize that the problem of  suffering was a wrongly-formulated question.

Jesus did not promise a better mortal world - nor a world of less suffering: certainly not a mortal world of perfection! 

Nor did he wish to set up a church as an essential intermediary between individual Men and the divine; and make his followers obey a church primarily - instead, he sent the Holy Ghost for our essential and always-wise guidance. 

Jesus did not promise even an improvement of this mortal life. Instead; Jesus's promises of happiness were directed at post-mortal life, and not at flaw-less-perfection, but at our becoming Sons and Daughters of God - divine creative-Beings like Jesus himself. 

God did not create suffering, which has always-been wherever there was free-agency (until Jesus enabled Heaven). God's creation is directed against primordial suffering and conflict between Beings; but God did not promise to remove suffering, which is impossible in this mortal world. Suffering is only overcome (via Jesus's teaching and work) in the post-mortal, resurrected life-everlasting, world of Heaven. 

Suffering in this mortal world is therefore inevitable, because of the nature of this world and the Beings who inhabit it; and therefore God uses this world to prepare us for the resurrected world of Heaven which those who desire it may choose - and where there is positive love, joy, creativity, energy, satisfaction (instead of the mere negation of suffering). 

Thus we arrive at some simple and comprehensible understandings of these vital matters - but only by applying our creativity, as well as our intelligence. 

In a post last month I speculated on why demons did not attack everybody, all of the time - all-out. 

And one conclusion (or suggestion) was that it hurts demons when they attacked and are repulsed; therefore they greatly prefer indirect and deniable assaults; and will only go all-out when confident of victory. 

In other words: demons try to avoid being undeniably-defeated; because this causes them intense and personal suffering. 

On further reflection - this seems to have the ring of truth; since for demons suffering is an absolute thing. When a demon suffers, there is nothing-else in his existence: suffering is total. 

 

A demon lives for his own gratification - therefore when he suffers there is no 'long-term' benefit, nothing to be learned from the experience: so that demonic suffering is absolute in a way that is alien to a Christian.

Of course, demonic powers seek pleasure - the pleasures of sin. Yet these pleasure are temporary and partial, compared with absolute nature of suffering and the desire to avoid it. 

Presumably, when tempting a soul to become a demon; the pleasures of gratifying his favourite sins are emphasized. But evil feeds upon itself, and it seems likely that after a while committed demons become more-and-more negatively-motivated. 

The demon then lives mainly to avoid suffering, much more than to experience pleasure - because demonic suffering is so much more complete and overwhelming than the (always transitory and less-then-fully-satisfying) gratifications of pleasure.

This waxing of negative-motivation as evil develops, can be seen in the demonically-inspired Leftist movement - which began as utopian - claiming to build Heaven-on-earth; but has now become (with the birdemic-peck and climate-warmism) almost wholly negative and avoidant. 

Modern Leftism is nearly-all about opposing and avoiding some (supposed) suffering; it is hardly-at-all about offering any positive satisfaction or pleasure.

Or the sexual revolution - which began with promises of untrammeled and non-responsible promiscuity with anybody you 'fancied'. But has ended in the inverted evils of the transagenda (with its mutilation, poisoning and official-grooming of children); this being 'justified' by the need to avoid and reduce human suffering!    

In sum: demons have no courage; because they have no reason to be courageous. 

They may be forced to do things they would rather not do by the threat of greater suffering. But even in their boldness they are suffering-avoidant: fearing the certain retribution of their demonic masters more than the threat of what Men may do to them.

(This progressive domination of demonic evil by negative avoidance of personal pain is neatly illustrated in the course of CS Lewis's Screwtape Letters and Screwtape Proposes a Toast.) 

Yet Men may do much to hurt demons. 

And what can be done to hurt Them can be inferred as the opposite of how demons themselves behave, and the opposite of the behaviours they encourage and enforce upon those Men who have given themselves to the service of evil: Men such as the institutional leadership class of The West.

The demons suffer, immediately and strongly, when their temptations are decisively rejected; when their assaults are thrown-back. Therefore, timidity makes them creep forward towards wickedness - one deniable-increment at a time; trying to avoid their covert evil-motivation being noticed, discerned, exposed - then rejected. 

The demonic hatred of clarity and honesty is 'visceral' - clarity and honesty caused demons actual pain. 

Therefore demons delight to cloud every issue with complexity and 'nuance'; they delight in paradox and ambiguity; a state of fearful perplexity, confusion and dread - is their ideal. 

Demonic horror arises when their activities are seen clearly, and when even their baby-steps towards evil are immediately called and exposed. When their devious policies are rapidly recognized, repulsed, mocked - this causes actual and extreme, over-whelming, suffering. 

When elaborately deceptive demonic plans are instantly seen-through and cast into oblivion... this is more than merely frustrating - it is a cause of total agony for the Beings involved. 

So, we may begin to see what we should do, and what we should avoid, in our dealings. 

It is wise to avoid getting enmeshed in the demonic agenda in any way; demons love to debate, endlessly, on their own ground.

Do not compromise or be 'strategic' with evil: what They hate most, what is most effective - is also the least 'sophisticated' response. 

Keep it simple, keep it lucid, be concise; do Not try to meet evil half-way...

What is probably best, what likely causes most rapid and extreme harm to Them; is a childishly-direct response to what is childishly-obvious to the Christian discerning spirit. 

As so often; we are called-upon to choose a 'return' to child-like simplicity - but consciously, deliberately, as mature adults. 

As so often; the highest knowledge is a rediscovery of 'the obvious'. 

If you are really serious in wanting to understand why a wholly-loving God permits suffering in this mortal world (and are not merely using the questions rhetorically, as an excuse for disbelieving God and thereby enabling some sin which you greatly desire to do); then the first step is obviously to recognize that God's shaping of this mortal world is aimed at the eternal benefit of those who accept the offer of Jesus Christa and choose to become resurrected into Heaven. 

This world is 'for' the encouragement of Men to accept this offer of salvation into Heaven. Life is for the 'education' of men - so that we may learn what will benefit us eternally. 

There is no single cause for suffering - and suffering may be wholly motivated by the spite and sadism of beings (human, demonic) who are committed to evil. 

But suffering is also sometimes some kind of a 'lesson' for someone; an example of God's 'tough love' in trying to teach those who have refused to learn from more gentle lessons. 

But this cannot be known by trying to discover The Cause Of Suffering in some large (often abstract) group or classification of people (such as are beloved by the Left). 

God loves us as individual and unique persons - therefore suffering that derives from God's tough love (when it happens) will be directed at the specific circumstances of a specific person. 

To infer this cause of suffering requires specific knowledge of that person, and it probably requires that we have a genuine personal care for him; because only when we want the best for him is it likely that we can understand the motivations of a God who also wants the best for him - but to an even higher degree and across a longer timescale. 

Most of the people in this world do not seem to want eternal life in Heaven - even if they believed Heaven to be true, they would not want it. And any person is able to make that decision to reject God's will. But God desires that such rejection be a conscious and informed choice. 

A specific person may need to suffer the consequences of his choice to sustain the side against God - i.e. the side of evil; because all choices have consequences - and he may learn from these consequences. 

I seem to see a great deal of suffering nowadays which comes from the choice Not to recognize evil; the choice to go-along-with - and support - the agenda of evil. 

I seem to see many individual people who have made these choices, and who have personally suffered great misery, physical suffering, even death as a consequence... 

And yet I see that many of these people continue Not to recognize the evil motivations that have led to their suffering.

This shows how difficult it is to teach some (most?) people; and how resistant people can be to learning the lessons which life provides. 

I seem to see God providing many people with life lessons - some sweet and delightful, others tough and harsh... and yet people simply Will Not Learn from them; but will explain-away the obvious lessons by more and more convoluted and implausible scenarios that serve to sustain their earlier evil choices. 

For example - someone refuses to recognize the obvious (i.e. incoherent, changing) lies of an obvious liar (incoherent explanations, rapidly changing explanations)... That person chooses to believe the obvious lies of an obvious liar. 

That person then suffers very personally from his choice of evil - the lies lead to harming people he loves, the consequences harm himself. 

Obedience to evil always has outcomes - and a refusal to learn from these outcomes, a refusal to recognize evil, leads to more evil in the 'cover-up' and opens the possibility of greater evils to come (and the failure to recognize and learn from them).     

But there are those who do wake-up to evil when the consequences become so severe or numerous as to be undeniable. 

It can't be predicted exactly what will work for an individual - it may seem trivial, or it may seem like another consequence in a sequence; yet it is the straw that breaks the camel's back. 

So, as the consequences of evil multiply - more people do awaken and recognize the evil. ...Not so may as I would hope, and some of those I most hope-for are among the unawakened. 

And some people are astonishingly resistant to learning (some, apparently, resistant unto death). 

Yet I think I can see what God is doing in some cases. I can sometimes understand - very specifically - why God allows these kinds of suffering. 

 

Different Christians have different (valid) answers to the 'problem of pain' or human suffering, or evil - and each sincere and knowledgeable answer captures or highlights something of the truth; but not all of it - since that is the nature of answers.

(After all, how could anybody capture the whole truth in just one short sentence? The idea is absurd. And having written or uttered a sentence, how would be be sure that everybody understood it correctly?)


And there does not need to be one single cause of evil and suffering in the world.

There is the free will of men; the purposive Good-destructive evil of Satan and his minions (which themselves need explaining); the limitations - some logical and practical, other perhaps fundamental - on God's power and influence; the indifference (or hostility) of the 'non-living' world (e.g. natural disasters). And so on.

But at the bottom of it all is the fact, that ought to be blindingly obvious to anyone who understands enough about Christianity to become one, that nobody who knew anything about Christianity ever claimed that Christianity was about producing perfect or even optimal happiness in this mortal life on earth.


Surely it is crystal clear? (even to an Archbishop) that Christianity is about our happiness in the eternity after death and resurrection?

(Our happiness is this world is indeed affected by Christianity - very much so. But the degree to which perfect happiness is created - measured, as it will be, by existant, labile, partly corrupt evaluations - is not a measure of the validity of Christianity; nor is the failure of Christian belief to create perfect earthly happiness a refutation of its validity!)

This world and our mortal life is extremely important - and it is not merely 'a means to an end' - but surely the voices of the New Testament are unamimous and unambiguous that the Christian importance of mortal life is not about God making mortal earthly life maximally happy and eliminating pain and suffering on condition of belief...


Where (on earth) did people get that idea? Not from the Bible! That idea just is not a part of the message.


The provenance of the made-up notion that Christainity, if it were valid, would eliminate pain and suffering from the world is surely demonic, not divine.

This idea of suffering being a threat to the validity of Christianity is a pseudo-problem, falsely framed.

Which is why, having accepted this frame, the question cannot ever satisfactorily be disposed-of - 'doubts' induced by the sufferings of mortal life lead, not to answers, but to to more-doubts - and to the erosion of faith.

Which is not an accident.


We do indeed often seek an explanation of pain and suffering - and we may or may not find it (the reason is likely being personal to the seeker and specific to the cause - typically, general reasons will not satisfy us)  - however our failure to understand the reason or meaning or causes for specific sufferings has nothing to do with the truth of Christianity (it is 'orthogonal') - this just is not a reason for 'doubts'.


The valid domain of consideration that may (sometimes, for some people) be induced by the existence of extreme pain and suffering and evil in this mortal life, is an enquiry concerning the relationship between God's Goodness and His Power.

Christians have been told unambiguously that God is wholly Good; also that he is the creator and the most powerful of 'god's. To understand evil and suffering some people need a satisfying general explanation of how these divine attributes might fit-together.

And any explanation must start either with God's Goodness, or with his power. Which divine attribute you start-with (and this is a metaphysical assumption that probably should be based on interpretation of divine revelation) determines the range of possible answers you will end-up-with.


But none of this is to do with the validity of Christianity supposedly being challenged by the existence of suffering and evil. Our ancestors knew this - and their direct experience of suffering was, on average, far greater than our own.

However, our own experience of evil is greater than theirs. They knew, with considerable precision, what was Good. Yet we live in a world of moral inversion in the official arena of public discourse, a world of evil routinely and by high status persons propagandized as Good; and of Goodness depicted as evil - all this by communications (including everything from the arts and sciences to advertizing and public relations) whose reach and influence is (via the mass media) now almost all-pervading and universal.

And THAT fact of living inside an actively-evil world, is the reason why modern people have been duped into supposing it is valid to state that the sufferings of mortal life constitute as lethal challenge to Christianity.

The debate is itself a product of modern moral inversion.  



Note: Thans to commenter Joel whose questioning provoked this very full response: I hope it satsifies him!

Pleasure and joy, pain and suffering - these are what link us to the world. On the one hand they should not be ignored, while on the other hand they should be treated as means not ends.

If we live without taking any notice of pleasure and suffering, if we extinguish them or cut ourselves off from them - then we cut-off our soul from life, we do not experience life as real - life becomes a theoretical exercise.

We imprison our real self and leave the false self to deal with the world.


But if we regard pleasure and suffering as the purpose of life, accept passively that we should do what gives pleasure and avoid that which gives pain - if we are drawn-through life passively by our psychological responses - if our goal becomes to act strategically to amplify pleasures and avoid suffering... then we surrender agency and become a thing which is caused; merely part of the clockwork.

By living hedonistically, maximizing that which yields happiness and minimizing sources of misery - optimizing our position on the joy-pain axis... we have identified-with our false self.

And if we succeed, we become our false self - we become a bundle of instincts and conditioned responses.


What needs to be done is recognize that pleasure and pain are senses; and senses are a means not an end.

Pleasure-suffering navigates us through life as does sight or hearing. Our purpose in life is neither to devote ourselves to sensory gratification, nor to ignore the senses, but to use the senses. The same applies with pleasure-suffering - we must use these feelings.

We need to:

1. Notice when we experience pleasure or misery
2. Reflect on the source of these feelings
3.Interpret this as evidence of what our real self wants or needs

So, when it comes to our emotional state and the world, we need to Be Aware, Contemplate, then Interpret.


Say I eat ice cream and experience pleasure. To say: I eat ice cream and experience pleasure, therefore I need to arrange my life to eat more ice cream - is error.

To say: I eat ice cream and experience pleasure, but this means nothing - is another error.

To say: my task is to find-out what the pleasure of eating ice cream means - is wisdom.

(So long as meaning is understood in the largest terms - and meaning is not merely 'explained-away' as contingency.)


To say that any source of pleasure and suffering - such as ice cream - is unreal and irrelevant is an error - because this is our connection with life. But to wallow in memories of past ice creams and indulge in fantasies of future ice creams is also error.

Wisdom is to meditate and contemplate upon the phenomena; to consider why ice cream yields happiness, what kind of ice cream, what conditions for eating it - we should introspect concerning what goes through the mind, connotations, memories triggered, people and places associated, what hopes and dreams there are.

We need to know how ice cream makes us feel good and in what way 'good'.


The eye and ear help us navigate the mundane world, but pleasure and suffering help us navigate the higher world, the spiritual world. They are our spiritual senses, essential, indispensable evaluations - despite that the evidence they provide is partial and biased, and would mislead us unless that evidence was interpreted.

Our task is to recognize the information and interpret it.

To yield to pleasure  and suffering would be like a moth flying into a flame - but to reject and ignore pleasure and pain would be to walk through life in a blindfold.

Analgesia - pain-relief, especially in the broadest sense of relief of suffering - was for most of history the primary interventional benefit of the physician (as contrasted with the surgeon) in medicine.

Among the primary benefits of medicine, perhaps prognosis is the greatest benefit - that is, the ability to predict the future; because prognosis entails diagnosis and an understanding of the natural history (natural progression) of disease.

Without knowledge of the likely natural history of a patient, then the physician would have no idea whether to do anything, and what to do.

However, through most of history, physicians were probably unable to influence the outcome of disease - at least in most instances they would diagnose, make a prognosis then try to keep the patient comfortable as events unfolded.

Keeping the patient comfortable. Relief of suffering. In other words: analgesia.

Much of medicine remains essentially analgesic (in this broad sense), even now.

But relief of actual pain is the most vital analgesic function: because at a certain level of severity and duration, pain trumps everything else.

So, perhaps the most precious of all medical interventions are those which relieve pain - not just the general pain-killers (of which the opiates are the most powerful) but the effective treatments of specific forms of pain - as when radiotherapy treats the pain of cancer, or when GTN treats the pain of angina, or steroids prevent relentless itching from eczema and so on.

The *irony* of modern medicine is that while it has unprecedented knowledge of analgesia, of the relief of pain and suffering - these are (in general) available only via prescription.

So, someone who is suffering pain and seeks relief, and effective analgesia is indeed in principle available, must *first* convince a physician of the necessity to provide them with relief.

If a physician does not believe the pain, or does not care about the pain, or has some other agenda - then the patient must continue to suffer. They do not have direct access to pain relief - only indirect access via the permission of a physician.

Pain and suffering are subjective, and it is much easier to bear another person's pain and suffering than it is actually to bear pain and suffering oneself.

Yet we have in place a system which means that everyone who suffers pain must first convince a professional before they can obtain relief from that pain.

This situation was bearable so long as there was a choice of independent physicians. If one physician denied analgesia for pain, perhaps another would agree?

The inestimable benefits of analgesia have been professionalized, and that means they have nowadays been bureaucratized since professionals now operate within increasingly rigid, pervasive and intrusive bureaucracies.

So the inestimable benefits of analgesia are *now* available to those in pain only if they fulfill whatever bureaucratic requisites happen to be in place.

If the bureaucracy chooses (for whatever reason - saving money, punishing the 'undeserving', whatever) that a person does not fulfill the requirements for receiving analgesia, then they will not get pain relief.

That is the situation, at the present moment.

Why do we tolerate this situation? Why do we not demand direct access to analgesia? Why do we risk being denied analgesia by managerial diktat?

Because, bureaucracy does not even need to acknowledge pain - it can legislate pain and suffering out of existence. It creates guidelines which define what counts as significant pain, what or who gets relief, and what or who gets left to suffer.

It is so easy to deny or to bear *other people's* pain and suffering, to advise patience, to devise long-drawn out consultations, evaluations and procedures.

Bearing pain ourselves is another matter altogether. Pain of one's own is an altogether more *urgent* business. But by the time we find ourselves in that situation, it is too late for wrangling over prescriptions, guidelines, and procedures.

We see the beautiful head of compassionate love, which is neither young nor old, looking down with sorrow and affection upon the smoke and grime of a big city and endeavouring to enfold it all within him and gather it up, like a hen gathers up her chickens beneath her wing. Although we would often save people from a miserable and wretched environment, we discover it is not easy, neither do they always want to be saved from it anyway. In a deeper way we know we must exercise great patience in our compassion without losing the heart of its attitudes; for the object of our compassion is often a most delicate teaching situation which our Creator is using in the classroom of His university. The ones we feel compassion for may never be able to gather the content of that painful situation any other way.
Note: People often do not want to be saved-from that which they need to be saved-from - and people can only be saved with their own consent, when they are willing.

It seems that, ultimately, evil does always lead to suffering - self-inflicted suffering.

Those who do not want to be saved, who fight being saved; who reject the Gift of the Saviour... they will typically suffer. In a sense they should suffer, because suffering is their only hope.

We, as individual people, should not make them suffer - they do that for themselves - but we should not unthinkingly or always strive actively to alleviate self-imposed suffering - that may well be to harm the other person: harm them soon and forever.

Alleviation of suffering is not an imperative - and we should never allow ourselves to be persuaded that it is. There are worse things than suffering and indeed suffering is, in practice, often a necessity for Good. More to the point, every parent knows that short-term alleviation of all suffering in all circumstances leads to terrible outcomes.

We should always aim to love, pray and allow ourselves empathically to experience compassion for those whose sufferings are self-inflicted and who resist being saved. Yet we must also recognise that we are in this mortal life to learn; yet learning is very difficult, often prolonged, often requiring repetition, often resisted and rejected; and we know that for some people to learn requires suffering.

We must exercise great patience in our compassion without losing the heart of its attitudes.

*
My Dear Child,

I know that one of the hardest things for you to understand about your mortal life on Earth is the sheer amount and severity of suffering which some people experience.

You will know that I am a God of Love, and it is not my intention for my children to suffer as much as some of you do; and indeed - as any loving earthly parent will know - my own sufferings on your behalf are extreme.


Suffering is not a matter to be disposed of by a single, simple explanation - because there are different reasons for different instances of suffering - and some degrees and instances of suffering are wholesome overall and in the long run.

Also, it may, perhaps, be helpful for you to know that all earthly sufferings can, and will, be healed by me after you move on to the next step - if you allow me to do this, because you must of course consent to my help (sadly, not all of you do allow this).

But one cause of suffering which seems particularly hard for you modern Men to understand is that caused by 'natural disasters' such as earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes and tidal waves. These seem to be arbitrary and random, and at least some of these happenings may seem impossible honestly to explain as part of any divine plan.

Yet, you reason; if they are not part of my plan, then why do they happen at all; why did I not make the world so that things like this simply could not happen? 

And a further worrying question sometimes arises in your mind; which is that since natural disasters happen now, on earth, will they continue to happen throughout the eternities, even in Heaven? And if not, then why must they continue to happen now?

The answer is one that challenges your habitual understanding of the nature of the universe. You are probably assuming that the forces of natural disaster are non-living, and work by simple 'mechanical' causality; therefore natural disasters are predictable and therefore (in principle) preventable.

However, in fact everything in the universe is alive - to a greater (like you) or lesser (like a rock) degree. And although most living things lack anything which you would recognise or could detect as consciousness, nevertheless they do have a kind of consciousness and do have some innate powers of self-determination.

In other words, there is no bright line dividing the living from the non-living- rather livingness is a matter of degree and type, a continuum which varies greatly but which extends all the way down.

So, life on earth in reality includes all those things which you usually (and in most instances quite reasonably) regard as non-living - rocks, water, metal, oil, glass, plastic - yes, even man-made things are to some extent alive.

Therefore, the causes of 'natural' suffering are the same in kind as the causes of suffering inflicted by human choices. Natural things may choose to be either benevolent (good) or malign (evil) in much the same way as people; and the way we treat natural things may also be good or bad.

Thus the milieu or atmosphere of the earth contains influences both benign and malign; every good choice and act adds to the good atmosphere - and vice versa.

In a nutshell, natural disasters are the product of bad, wicked, evil choices by entities in the same fashion as are wars and torture - and these are unpredictable due to the unimaginable complexity of a mostly-unknown and sometimes un-influence-able multiplicity of interacting choices and purposes and responses.

Therefore, in Heaven there will not be natural disasters - but on the other hand there will always be natural disasters in those parts of the universe where there is not Heaven - those parts where at least some of the entities have chosen to reject Love as the primary principle of existence.

In other words, harmony comes from Love, and some suffering will always be necessary and constructive - as part of learning and creative-evolving. But the futile or harmful kinds of suffering are eliminated by Love - provided that we remember that Love is a principle which binds all and everything, including those things we habitually tend to regard as 'not alive'.

From your loving Father in Heaven

**

See also:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/letter-from-your-heavenly-father-part.html

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/letter-from-your-heavenly-father-part_13.html

The problem of pain/ suffering in the world is often regarded, by modern Western people, as a decisive argument against the reality of the loving Christian God*. 

...On the lines of - "a loving God would not allow such pain and suffering as we see in the world" - typically followed by an historic (or current) instance of (what is assumed to be) extreme and widspread suffering.

It is worth noting that this was not seen as a problem for the Christians (including converts) of the past - who had a great deal more of pain and suffering to contend with. 

Nonetheless, the important thing is to answer this for modern Western people. 

(The problem of pain is, in fact, properly, a sub-division of the problem of the existence of evil in a world ruled by a loving God; but modern secular people do not have any understanding of evil - and in practice tend to reduce evil to 'whatever causes suffering'.)

My own perspective on the problem of pain begins with my baseline metaphysical assumptions concerning the nature of reality. These are not shared by most Christians; but they may be of help to those who are not convinced by more mainstream orthodox Christian explanations - such as CS Lewis's book The Problem of Pain.

To begin with I regard God to be my loving Father, and the creator of this reality; but I do not regard him as omnipotent. Indeed, I think that it is the habit of thinking in abstractions such as 'omnipotence' as a root error that leads to fallacies such as 'the problem of pain'. 

I regard my life, my continuing life, as being for the purpose of spiritual development (theosis): that is my life is about having experiences from which I am intended to learn. And pain is one of the experiences of my life. 

I think it is absolutely vital to regard this matter from an individual and specific point of view. 

If we instead asked what is the reason for pain and suffering in an abstract manner - which includes many possible kinds of pain, and includes all people (past, present and future) who are asserted to have suffered pain (either or both extremely or in large numbers) - then we have simply created an unanswerable question. 

The question is so badly formed as to have - in principle - no possible answer. 

When we do not properly know what we are asking, we would not know whether or not we had answered it. 

We would not even know whether - or to what extent - the abstract persons actually did suffer pain - and we have no solid way of finding-out. Nor is there any way of measuring or adding-up pain.  

Another of my assumptions is that God is my loving parent, and as such I am one of a world of his children; each of whom is loved as an individual, and each of whom will have different experiences and things they need to learn from living. 

I cannot possibly know why 'other people' - whether as individuals or as categories - experienced what seems to be pain or suffering. 

Because the truth of the matter is that there are going to be literally billions of true-explanations for why pain and suffering happened on (?trillions) of occasions. 

(Yet people who ask such questions seem to expect a snappy answer - in a few sentences!)

The proper question is: What about my own pain? And perhaps also the pain of that handful of people who I love and about whom I have great knowledge? 

Can I know why I suffer, and why those I love suffer?

Yes, I believe this can be known. It can be discovered in the ways that individual Christians may learn about God and his hopes and plans; by means of reflection and prayer.  

This may not be easy - since typically we are confused, distracted, and our motivations are often muddled or base. But insofar as we are able to clarify and purify our seeking of an answer - we can receive one. 

This answer will be a direct-communication from God understood by a single act of comprehension; which means that it will not depend on language - which means that it will not be fully or un-distortedly state-able in words. 

Even less will that wordless understanding be communicable to other people. 

None of which matters. 

What we need is a personal understanding of specific instances of pain and suffering in ourselves and other specific beloved persons. If we receive such knowledge directly, and understanding it as such - our question has been answered. 

And that is the answer to 'the problem of pain' - when the question has been properly understood and conceptualized. 

*I have frequent occasion to reflect on this matter since I suffer from frequent and prolonged episodes of that purest of severe pain disorders: migraine. I call migraine 'pure' pain because the disease is (pretty much) 'just' pain, and can be extremely intense and last up to a few days; and the conditions may persist for many decades. The pain in migraine is not perceptibly 'functional' unlike most causes of pain. It doesn't seem to signify anything other than itself. Migraine therefore seems singularly 'pointless', almost like torture for its own sake - or the sake of being cruel. Hence migraine might (as much as almost anything) be expected to lead to inferences of the malevolence of some supernatural being.  

Since, at least in the UK, all the signs are that we are in for very severe (and all-but universal - ultra-rich are exempt, of course) economic hardship and suffering. 

The plans have been implemented, the pieces are in place, the trend is already-established, and further destructive measures are being introduced on a weekly basis. 

So; will people (en masse) be awakened and enlightened by our coming physical deprivation and suffering? 

The answer is a firm No. 

If people (as they currently are) were capable of being awakened and enlightened by adversity, this would have happened in 2020; or, at least, the 2020 events would have been understood for what they really were, and explicitly repented. 

But, although (especially in England) there has been an unexpected (and welcome!) roll-back of the 2020 measures; and although this indicates the English are not such a beaten people as I suspected, and less dumb and sheep-like than the Scots, Welsh, Canadians, Australians or New Zealenaders - this push against measures has merely been based on mass passive disobedience; and rooted in negative, not positive, criticism (e.g. annoyance at inconvenience, rather than on principle). 

Any significant dawn of understanding has been among a few individuals; and not happened explicitly or widely. 

My feeling is that the people of the UK have absolutely No Idea what is about to happen to them: i.e. that we are (almost all) going to become very significantly impoverished - that we will lose a large proportion (tens of percent) of our income and then wealth - from inflation and much higher taxes and (no doubt) other covert extractions. 

(This at least - such rapid and severe changes will have unpredictable systemic consequences, that may induce societal collapse - nobody really knows.)

We face apparently-inevitable considerable suffering; but people will not be enlightened by this suffering. 

At present people 'cannot believe' what is coming because they are not yet suffering enough. Yet when 'enough' suffering comes (shortages of food, warmth, light, fuel, basic services) they will attribute it to false causes. 

Apparently the UK 'leader' (the Prime Minister) explicitly attributes the coming hardships primarily to the leader of the Fire Nation, and secondarily to Brexit -- despite that the true causes were all self-imposed, and deliberately self-imposed, with solid foreknowledge of consequences. (And despite that Brexit never happened!)

It is not enough for him even to pretend that well-intended errors led to unanticipated consequences; but nowadays an actual inversion of the truth is the preferred explanation - no doubt because 'opposites-world' reasoning better explains why the proposed 'remedial' measures instead actually increase economic damage. 

But plenty of people seem to believe this incoherent lying! Enough to make it worth saying. 

People will attribute their suffering to false causes and they will therefore fail to learn from it. 

They will blame false causes, because their basic metaphysical assumptions are false; and wrong assumptions make it impossible to learn from experience. 

Metaphysics comes first! When we have wrong assumptions, we cannot discern the relevant facts, nor can we reason correctly from them. 

It is our basic assumptions that determine what we perceive, and what we perceive as important; and - having chosen what is important from the endless possibilities - it is our metaphysics that determines how we can put these together to make an explanation, and infer from this what to do.

Since Modern Man assumes that we all live in a purposeless and meaningless, accidental universe; and that we humans are accidental products of purposeless evolution; and that our lives begin with random genetic combinations and we are annihilated at death - then we cannot ultimately learn anything at all concerning the true meaning and purpose of our lives. 

Modern Man has pre-decided that he is a passive consequence of blind processes, and can only 'know' the current state of his gratification (his happiness or suffering) - which affective state is manipulated by any of those with power who consciously posses the agency and purpose that Modern Man denies in himself. 

In the country of the nihilists, the purposive Man is king. 

So what is the purpose of our 'kings'? 

I am asking not what the kings say is their purpose; but what truly is their purpose... 

For any Christian who is prepared to think for himself; to ask that question is to know the answer: that the purpose of our kings is malign. 

Our 'kings' want to harm us: physically, but most-of-all spiritually.  

Until Modern Man can recover a basis conviction of purpose, hence meaning; Men will remain as they are: puppets, cattle, and prey; and will remain unable to learn from any possible kind of experience.  

To live always in bliss is a common enough ideal; yet it entails the removal of past and future (adverse past memories, feared possible futures) such that only the present is experienced and real. 

We may have experienced such bliss, briefly; as when it is said that eternity can be found in the moment - and some want it permanently. 

Yet to want permanent bliss is to want not-to-be; because the present moment does not exist: as a time-slice - with nothing before or after - it is infinitely small. 

To have (to experience, to know-of) neither past nor future is not-to-be.  

To want to escape suffering - wholly and forever - entails losing all awareness of every-thing. 

This would be to exist in the present moment without desire and without attachment - which means without sense of self. 

To escape suffering therefore requires not-to-be a distinct-being (or, at least, not to be aware of oneself as a being). One must become subjectively unaware that one exists. 

Not to suffer at-all or ever, is a state indistinguishable from complete and permanent annihilation. 

If this sounds like a reductio ad absurdum, reflect that it is very common - almost normal - to feel thus. 

It is perhaps only a kind of uncertainty about what will happen afterwards (a residual fear that death might not be annihilation), plus cowardice about the physical painfulness (suffering) of actually-doing-it; that stops many modern people from killing themselves...

Which is why so many of them clamour for the 'right' painlessly to be murdered (i.e. 'euthanasia') on demand. 

A rejoinder might be that what most people really want is neither complete nor permanent; but simply greater and more sustained happiness, and an end to severe suffering. This even sounds-like common sense...

But these are not an answer that has satisfied; and we know this because so many people already live that answer, and have done for many decades in the West. 

Many or most modern people already have experienced historically-unprecedented gratification of happiness and elimination of physical suffering; yet they are not satisfied by such quantitative improvements.

Indeed, more than in many times and places of the past (insofar as such things can be compared) modern people have been distinctive for their escalating fear, resentment and despair. They have in fact - whatever the theory - focused on the incompleteness of their bliss; and the unbearability of their residual suffering. 

Hence the apparently widespread (albeit often implicit - since modern Man usually refuses to think consciously and consecutively about fundamental matters) desire for total happiness and the absence of suffering; as the only proper, un-controversially Good goals of life. 

All of which goes to show that ideals which are normal and widespread, common-sensical and regarded as ethically-vital; can nonetheless be incoherent nonsense. 

 

*

I sense that Christian churches are so permeated with worldliness that they now see the human condition in a *primarily* worldly frame.

For example in the case of intercessionary prayer. It seems normal, almost universal, to pray for those who are suffering - bodily - from illness, poverty, natural disasters and war.

And in the case of specific, known, local people, this is surely right (although our threshold for suffering is very low by historical standards - especially in terms of poverty).

*

But the amount of attention paid by churches to mass suffering seems, while clearly not wrong, to be strategically counter productive - in a secular society it assimilates the church to secular life.

It seems that our guided prayers ought to be very clearly distinct from what the mass media happens to be featuring as 'good cause of the week'.

*

The church ought not to be striving to be 'topical and relevant', it ought to be striving in the opposite direction; and insofar as any reference is made to mass suffering it ought, surely, to be concerned with the souls of those who suffer, and not with the socio-political alleviation of their physical suffering as such?

If suffering is inevitable, and cannot usually be alleviated; surely public Christian prayer should ask for spiritual resources to endure suffering, and to use suffering to advance spiritually?

* 

This is an extremely important matter - at least for modern people. I mean, questions about why 'people' suffer so much - the demand for explanations as to why some other-person, or group, have suffered - the demand that this be explained in terms of God's goodness and power...

Failure to provide 'adequate' answers to this demand (and, for reasons I will explain, all answers are inadequate) is generally regarded as a sufficient reason (or, at least, an acceptable excuse) for abandoning Christianity (and then - typically - embracing a favourite, usually sexual, sin).



Each man's life is unique - the life trajectory is unique - because each Man's soul was different from the beginning, and to this different original constitution are added differences in experience, and differences in what has been learned.

So each person needs different things from his experience of mortal life. We chose our mortal lives and were placed in a specific situation and our life is divinely shaped - so that our needs for learning experiences are met.

However, it is up-to each-of-us to learn from the experiences. If we don't they may be repeated, and may be made starker and harsher - but in the end, we may chose not to learn (It happens. A lot.)


Mortal life is about supplying these specific needs. Mortal life is about learning; it is Not about providing the happiest experience, nor the least suffering. Mortal life is mostly about providing what we personally - and each is different - most need for the eternity of post-mortal resurrected life.

But these needs depend on the unique contours and destiny of each soul. We have distinct pasts, and we are not being prepared for identical futures - instead each person is being encourages to make the most of his own special attributes.

In Heaven there are no professions; each niche is unique. Or rather, each unique person develops an unique role in the world of creation. Each person is irreplaceable. If he chooses Heaven he brings something nobody else could; if he rejects Heaven then it leaves a gap that never can be filled.

So, when we suffer in our own lives; we can potentially know the meaning of this suffering - we can know this directly because we know our-selves and God will answer our questions (if the question is answerable, and if we actually ask it of God).


The proper question has the general form: "What does this particular experience mean in the context of my eternal life?" The answer will have the general form of explaining what it is that we need to learn from that experience.  

We can know this, but no other. But we cannot know why others suffer. There is no general answer to why somebody or some group suffers. There are as many answers as there are specific people, and specific instances; and we do not know enough to ask the right questions; and even if we did, it is none of our business - it is a matter between God and that other person; because the suffering is in context of his life, not ours.

Mortal life is a very serious business - otherwise it would not happen at all. The necessary experience of a particular mortal life may come very early in life (after all, most people have died in the womb or around birth); or it may come at the last moment (perhaps after several previous failures to learn from earlier experiences, or perhaps because that 'imminent death' context was exactly what we needed to learn-from).


None of the above can be proved, as a generalisation, by evidence. Because the argument is that the necessary evidence is not available to us.

But we can know about our-selves, and that direct knowledge can tell us about the nature, power and personal love of God.

And that is the answer.


Note added: To put matters in reverse: If we do not understand the reason for our own suffering - then we cannot understand the reason for another person's suffering. This applies both for suffering in general, and for specific sufferings; it applies for ourselves as individuals, and for the groups of which we are members. If we really want to understand the meaning and purpose of suffering; we must start at home.