Overcoming the Suffering of Life1 (original) (raw)
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hurt, misery, sorrow, trouble, vexation, and a litany of other things. Essentially, Job is asking, "Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive suffering?" Suffering as we know it was birthed from the original sin of man. When God discovered the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, He laid a curse upon them: Unto the woman He said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children … And unto Adam He said, because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life … (Gen. 3:16-17, KJV). The Hebrew word used here for "sorrow" is the word ʻetseb which signifies pain, hurt, toil, sorrow, labor, and hardship. 2 The curse of Adam is that of suffering. And yet, as image bearers of God, we are not alienated from His likeness due to suffering, in fact suffering is sine qua non to a Christian's Christlikeness. However, many philosophers from a variety of backgrounds have expounded upon the purpose that suffering serves, and it would do well to have an understanding of their arguments. For C.S. Lewis, the purpose of suffering is twofold: to produce divine humility within mankind and to break men of their will in order that they may submit said will unto God. "The first answer, then, to the question why our cure should be painful, is that to render back the will which we have so long claimed for our own, is in itself, wherever and however it is done, a grievous pain." 3 He notes that for mankind to surrender one's will, one's sense of selfgovernance, is all but impossible. When people are forced to surrender their will, they do not take it lightly. He goes on to say that "to surrender a self-will inflamed and swollen with years of usurpation is a kind of death. We all remember this self-will as it was in childhood: the bitter, prolonged rage at every thwarting, the burst of passionate tears, the black, Satanic wish to kill or 2
The Mystery of Pain and How to Suffer in a Christian Way. What is pain, and why do we suffer?
The Mystery of Pain and How to Suffer in a Christian Way
We will try to address in this paper a very common thing in our lives, pain, illnesses, natural disasters etc. Although we all suffer in some measure, be it an illness of the body, or mental problems, like depression or more serious issues, suffering from a broken heart after being abandoned by someone we love, suffering the difficulties of not having money nor where to live...Pain is, and will continue to be in this age, an always present problem in our lives, or a blessing if we learn how to suffer in a Christian way according to the teachings of the Church and the Holy Fathers. We will try to answer to some of the most pressing questions regarding pain. What is pain, and why do we suffer.
Perspectives on Pain: Introduction
19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, 2012
Throughout history, pain has been understood to be a universal yet intensely personal experience. For the eighteenth-century faithful, the agonies arising from a cancerous tumour might have been interpreted as a divine gift, an opportunity to submit fully to God's will, or even to be purged of sin. For the worn out mill-worker of the nineteenth century, the pain of a mangled arm caused by malfunctioning machinery could have been understood as an unjust punishment. Today's marathon runner may view pain as an endurance test, a barrier to be pushed through and past; a necessary means to a triumphant end.
Utilitas, 2009
The traditional accounts of pain's intrinsic badness assume a false view of what pains are. Insofar as they are normatively significant, pains are not just painful sensations. A pain is a composite of a painful sensation and a set of beliefs, desires, emotions, and other mental states. A pain's intrinsic properties can include inter alia depression, anxiety, fear, desires, feelings of helplessness, and the pain's meaning. This undermines the traditional accounts of pain's intrinsic badness. Pain is intrinsically bad in two distinct and historically unnoticed ways. First, most writers hold that pain's intrinsic badness lies either in its unpleasantness or in its being disliked. Given my wider conception of pain, I believe it is both. Pain's first intrinsic evil lies in a conjunction of all the traditional candidates for its source. Pain's second intrinsic evil lies in the way it necessarily undermines the self-control necessary for intrinsic goods like autonomy.
Suffering and the Emergence of Meaning in Life
2021
Philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists pose deep and difficult questions about pain and suffering and try to provide answers to these questions: What is pain? Is pain in the brain? Is there meaning in suffering? What makes pain unpleasant? This article provides a rich and wide-ranging exploration of these questions and offers important new insights into the philosophy of pain. To complement the author's reflection on pain, suffering and the emergence of meaning in life, he has gathered information about the said topic from various sources that could enrich the article and have reflected some concepts that help us understand the topic better.