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Re: Suffering;  Was the Defect of Christianity and Society

wild6@ix.netcom.com (william ceglar) wrote:

>Christopher Beattie <chrisb@Tansoft.com> wrote:

>>Raymond Karczewski wrote:
>>> 
>>> Re: The Defect of Christianity and Society
>>> > Fr. John W. Morris responds;
>>> 
>>> >Your problem is that you try to understand with your mind mysteries
>>> > that no human can understand. Suffering is a mystery that we cannot
>>> > understand. Read the Book of Job. It tells us this. We are mortal sinful
>>> > humans, we cannot understand God or the ways of God, because God is
>>> >immortal and sinless.
>>> 
>>>  Fr. John +
>>> 
>>>     John,
>>> 
>>>    Spoken like a true pharisee.  There is much to life that our mortal
>>> minds are unable to grasp, but suffering is certainly not one of them.
>>> Suffering is no  mystery to an open, discriminative mind, able to
>>> function in a balanced and untethered manner. Suffering is the outcome
>>> which manifests in the lives of all who find themselves living in a
>>> state of constant contradiction produced by the confusion of filtering
>>> their perceptions of life through a fragmented, dualistic, conditioned
>>> mind. When you answer a rather simple question by couching it in
>>> mysticism, as you have above, you are performing your priestly
>>> schtick, aren't you?  You misdirect an enquiring mind, sending it into
>>> the morass of superstition and belief.  In doing so you, and others of
>>> your profession, create for yourselves a codependent relationship with
>>> others which may then be exploitable.                                                                          
>>                                                                        
>>Spoken like a true long winded intellectual. No, Fr. John is not trying
>>to use any form of cuircular logic to get people to be hooked on him.
>>He is just looking at the whole picture, while you are looking at only
>>a small potion of the picture.
>> 
>>First of all, there are many forms of suffering.  Unfortunately,
>>many people like to concentrate on the suffering caused by people
>>on other people.  Causing suffering is a bad thing, no doubt about
>>it, and I am sure that Fr. John will agree with me there.  
>> 
>>But not all suffering come directly from Man.  Cancer causes suffering,
>>AIDS causes suffering, hurricanes, volcanoes, and other natural
>>events also can cause suffering.  To find a cure from cancer is a good
>>thing, to find a menas to keep natural events from causing suffering
>>is a good thing.  We should try to help others from suffering and
>>to help them when they are suffering.
>> 
>>No one likes to suffer. (OK, a few might, but they are the exception.)
>>People suffer because they have to.  But an interesting thing happens
>>in suffering, something that is not intitutively obvious to even a
>>most studious observer.
>> 
>>You have, I assume heard of the old expression, "The school of hard
>>knocks."  Mankind has, throughout the ages, learned that true learning
>>can and must be done the hard way.  Through suffering can come wisdom.
>>No it doesn't automatically come, it is how we handle the suffering 
>>that we are given.  Very few people have lived easy lives of wealth
>>and comfort and are remembered, unless you count the ones who are
>>remembered for the suffering they may have caused.
>> 
>>This is the mystery that Fr. John talks about.  Suffering is bad,
>>yet through suffering can come wisdom, and through wisdom can come
>>good.  It is hard to understand how something good can come from
>>something bad, how something many people want can be found in 
>>something few people want to endure.
>> 
>>For the Christian, the mystery is more confusing to the intellect.
>>For Jesus lived in an age of suffering. (I don't there ever was
>>an age of not suffering.) He helped those who suffered, he told
>>his followers to do the same.  Yet he also said that he was the 
>>way, and then in turned took on suffering for the sake of us all.
                                  
>>There are many causes to suffering.  There is no mystery in the
>>causes of suffering.  Suffering in the third person is never
>>mysterious.  It is suffering in the first person, when you are
>>not able to change or remove your suffering, when you are in
>>essence enslaved to suffering, that has been the question
>>every society has faced with.  And from suffering comes wisdom.
>>Why does suffering occur is not the same as how does suffering
>>occur.  The two are vastly different questions.  Indeed "Why"
>>may be the hardest question the human mind has ever come up with.

Bill,
    You have seriously misread me.  It is the contradiction of one who
is trapped when  living his/her life while filtering their perceptions
through their  socially conditioned, dualistic, intellectual mind that
is the cause of suffering in the world, nothing else. There is no
suffering beyond the limited mind of intellectualism.  But you, Bill,
have yet to grasp that.

    You posit that I am an intellectual.  You could not be further off
the mark.  I use the intellect to communicate with words and deal with
the technical aspects of life, as do all who live on this plane of
existence.  But beyond that there is no tethering of oneself to the
intellect.  The mind stops its chattering and clarity IS. 

   Suffering occurs when one reflects upon events which have occurred
in the past.  It is the ressurrection of thought, through remembrance,
that continues the emotionally charged dualistic reaction to the past
(dead) event.  Surely it can be seen that it is how one reacts to his
experiences which causes suffering or naught to one's consciousness.
The wise man can let go, the fool cannot while loudly proclaiming
his/her suffering. 

   In  times of natural events like earthquakes, floods, hurricanes,
etc., one either survives them  or not.  It is the quality of
consciousness in the state of reaction which dictates suffering, not
the actual events.

   Only in the case of man's immersion in his own conflicted mind, via
illusory societal rules which perpetuate in one's psyche a constant
state of coercion and reaction,  does man truly suffer.  

  I did not include natural events in the post so as not to be accused
of long-windedness.  Didn't work, did it?   The fact has always been
that people are going to believe what they want to believe, until they
are ready to see the truth for themselves.  Until then, they will
suffer.