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What Is It To Suffer

© David T. Davis

What is it to suffer? In the Christian sense, suffering is a glorious march, which must be performed throughout life in the honor of Christ. The reward for this sacrifice is a place in God's Heaven. Any individual of intelligence would know, the suffering preached to us as a necessity of life, is a false impression of God. For if Christ was the son of God, and he was placed upon this earth as the sacrificial lamb for all mankind, and his suffering was to free us all, then why do we continue to suffer? It is if the Christian is beating a dead horse.

Now some Christians may say it was because we defied God, and abandoned Christ. Yet, that too does not rationalize out. For even if our brethren Jews forswore Jesus, it would not make a compassionate God look good to recant those who did not forsake Jesus. So the Christian, who places his faith in the idea that Jesus was the Messiah, should have the perquisite from God of no suffering. Yet, all mankind suffers in one form or another.

Is our suffering a curse from God, or more to the point, a curse upon our own selves? A God of mercy, a God of compassion, a God of justice, and equality. A God of beauty, and passion, the true depth of love Himself... could also be a God that denies these wonders, simply based on man's assumption, that if he does not suffer as Jesus did he will surly burn in Hell? Could we at this point label God as rigid? The One who can create the basic structure of life (DNA) to such a specific degree, is unbending in ideology?

I have no place within my mind, and heart, to see a God of such ironhanded complacency. I can not infer that man, no matter where he may slant on such issues - small or large - in the existence of the universe, and the destinies of mankind, is designed to suffer under the Will of a God whom created Will in the first place. It does not make sense. On the contrary, the only power causing the suffering of mankind is mankind himself.

Therefore, if man follows the teachings of the Christian, Jewish, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist, and any other religious doctrine, he is by clear presence defying the Will of God. Because, the Will of God is to be free. Free of hardships, free of constraints, free of ignorance (the true sin). The opposite of all these things are found in the foundation of the church.