Our age increasingly urges, and even promises, a world where such suffering need not occur.
In the Sermon on the Mount, he told the crowd: "Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you." In time, He willingly endured the suffering of betrayal by his closest friends, a show trial engineered by religious and political elites, and his own execution.
Rather, the Christian faith teaches that when it comes to suffering, it is less about "If" than "When." It sees suffering as both instructive and as a means to higher goods, like courage.
The contributions of the monastic tradition, its monks engaging in severe penances alongside their labors, cannot be understood apart from a Christian concept of suffering.
Suffering formed, rather than undermined, their identities as Americans.
Only a culture that sees the good in suffering can properly orient its eyes to perceive how it is overcome, both here and forever.
As the Apostle Paul writes, "We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us."
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/america-loses-her-thick-skin/
In the Sermon on the Mount, he told the crowd: "Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you." In time, He willingly endured the suffering of betrayal by his closest friends, a show trial engineered by religious and political elites, and his own execution.
Rather, the Christian faith teaches that when it comes to suffering, it is less about "If" than "When." It sees suffering as both instructive and as a means to higher goods, like courage.
The contributions of the monastic tradition, its monks engaging in severe penances alongside their labors, cannot be understood apart from a Christian concept of suffering.
Suffering formed, rather than undermined, their identities as Americans.
Only a culture that sees the good in suffering can properly orient its eyes to perceive how it is overcome, both here and forever.
As the Apostle Paul writes, "We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us."
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/america-loses-her-thick-skin/
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