The Practice of Suffering

This should not be something we need to practice, since most of us come to it quite naturally.

The Buddha taught that life is suffering, with that suffering coming from attachment. Enlightenment is achieved by detaching from our mortal attachments.

Traditional Christians believe in redemptive suffering, the cosmic sufferings of Jesus before an angry God. Catholics practice penance, particularly abstinence from meat, on Fridays, especially during Lent, to share in Christ's sufferings. Redemptive fasting is practiced as an offering to God for all kinds of things, from personal redemption to ending abortion. Opus Dei adds self-flagellation. Shia Muslims practice this as well.

Why was animal sacrifice required in ancient times, or even human sacrifice to Baal (who is also linguistically Allah and Elohim) or to the Aztec gods. Why fast for the month of Ramadan or for Yom Kippur?

The Five Pillars of Islam and the Eight Precepts of Buddhism all seek merits. Meritorious living is the way to Paradise or to achieve Nirvana.

Luther saw no merit to Catholic self-mortification, teaching that we are saved by faith in the sufferings of Christ (leaving out the rest of the verse in Romans that states that our works are a sign of this faith). Evangelical Protestants take this to a whole new level, claiming that accepting Christ into your heart forgives all sin, past and future. Many call this cheap grace, but weekly Catholic confession, a minor penance and seeking indulgences (which Luther rebelled against) seems just as cheap.

Is faith a ticket to Heaven? Must we do works to merit salvation? Did Christ die because God demands pain for seeking pleasure or for disobedience, both personal and inherited as original sin through female sexuality from Eve?

Why must we seek pain out, when it comes to us so easily?

The answer is that we don't. Jesus did not come and suffer because God desires it but so that as God, he could experience the inescapable suffering of our humanity. He came because we suffer, not force us to.

Why practice self-mortification? Why abandon attachments? Why seek forgiveness? Why give alms or practice charity, both private and public?

Feeling guilt or demanding vengeance are both self-inflicted wounds, but to give up one, you must give up the other.

Self-mortification need not be practiced by all. The poor find adequate suffering without it, as do those who suffer from alcoholism and addiction. Those who already suffer can identify with Christ as the suffering servant without seeking additional pain.

Self-mortification is only necessary for the comfortable. Its purpose is to seek the despair common to the human condition that they have escaped. Such suffering is a way to feel the vulnerability that the poor and afflicted face daily. Luther simply missed the joke.

The Prosperity Gospel is taking the joke too far the other way. It is like Brahmanism, which sees comfort as a sign of Divine favor or past good deeds. This is going beyond a healthy enjoyment of life to seeing it as an entitlement for themselves alone. It is others who must suffer for some past sin or character flaw (or from being born the wrong color).

Pleasure is not intrinsic evil. Seeking it at the expense of others is, from feudalism to capitalism. Fasting was not originally for self mortification but for shared sacrifice. It is a natural way for a population to survive the scarcity of winter (including and especially the laborers and slaves). Abstinence from meat was to finally a way to keep fishermen solvent when other food became available.

Eco-socialism is the new common sacrifice to save the biosphere (the planet itself does quite well, with or without us). Doing without, whether it be paying carbon taxes or taking the bus, is a sign of solidarity. Equality recognizes the dignity of each person, rather than seeing good fortune as a sign of Divine favor or some imagined superiority.

Seeking self-mortification, then is a recognition of common humanity of those whose lives of those who already suffer. It is the first step in making them whole and seeing them as holy. Christ is found in those who suffer and justice is raising them out of their suffering, not just individually but systemically.

If we are saved by God, we must do God's work, even if that means paying higher taxes so that all children are provided for and welcomed into this world. No child is more entitled to basic needs than any other child due to accidents of birth. Until that happens, we all suffer a loss of our humanity.