Destiny and misfortune

[lemondiesel]

I understand the question has been asked many of times. Why are some born to suffer while others are allowed to benefit and prosper? Let’s say everyone has a divine destiny, how does suffering fit into that? If there is some deity or supernatural force that gives us purpose, how does He subject individuals to such torment? The idea of reincarnation from some form of a past life, whether it is physical or spiritual, seems to be the only explanation for why people must suffer. An ‘all just’ god would not give these people a purpose to suffer for the benefit of someone else. So we must place individual’s sufferings into the category of misfortune. Being born to misfortune also implies that we are born to fit a role, with no divine purpose. This misfortune is entirely based on mankind’s interaction with the known world. People are born into unfortunate situations as a result individualism, not communitarianism.

This individualism is based on two concepts that every person has as natural rights. The first right is that we have the right to our names and the image for which that name represents. The second is the ability to perform good/evil actions, which develops into the image that resembles us. In a broad sense, many live their lives hoping to establish their own unique name, but forget the concept of communitarianism. They forget the power of influence they have in the world, and how it can shape others. They forget concepts as simple as helping people for the benefit of the community as a whole. If they personally do not receive anything noticeable in return, it is seen as pointless to help; when in fact, helping anyone benefits the whole.

Example: you are walking down the street and pass a homeless individual. He begs you for your sweater, or any sort of clothing, because nights are cold and he has no proper way of keeping in heat. You shrug him off, thinking he is an outcast from society who refused to make something for himself. He offers you nothing in return. Yet later, when you are sitting around your tv, you see a news segment that says a homeless man brutally beat a man for his jacket. Why would a man do such a thing? The jacket to you seems replaceable, whereas for the homeless man, has become a basic survival necessity.

So then you are tormented with one thought. “What if I had just given the man my sweater?” Would I have saved a life? Even when you do not receive anything in return, the overall community means and includes you. In other words, if “I” help “you,” in return I will have helped “us” both.

Although this turned more into a rant than a question, I still find my mind like a baked potato. Was it destiny (god’s plan and purpose) for the homeless person to show you this revelation? Or by out casting this man from society, we put an innocent man’s life in jeopardy because of a man’s need for survival.

To add, this was supposed to be focused more on why people in Africa suffer and are born into lives that only lead to more suffering and most likely a painful death? Were they somehow jackdonkeys in the past, and through reincarnation have been made to suffer? Or are they born with the same rights, but because there is already a system established of how humans live they cannot pursue their own futures? In a different sense, society has shaped how individuals can succeed or fall, they can work in the system or become anarchist. Yet some are never given that choice, they are born to suffer as a result of the already established way of life. So is that considered a divine purpose? Are they just playing their roles as people who need to suffer in order for others to succeed? Or can we in fact change the way life is, where everyone is given the same equal choices?

 

[VicTorDominican]

One way of looking at the problem (usually called “The Problem of Evil” since it comes up all the time) is to postulate that suffering is relative. For example, if there’s a God, then why did he allow Mackenzie to suffer when her father bought her a red car instead of a blue car for her birthday? (see youtube.com/watch?v=FnSGrrWMjQg) Now would you consider Mackenzie’s predicament to be suffering? I mean look at her, she’s crying and all. How could God allow that?

Another way is to postulate that suffering is our fault. Your homeless man in your example, let’s say he became homeless because he burned his house down to get back at his wife for, I don’t know, cheating on him or something, and she left him and went back to her parents, or whatever. So being homeless is 100% his fault. Does that change the nature of suffering when we bring it on ourselves? Or should God constantly be saving us from ourselves in spite of our dedicating ourselves to self-destruction?

Or again, what about a baby born addicted to crack? Sure it’s not the baby’s “fault”, it’s the mother’s “fault”, but does that mean there is no God just because when we go around hurting other people, other people end up getting hurt?

Or again, lots of Christians say that all this suffering (including, and especially, death itself) is a reasonable consequence of Adam’s sin where God gave him the choice to obey or disobey God concerning one tiny little matter, and it really was a tiny little matter, it’s not like he was entrapped or had a huge temptation forced on him. But Adam was told that the consequence would be suffering and mortality and everything that goes along with that, for him and his descendants. So we can all blame Adam for being a sort of crack-mother of the human race.

A third way is to say that suffering has a meaning and a value that yes, we can understand perfectly well, no mystery there, that suffering is not only instructive but also redemptive, especially when it’s united with Jesus’ own suffering, Granted this is not the tack you should take with someone who’s not taking suffering well lol. But in theory it makes sense, that with our suffering we are making up for our own sins and even the sins of others. It’s only right that we suffer for the bad things we have done, but what a noble thing to suffer for what others have done so that their suffering is lightened. Sure that sounds unfair but … love is unfair, mercy is unfair, if you think about it. Would you willingly suffer for someone you love?

But in the end, it is important to remember that the way things are nowadays, with suffering in the world, is not the way it was supposed to be. So in a way the question is moot; suffering wasn’t supposed to happen, so its existence shouldn’t be an argument against the existence of God.

As regards the communitarianist framing of the question, however, no one is born for the sake of taking on suffering as a “meaning-of-life” for his particular life. (You may argue that this was part of the purpose of the second person of the trinity’s meaning-of-life for him taking on human nature.) But if there is ultimate justice, then whatever suffering is laid on a member of society because of the communitarian nature of society, there must be compensation for it in this life or in the next.

 

[tonyrey]

Misfortunes are facts of life in an immensely complex universe. Unwanted coincidences are bound to occur but the element of chance is subordinate to the framework of order and Design. Purposeless events such as accidents and natural disasters are inevitable even in a purposeful system!