Does it?

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Certainly Christianity does. Our end is to reach for the ultimate good, the ultimate truth, the ultimate perfection, and find it and ourselves fulfilled in God. It is to participate in the divine life of God. God created to manifest His glory. It is to practice the love of God in our lives, as demonstrated in Jesus Christ.

Now, you may issue with parts of that, but certainly Christians do feel that their faith gives meaning for our being, the good we experience, the suffering we endure, the reason for it all, and what we’re doing here.
 
Wesrock said:
Certainly Christianity does. Our end is to reach for the ultimate good, the ultimate truth, the ultimate perfection, and find it and ourselves fulfilled in God. It is to participate in the divine life of God. God created to manifest His glory. It is to practice the love of God in our lives, as demonstrated in Jesus Christ.
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You are talking about the ultimate good, truth, etc. I asked for the meaning. How do you define the meaning? To me meaning is something which everything is empty without it. Something whichgives us direction to gain the best in everything.
Wesrock said:
Now, you may issue with parts of that, but certainly Christians do feel that their faith gives meaning for our being, the good we experience, the suffering we endure, the reason for it all, and what we’re doing here.
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Do you know why we should be suffering?
 
“Do you know why we should be suffering”

catholicnewsagency.com/resources/sacraments/anointing-of-the-sick/suffering-can-lead-to-salvation/

To sum it up in my words, which are not nearly as good as the articles, I compare it to fasting. We fast to train ourselves to say no to the things we really want. The more I can stop myself from eating the things I really want the easier it will be to say no to temptation when sin comes knocking.

Suffering produces a like situation, by suffering not only for myself and Christ Jesus but for others I train myself to accept God’s will no matter what, love all others no matter what (even when they make me suffer) and become that much closer to God (He loves you no matter what you do). Remember God’s greatest commandment is to love Him above all other things, and the second greatest is to love your neighbor!
 
I edited my post, check it, let me know what you think and then I’ll respond.
 
STT said:
So suffering helps us to reach salvation, therefore it is positive. How could you suffer without Evil? Is Evil a positive thing?
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Evil is not a positive thing, however, God is so amazing that He can use the results from bad things for positive things.

Look at the sinking of the Titanic, a horrible event, but it sparked all the safety we now have on cruise liners and many laws were passed because of it.

Look at the Great Molasses flood of 1919 in Boston, 21 people died and over 150 were injured but most all of our building codes and our safety was a result.

Is an iceberg evil? Is Molasses evil? However both these things caused sufferings, and yet God was able to use them for the benefit of humanity.

You have to remember that God created us not for this world, but for immortality with Him. It was our choices in the Garden of Eden which led us here. Thus God, who cannot be with sin, gave us what we wanted. We wanted to know everything, so now we know sin, now we know death, now we understand suffering, we chose sin and so God, who respects us and our free will so much that He gave us what we wanted. Even if it was not what He wanted for us.
 
STT said:
Thanks. So, do you agree that God allows Evil? Please also let me know your opinion about post #5.
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That’s a two fold question/answer.

First God, who respects our free will, allows people to do what they want. He could force us to obey, to be His servants, but He will never do that. He loves us, and because He loves us He lets us freely accept or reject Him. Sometimes, people who reject him do evil. Even some people who accept Him do evil!!!

Secondly, sometimes God allows Satan to tempt us or do certain things. It is for our benefit, sometimes we don’t understand, sometimes we don’t like it, but whatever God allows Satan to accomplish is for the good of all mankind.

You (people) have to get to a point where we understand that God has a plan. If we truly understood that, and respected that, then anything and everything that came our way would be gladly accepted because we would know that it falls in line with God’s plan.

My 11 year old daughter just had brain surgery, she is still suffering some of the effects of that. Was the cyst evil? Why did God allow that to happen?

I don’t have all the answers, but the cyst is not evil, it is a condition of the human form after Eden, before the beatific vision. Why, I have no idea, but I trust in God’s plan, He can use this, whether it is her sufferings He uses (a more spiritual use) or something that comes of it on this earth (a more temporal and physical use), He can use it. Look into St. Gianna, her sufferings and death produced something amazing, God used it, and it inspires people.

We have to let go of the illusion of control and trust in God.
 
Truth will have more meaning than anything. Ideally these are in continuum rather than contrast.
 
USMC_Convert said:
Evil is not a positive thing, however, God is so amazing that He can use the results from bad things for positive things.

Look at the sinking of the Titanic, a horrible event, but it sparked all the safety we now have on cruise liners and many laws were passed because of it.

Look at the Great Molasses flood of 1919 in Boston, 21 people died and over 150 were injured but most all of our building codes and our safety was a result.

Is an iceberg evil? Is Molasses evil? However both these things caused sufferings, and yet God was able to use them for the benefit of humanity.

You have to remember that God created us not for this world, but for immortality with Him. It was our choices in the Garden of Eden which led us here. Thus God, who cannot be with sin, gave us what we wanted. We wanted to know everything, so now we know sin, now we know death, now we understand suffering, we chose sin and so God, who respects us and our free will so much that He gave us what we wanted. Even if it was not what He wanted for us.
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That God can create good out of evil, does that mean God is amazing or that reality is amazing (in the sense that the principles of logic apply to God too)?

I guess it would mean that reality sucks in a sense too, because certain good can only be brought out of the evil?
 
thinkandmull said:
That God can create good out of evil, does that mean God is amazing or that reality is amazing (in the sense that the principles of logic apply to God too)?

I guess it would mean that reality sucks in a sense too, because certain good can only be brought out of the evil?
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I don’t think that God needs the evil to create certain good. It is always to do certain good from the scratch.
 
If God could have created an equally good world (or better one) without pain for the innocent He would have been obligated to do that.
 
There is actually an entire book of the Bible that focuses on this question. The meaning of life in the Christian world vew includes the following:

Ecclesiastes: “let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep his commandments for this is man’s all.”

Jesus: “I come that you may have life, and that more abundantly.”
Jesus: “this is eternal life that they may know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent”

1John 1(the apostle John) “these things we declare to you that you may have fellowship with us and our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.”
1John 1 “these things we declare to you that your joy may be full.”

Apostle Paul: (paraphrased from memory) whatever would be considered gain to me in terms of natural wealth status or achievement in society, religion or worldly benefit I consider to be a worthless loss compared to the incomparable greatness of knowing Jesus and the power of His resurrection and even having fellowship with Him in suffering.

How I interpret the above resources to apply to my personal desire for meaning: I am created by God for fellowship with God. That includes being committed to good as defined by God. Sometimes in this life goodness requires a personal sacrifice just as Jesus himself suffered willingly on the cross for the cause of good. However abundant life and joy are found in the midst of all life’s circumstances including those which would otherwise be empty suffering because of fellowship with Father and the Son and the believers who share in this fellowship. Meaning actually has nothing to do with suffering any more than it has to do with fun other than that, as described in Ecclesiastes, without God all is empty and meaningless but with God the greater purpose of fellowship with God overpowers even the experience of pain–as described by Paul.

The guys that I reference were very experienced in the material they wrote about. Solomon, the author of Ecclesiastes was a tychoon and a genius and a king with great power and influence in the world. He found no meaning in any of it outside faithfulness to God. John was a close friend of Jesus and an eyewitness of the resurrection. As he says, “that which we have seen, heard, and touched concerning the Word of Life…” Paul left a powerful position in the religious government of Jerusalem to become a follower of Jesus and was often imprisoned, tortured, and finally beheaded for his preaching. So these guys all lived out the claims they made about meaning.

The first paragraph of the Catechism of the Catholic Church has this to say about the overarching purpose of mankind: “1 God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Savior. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life.”
 
We fulfil our destiny better when we stretch and grow, therefore circumstances, as opportunities, are a gift, however a difficult one.
 
For the specific category of meaning in pain or suffering, there is also the story of Job where several pieces of advice are offered by presumptuous men who think that somehow Job’s suffering is to teach Job a lesson or punish him for some sin. In the end it turns out God was actually quite pleased with Job and was making a point to the devil and, by interpretation, us about faithfulness and suffering. God also rewarded Job for his faithfulness but the suffering Job endured was not about him at all. It is an error to presume that the point of suffering, pain or sickness is for our benefit–it may not be. But God does reward those who remain faithful to the end.
 
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