Sin and suffering?

[ZenFred]

Vico,

“Suffering is the result of sin having entered the world, but its purpose is to expiate wrongdoing and to enable the believer to offer God a sacrifice of praise.”

Excellent response that really condenses the issue. Thank you.

My response would be:
“Suffering is the result of failing to see things, circumstances, others, ourselves, and Reality as they truly are. It serves no purpose and is result of attachments to human attempts and resulting mistakes in describing our experiences in every area of life to include religion.”

 

[fhansen]

Vico,

“Suffering is the result of sin having entered the world, but its purpose is to expiate wrongdoing and to enable the believer to offer God a sacrifice of praise.”

Excellent response that really condenses the issue. Thank you.

My response would be:
“Suffering is the result of failing to see things, circumstances, others, ourselves, and Reality as they truly are. It serves no purpose and is result of attachments to human attempts and resulting mistakes in describing our experiences in every area of life to include religion.”

There have been some Christian thinkers, even Chesterton, I believe, who have commented that evil is a matter of perspective. Either way, Catholicism will always maintain that, along with physical evil, moral evil/injustice are very real, even when understood as a lessening, by acts of human free will, of the good that could and should otherwise be. God doesn’t will evil IOW

 

[friardchips]

Vico,

“Suffering is the result of sin having entered the world, but its purpose is to expiate wrongdoing and to enable the believer to offer God a sacrifice of praise.”

Excellent response that really condenses the issue. Thank you.

My response would be:
“Suffering is the result of failing to see things, circumstances, others, ourselves, and Reality as they truly are. It serves no purpose and is result of attachments to human attempts and resulting mistakes in describing our experiences in every area of life to include religion.”

Suffering is the result of original sin. Sin is the turning away from love who is God.

And this happens all the time. Adam sinned. We sin.

Christ redeemed!

 

[Vico]

Vico,

“Suffering is the result of sin having entered the world, but its purpose is to expiate wrongdoing and to enable the believer to offer God a sacrifice of praise.”

Excellent response that really condenses the issue. Thank you.

My response would be:
“Suffering is the result of failing to see things, circumstances, others, ourselves, and Reality as they truly are. It serves no purpose and is result of attachments to human attempts and resulting mistakes in describing our experiences in every area of life to include religion.”

In a sense, there is no mental suffering if one is detached. But there is an objective meaning of suffering also. Really you could make a statement on each.

 

[ZenFred]

Fhanson,

I think to some degree even if sin is real it’s a matter of perspective. The believer is justified and made as pure as snow and is regarded as without sin, right? Karl Barth, a Lutheran theologian argued that against the power of God manifested in Christ’s sacrifice the devil’s and sin’s “No” to God’s “Yes” had no power, wasn’t going to last and wasn’t fully real. It all depends on what is “real.” In Buddhism we run into this problem a lot when we say suffering isn’t real. People might say so missing my dead wife isn’t real sadness? Of course not we really do experience suffering yet there is a place/perspective where even that suffering disappears.

There is a koan that addresses it. “Foolish is the monk who regards karma since he is beyond cause and effect and the consequences of actions will not touch him. Foolish is the monk who disregards karma and does what ever we pleases thinking the consequences of his actions will not touch him.”

But I agree we really say suffering isn’t real in a way Christains don’t.

 

[friardchips]

I think the real difference is what the solution is. But I’ll give people a chance to comment first.

Go to Jesus. Learn about Him. Learn about His sacrifice. Learn about the way of the cross - the narrow path. Wear love. Love people with gentleness and kindness. Be there for people. Offer it all up to God in prayer, including suffering - your whole life. Keep hoping. Keep searching. Keep loving. Keep smiling. Take one day at a time. God bless.

 

[Michael19682]

Um, I didn’t say Him; I said we. Christ voluntarily lowered Himself, identifying with humanity in, among other things, the suffering that resulted from the Fall of man. Being without sin, however, He was always in communion with the Father even in His human nature, unlike ourselves.

Up until now I might have said such reasoning makes a farce of his suffering. But you state the situation wonderfully and I understand much better through the idea of “lowering himself”. Can you explain with equal coherence Cor 5:21? I’d appreciate it because I’m involved in a discussion in another topic where I have trouble understanding the phrase about “not seeing the sinner, but the sin.” Christ wasn’t a sinner, but what is the practical difference for the faith if he was as Cor 5:21 says, Sin itself?

 

[fhansen]

Fhanson,

I think to some degree even if sin is real it’s a matter of perspective. The believer is justified and made as pure as snow and is regarded as without sin, right? Karl Barth, a Lutheran theologian argued that against the power of God manifested in Christ’s sacrifice the devil’s and sin’s “No” to God’s “Yes” had no power, wasn’t going to last and wasn’t fully real. It all depends on what is “real.” In Buddhism we run into this problem a lot when we say suffering isn’t real. People might say so missing my dead wife isn’t real sadness? Of course not we really do experience suffering yet there is a place/perspective where even that suffering disappears.

There is a koan that addresses it. “Foolish is the monk who regards karma since he is beyond cause and effect and the consequences of actions will not touch him. Foolish is the monk who disregards karma and does what ever we pleases thinking the consequences of his actions will not touch him.”

But I agree we really say suffering isn’t real in a way Christains don’t.

The evil of losing a loved one is different in kind-and in our experience of it-than the evil that results from an act committed with deliberate malicious intent-by the choice of a human being. This is the evil which is most out of place, unnecessary, and unreasonable in this world-and the most difficult to deal with, understand, or reconcile.

 

[oldcelt]

Existence equals suffering…no other additives are needed.

 

[fhansen]

Existence equals suffering…no other additives are needed.

I disagree; the addition of free moral choices, leading to selfish acts, sometimes with little or no rational basis, greatly, and unnecessarily, increase suffering in this existence. Mean little arrogant and ruthless people.

 

[ZenFred]

Thanks for all the comments everyone.

I was just thinking that some concepts like “sin” for Christains and “suffering” for Buddhists are overly religious words in that we hear them again and again in different context in preaching and teaching. So much so that we have a deeply emotional and spiritual reaction to them. They mean more that the word itself suggests. When you say sin you include implied meanings and contexts that aren’t held in word itself. So that’s why I’m uncomfortable with the idea in a broad christain sense but not when discussed in a narrow context. For example I agree that all fallen short and that we harm ourselves and others, that’s sin. I am not comfortable with the whole system of salvation in the gospel that is wrapped up/connected in that word.

 

[fhansen]

Thanks for all the comments everyone.

I was just thinking that some concepts like “sin” for Christains and “suffering” for Buddhists are overly religious words in that we hear them again and again in different context in preaching and teaching. So much so that we have a deeply emotional and spiritual reaction to them. They mean more that the word itself suggests. When you say sin you include implied meanings and contexts that aren’t held in word itself. So that’s why I’m uncomfortable with the idea in a broad christain sense but not when discussed in a narrow context. For example I agree that all fallen short and that we harm ourselves and others, that’s sin. I am not comfortable with the whole system of salvation in the gospel that is wrapped up/connected in that word.

I don’t think we understand the term “salvation” so well either. But the term implies that humans are lost, cut off in some manner and to some degree from reality, from the truth, the truth of who we are, and not knowing where we came from, if anywhere, what we’re here for, if anything, and where we’re going, if anywhere. Not trusting in the Ultimate Reality; when we find God we find ourselves. Sin is the outcome of being separated from God and ourselves. Sin is something unnatural, out of sync with the order of the universe, out of sync with our own natures. We need to ask why humans alone among all creatures within our direct experience, fall short.

 

[Bob_Crowley]

Peace and happiness to everyone here. You have helped me out a great deal with your thoughtful responses in the past and I hope you can do so again. I am grateful in advance.

So most world views, Christianity is not an exception, say there is something wrong with the state of things or man’s condition. For Christianity this “problem” is sin. Why is that?

I think we call agree that “problem” with the world is that human being experience suffering. I realize this is a bit of just restating the obvious and an A=A proposition. I think a Christian would say that sin is a problem because it causes human suffering. Right?

But not all suffering is caused by wrongful action and much suffering is due to natural causes such as illness or loss of loved one, or just the changes and chances of this life.

How is the fact that we violate a divine set of laws the fundamental issue and why we are not happy?

I do believe that as human beings we make mistakes and do great harm to each other and ourselves. But if we were morally perfect would we be free from suffering?

-Namaste, Fred

I’m probably writing in ignorance, but from the little I know about Buddhism, the ideal is complete “detachment” from this world, which is constantly changing, and where any hope of permanence is an illusion. The ultimate goal seems to be what might be called nirvana, or merging into the real spiritual world, but at the cost of a loss of individuality.

In some respects, Christian and Buddhist mystics / religious orders probably share a lot in common when it comes to the idea of “detachment”. As the old saying goes, “you can’t take it with you”.

However Christians believe an individual soul remains just that, but answers for all his or her words and actions (or the lack of them). And this determines their ultimate fate.

Sin is our predilection towards what is evil. And we all do it. It’s inbuilt ever since the Fall. As a consequence we have not only moral evil, but also natural evil.

The Christian claim is that in heaven these things will be done away with, but only on God’s terms - not ours. And His terms include the realisation that the Man-God Jesus Christ, who lived, died and rose again, is the way, the truth and the life.

The antithesis of that is Hell, which is the complete absence of the good.

But either way we retain our personal individuality after death.

And the choice of where we end up is ours.

 

[Michael19682]

Thanks for all the comments everyone.

I was just thinking that some concepts like “sin” for Christains and “suffering” for Buddhists are overly religious words in that we hear them again and again in different context in preaching and teaching. So much so that we have a deeply emotional and spiritual reaction to them. They mean more that the word itself suggests. When you say sin you include implied meanings and contexts that aren’t held in word itself. So that’s why I’m uncomfortable with the idea in a broad christain sense but not when discussed in a narrow context. For example I agree that all fallen short and that we harm ourselves and others, that’s sin. I am not comfortable with the whole system of salvation in the gospel that is wrapped up/connected in that word.

HI again, ZenFred. Grace for me is a delicate balance. Adam and Eve were created in a state of grace and lived that way apart from any law except not eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The serpent, which symbolizes sin, found a way to exploit that balance – which therefore was an internal balance dependent on a kind of kindness and abiding truth of the environment. You may think of the serpent’s deception as a kind of natural disaster. Nevertheless, it conditioned mankind and was the introduction of evil into his world. Once evil was known, his mind became perverse – i.e., he realized he was naked and thought his natural state was sinful. In that is the implication that God, who created all nature, is now conceived of as evil, for he created Adam in the very state Adam conceives of as worthy of hiding. God lost in Adam’s view his loving stature and became angry judge. The rest is history.
Jesus, among the myriad things he accomplished, restored balance to creation by showing that God is love and giving us the awesome ability of knowing the difference between good and bad and in fact making us new creations in that grace. Satan promised we would be like God if we ate from the tree and if we disobeyed God therein. Jesus did in fact make us like God, but showed the true way was love, justice, and humility the exact restoratives to our weaknesses or vulnerability. To the extent that we have a way, we have a means of remaining in the personal balance God intends for us.
With original sin, you are working symbolically in the parable, with salvation, you have both literal man and God in Jesus, and lots of parable also.