Why God doesn't heal Dementia,Paraplegia etc?

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The change, of which you speak, is evil increasing. WHY? It all started w Madelyn O Hare getting prayer out of school. Then, the Supreme Court ruled that pornography is protected by FREEDOM OF SPEECH. Now, FOS, was started by the founding fathers. SO, Why did they keep porn, censured? Who felt it could be free. A judge who liked to read porn! Who would have thought Pediophiles would run for political office w a platform of cancelling the Domestic Violence bill b/c WOMEN are owned by husbands who can beat and rape them. This guy dreams of having sex w INFANTS & TODDLERS! This was in the paper in Va. I called the police and asked why they didn’t have him arrested? No crime committed! Isn’t ASSAULT a verbal threat? He stated he wants to have sex w infants and kids. Get a warrant to seize computers! It sounds like a threat for a man wanting to have sex w infants and toddlers. I don’t know what they did.
We,the church, have failed God & His Creation. The Constitutiin was written for the common good. ( the majority) If the cross or the flag offends one person or 10 or 100, w a population of 330 million, they can close their eyes or move. We didn’t rise up enough to fight for our common good. We were in shock, after the stupid rulings. Have we waited too long to overcome the evil in the world. The DEMS w hatred. & the RESISTANCE is an arm of Satan. Pro-Abortion, pro-open borders, pro-illegal status of immigrants, defending criminals over citizens, and a free for all in the gender confusion area! Whatever your beliefs in homosexuality, there has to be limits in body mutilation. It’s coming out as a mental illness that needs to be treated w meds and psychiatry. How can little children understand this gender stuff at their age.
I’m sure you get the idea! We need mass fasting and prayer…, Any ideas how to organize such a thing???

In Christ’s Love
Tweedlealice
 
It’s in 2 Samuel 11 and 12. David sees Bathsheba bathing, is attracted to her and inquires about who she is. He learns that she is the wife of one of his soldiers, but has her brought to him and they commit adultery. She becomes pregnant and tells David. He has her husband called from the army in the hope that he will visit his wife and the baby can be passed of as her husbands child. That does not happen so David has Bathsheba’s husband murdered and marries her.

He is reprimanded by the prophet Nathan who tells him that his child will die as his punishment and indeed that happens.

1 Kings 1-2 shows Solomon, another son of David and Bathsheba’s succeeding David on the throne.
 
The church teaches, REDEMPTIVE SUFFERING.

Redemptive suffering is the Christian belief that human suffering, when accepted and offered up in union with the Passion of Jesus, can remit the just punishment for one’s sins or for the sins of another, or for the other physical or spiritual needs of oneself or another.
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 Suffering is a confusing topic. Jesus suffered for us. So, why do we suffer? That is oversimplifying the topic. We are corruptible bodies. We will die. We will suffer w illness as our body starts leaving its Spirit. Suffering is. Offering up the suffering is reasonable! 
 Our trying to be understand is worthy!
In Christ’s Love
Tweedlealice
 
Yes, Tweedlealice, I have spent a LOT of time reading about various victim souls and on redemptive suffering, generally written in a plain English by people like Mother Angelica or Archbishop Sheen.
I am not disputing that there is such a thing as redemptive suffering, it works just like you said, and we do it every day when we “offer it up” for the Poor Souls or for Reparation to the Sacred Heart or whatever, whenever we have an annoyance, a pain, a trouble throughout the day.

However, Roguish above has made a number of odd statements about what is required for suffering to be redemptive.

He has claimed that in order for our redemptive suffering to be valid:
  • we have to be “imitating Christ”, i.e. be “innocent” people suffering “persecution”
  • the suffering cannot have come about as a result of our own sins (I’m not sure what that even means since not only is suffering in the world due to man’s original sin, but also it would be really difficult for anyone over the age of a child to isolate out whether they have somehow contributed to their own suffering by any behavior that might be termed “sinful”)
  • earlier in the thread he suggested there was some limitation that suffering had to be “natural” which could be read to mean that suffering due to a disease could be offered up, but suffering due to the side effects of a treatment for the disease was somehow unnatural, and couldn’t be offered up.
The Church teaching on redemptive suffering simply does not put all these requirements on what suffering can be “redemptive”. As someone else said above, “redemptive suffering” is also not “in imitation of Christ”. We JOIN our sufferings to those of Christ in so doing, give meaning to our suffering. We do not have to be sinless like Christ (we’re never going to be sinless like Christ; saints are NOT “sinless” unless we’re discussing the Virgin Mary, only) and we do not have to be suffering from an unjust persecution, only.

It is these unusual ideas to which I am objecting, NOT the teaching of Redemptive Suffering as taught by the church.

Here is a very good, easy to understand article on the Church teaching about Redemptive Suffering:

 
Take everything here with a grain of holy salt. “Test everything. Retain what is good.”

Especially on the interwebz.
 
Please tell me, how in the world could sin possibly cause bad genes?!
 
[Roguish] has claimed that in order for our redemptive suffering to be valid:
  • we have to be “imitating Christ”, i.e. be “innocent” people suffering “persecution”
  • the suffering cannot have come about as a result of our own sins
Wait. Redemptive suffering certainly is a consequence of our sins. I never contradicted that, and (of course) redemptive suffering is essential to the Christian path, and (of course) it is valid.

But my point was that the Way of the Cross, a.k.a. suffering in imitation of Christ, is a different kind of suffering, which is what is experienced when one is persecuted precisely for having become free of sin. This also is essential to the Christian path, but it is of a different nature.

Yet another way of putting it is this: redemptive suffering improves one’s lot in the Afterlife. Clearly Christ did not have to improve His lot in the Afterlife, so redemptive suffering cannot be of the same nature as Christ’s suffering.

My earlier point about natural suffering vs. suffering due to treatment is not directly related to this distinction, so I won’t comment on it in this post. (But I could in another.)

P.S. I realize now that the problem lies at least in part in the term “redemptive suffering”. I take that term strictly at its face value: suffering that redeems (from sin). But a bit of browsing on the web reveals that most Christian authors use it to designate any suffering undergone by a Christian. Of course in that case it can no longer be used to identify one form of suffering from another, as I did in this post.

P.P.S. I overlooked an important point in your response:
ALL suffering is due to man’s sins because it all flows from the evil of original sin.
I wish this was so – because that’d be bad enough – but this world is still grimmer than that. Here’s an apt (and ominous) quote from Pope JP2:
“the devil is still alive and at work in the world. In fact, the evil that is in it, the disorder we see in society, the infidelity of man, the interior fragmentation of which he is a victim, are not merely the consequences of original sin, but also the effect of the dark and infesting activity of Satan, of this saboteur of man’s moral equilibrium.” (Address at Gargano)
Anyway, I’m not arguing the point just because I like to insist on my own views. Christians really need to know that not all their suffering is due to their sins. Without this understanding, one may at some point along one’s walk with God get overwhelmed by anxiety, fear, or despair – because one hasn’t been prepared for sufferings that cannot be explained in light of one’s own sinful past. You yourself recently inquired about anxiety on CAF – an inquiry that I could really relate to but decided not to comment on at the time – and if I remember correctly you seemed to acknowledge that not all anxiety (a form of suffering) can be attributed to the same cause. In short, the view that “all one’s suffering is somehow due to one’s sins” is not adequate.
 
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From St. Faustina’s Diary:

1032 "I saw the Lord Jesus nailed upon the cross amidst great torments. A soft moan issued from His heart. After some time He said ‘I thirst. I thirst for the salvation of souls. Help Me, My daughter, to save souls. Join your sufferings to My Passion and offer them to the heavenly Father for sinners.’ "

324 “There is but one price at which souls are bought, and that is suffering united to My suffering on the cross. Pure love understands these words; carnal love will never understand them.”

From Salvifici Doloris - John Paul II
Down through the centuries and generations it has been seen that in suffering there is concealed a particular power that draws a person interiorly close to Christ, a special grace. To this grace many saints, such as Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Ignatius of Loyola and others, owe their profound conversion. A result of such a conversion is not only that the individual discovers the salvific meaning of suffering but above all that he becomes a completely new person. He discovers a new dimension, as it were, of his entire life and vocation. This discovery is a particular confirmation of the spiritual greatness which in man surpasses the body in a way that is completely beyond compare. When this body is gravely ill, totally incapacitated, and the person is almost incapable of living and acting, all the more do interior maturity and spiritual greatness become evident, constituting a touching lesson to those who are healthy and normal.
 
On your JPII point, yes, you and Saint Pope JPII are correct that the devil and man’s sins greatly add to the suffering in this world. However, my point in noting that all suffering flows originally from original sin was going to your point where you were differentiating suffering due to man’s sins from suffering not due to man’s sin. Even if you had a totally innocent person suffering through no sin of their own, let’s say a child with cancer, that suffering is ultimately traced back to the original sin of man, as otherwise there would be no cancer and no earthly death. It’s true that there is a lot of additional suffering that flows from the sins of man, including man’s own suffering due to his own sins, and the suffering that a man’s sins might cause other men to experience. St. JPII saw this in a big way in WWII. So I am totally in agreement with you and the Pope on that point.

As for us doing The Way of the Cross, people often speak figuratively of us “carrying our cross” and imitating Jesus in doing so, like we try to imitate him in so many other things like being kind to others, being non-judgmental, doing God’s will, etc. But we are never going to be free of sin. We could suffer from now till Doomsday and it would never be enough to make up for our sins. We will be riddled with sin right up to the day we die and it’s only the mercy of God that will ever get us to Heaven.

Redemptive suffering is best understood, not as somebody trying to suffer so much on earth that it makes up for their own sins or they themselves become sin-free, but as someone offering their suffering for others or for the world in general. Most people who are thinking in terms of redemptive suffering are not focused on themselves. They kind of don’t care about themselves, they are leaving themselves to God, and focusing on trying to offer suffering for other people, sometimes a designated group (for the early Christians, for the souls of priests and religious, for the Jewish people etc). God also decides just how much he wants each person’s suffering to “count” for and in so doing he would look at what is in the person’s heart.

I understand you are trying to make the point that not all suffering is due to one’s own sins and you’re 100 percent correct in that also. Not arguing that point with you. It’s just a separate point from the broad idea of redemptive suffering, which is indeed generally taught as encompassing any suffering a person might undergo and want to offer up.
 
I’m sorry about your mother and mother in law:(
This would be awful.
 
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