The Joy of Suffering<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Gospel is a strange thing sometimes. Often, it challenges our most fundamental conceptions of truth. It forces us to question our basic assumptions\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithpromotingrumor\/2007\/06\/the-joy-of-suffering\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Joy of Suffering\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Gospel is a strange thing sometimes. Often, it challenges our most fundamental conceptions of truth. 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{"id":418,"date":"2007-06-26T13:28:24","date_gmt":"2007-06-26T18:28:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/faithpromotingrumor.wordpress.com\/2007\/06\/26\/the-joy-of-suffering\/"},"modified":"2007-06-26T13:28:24","modified_gmt":"2007-06-26T18:28:24","slug":"the-joy-of-suffering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithpromotingrumor\/2007\/06\/the-joy-of-suffering\/","title":{"rendered":"The Joy of Suffering"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The foundations of humanism are based on the exact opposite assumptions about the nature of the goals for humanity. Humanism was founded on the idea of the height of humanity as a state in which there is no suffering. The individual is autonomous, free from restrictions, and is able to enjoy a certain economic quality of life. Asceticism, submission, obedience, and denial are the vices of humanism. This has been the driving political ideology of the West for the past 300 years. Contemporary Christianity, including Mormonism<\/a>, often shares this ideology of human potential, but this is often held in tension with the scriptural and historical root of these traditions as fundamentally anti-humanistic. The ideal of human suffering, especially one in which God is pleased by human suffering always lurks in the background, troubling in interesting ways the ability to fully adopt the core ideology of liberalism.<\/p>\n

So what is the relationship between the role of suffering in the process of salvation and the humanistic goal of the absence of suffering? Aren\u2019t the vices of humanism the virtues of Christianity, and Mormonism in particular? Our most crucial story of salvation, the NT drama, is one where suffering is essential. Indeed, it is God\u2019s will that his own son suffer. Is God not the author of our suffering? But the human condition is not the only one which suffers. Isn\u2019t the divine condition one which suffers as well (D&C 19 and the weeping God in Moses)?<\/p>\n

In the gospel, can suffering really be joy? Is this simply a pre-modern idea, or worse, a tool of power to justify and enforce the suffering of others? If there are good and bad kinds of suffering, how do we tell the difference? Is there something truly important about suffering as constitutive of our subjectivity? Doesn\u2019t Christianity teach us that the humanistic ideal of a subject who is not subjected is simply an illusion?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"