Avoiding Libel and Dealing with Tragedies
Let's see if I can avoid the (unwarranted) charge of slander today. Here's hoping!
Frances Young shared at the Wesleyan Theological Society on Friday morning about suffering and the holy life. I will not give a summary of her excellent lecture, but I will share one part. She talked about suffering and tragedy, even from the personal perspective of raising a disabled child. She drew some of her thoughts to a head by saying we need a wider historical perspective of suffering and tragedy. When we take a wider historical perspective, we see that suffering and tragedy is just the way life is. Everybody suffers and it should not come at us as a surprise. It is the media, not Scripture, that presents tragedy and suffering as surprise. When we remember that suffering is not surprising, we are much better equipped to deal with it. Now Young believes that we can move from realizing that suffering is not the most serious thing; sin is.
Frances Young shared at the Wesleyan Theological Society on Friday morning about suffering and the holy life. I will not give a summary of her excellent lecture, but I will share one part. She talked about suffering and tragedy, even from the personal perspective of raising a disabled child. She drew some of her thoughts to a head by saying we need a wider historical perspective of suffering and tragedy. When we take a wider historical perspective, we see that suffering and tragedy is just the way life is. Everybody suffers and it should not come at us as a surprise. It is the media, not Scripture, that presents tragedy and suffering as surprise. When we remember that suffering is not surprising, we are much better equipped to deal with it. Now Young believes that we can move from realizing that suffering is not the most serious thing; sin is.
posted by Aaron Perry at
8:51 AM
5 Comments:
Hey Aaron I understood all that and not only do
I agree with it but I've been teaching it. I would add part of our revulsion towards suffering comes from our natural instinct to grasp at this temporal life. By doing that we feel we have to make this stage of our existence as pain free as possible or we are doing something wrong. The more we can understand the concept of eternity the more we should be able to embrace the suffering that comes with this World. That said suffering still sucks.
what do you mean by embrace suffering?
accept it as a reality of this world.
ok. i would agree--just wouldn't use the term "embrace" which implies to me a "welcoming." i don't think we should welcome suffering.
Good food for thought. I agree with it as well.
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