The most well recognised icon of the Christian tradition is also an icon of intense suffering. But Christians do not major on that aspect of the cross. They major on what the death of Jesus on a cross bought them. The suffering represented by the icon is largely overlooked and often not a popular topic.
Could it be that suffering as a tool for transformation has been largely ignored as a subject in the Christian tradition? It is as if the Christian tradition tends to major on the positive, the victorious, the "afterlife" and downplay suffering as a very real aspect of living this life. I think it has some connection with the doctrine of "life after death". Christians tend to live for the life after this life, for the "Second Coming"of Christ and tend to major on ways to escape the suffering of this world and to obtain fire insurance for the life after this one. Suffering is not a tool but a burden and God is a giant cosmic servant employed to reduce pain and suffering.
The effect this has on the way Christians live is obvious. We tend to minimise this life and this earth and everyone who is not a Christian to a means that will be justified by the end.
Buddhism, that does not have that perspective, major on suffering and how the correct approach to suffering can transform the way we live this life. For them, suffering is a tool, for Christians, suffering is something that must be avoided at all cost and that should actually not be part of our life-experience. Something we are entitled to escape based on our relationship with a loving Father.
Christians employ various instruments like prayer, service to God, evangelism and sacrifice to obtain favour with God and through that escape suffering. Buddhists do not have an external being to appeal to, so they have to transform suffering itself into a tool to reach perfection.
In the light of those thoughts, the questions below that I have received from Tracey can become guiding lights in a healthy discussion. Let's see what we can do with them
1. Do you think all human suffering leads us to the same outcome?
2. Does suffering ultimately cause growth and is growth suffering. I see suffering as such a negative process if I don’t see it in the light of growth.
3. If everything is in love, through love, can suffering be a form of love?
4. Does suffering depend on my mindset, is it connected to my ego and or my attachment to an expected outcome?
Thank you Joe, the concept of the spheres is helpful. The following quotes helps me to see deeper: "Human disassociation from God makes the human-sphere intrinsically dysfunctional. It is broken. As a broken sphere, it exploits, ravages, oppresses and disappoints. The sphere then lacks the transcendence and immanence that is true to it. What then governs it is power, covetousness and darkness, not Light and Life. ... We go into all of the 'cosmos' and order it through talking, doing and reconnecting it to the rule of God. This is called the great commission, ..."
I want to offer another cosmological approach that may offer some more answers. I may be wrong but I still see in your approach, the very subtle seed of dualism. Because there are spheres, it is easier to separate them in our minds and the separation then becomes experiential. What if the spheres are constructs of our reasoning, our cerebral attempts to describe and understand the Indescribable, strengthened by Plato and other philosophers? Is it possible that the spheres are constructs of a cosmology that denies the ontological oneness of all things? This kind of reasoning is represented by Plato's, "I think therefore I am".
I want to turn that on its head (forgive my presumption!) to "I am, therefore I think". That approach will have its inception in being, instead of reasoning.
What then is the reason for being? What is the reason for existence?
Once that is established, I can start reasoning about the outflow of being, like pain and suffering for example. From that perspective, I find a reason for the existence of pain and suffering in being and not in judgment and penal consequences. That approach answers a whole lot of questions that arise from "original sin", the "justice of God", God's omniscience, prevenient grace, the existence of hell and heaven, "eternal damnation" and especially from Calvin's "predestination" theory. These cerebral concepts have been the source of much division and blood-shed in our tradition.
In this primarily Perennial Wisdom approach, the spheres you describe are one because everything, every one and every moment exists only in the Creator (our name for the Ground of all Being is God, so let's use the name with the caveat that it is an Anglo-Saxon word that can never describe anything). It exists only in God for it is ontologically one with God-self. In my language, God used the only matter that existed before God created sequence and time - God-self. in other words, starting with sequence, he/she created within God's own being. Which means that all things carry in themselves the God-seed. A massive Oak tree is still in being an Oak although it is radically different from the Oak seed it grew from.
You once wrote to me, "The incarnated Life-Seed of the Holy Spirit imputing the life of Jesus in us is clearly the root of the Christian existence. Without this, nothing. The contemplative spiritual life, if it is to have any effect, aims to nurture this donor Life-Seed within."
I can agree wholeheartedly and I did at the time, but if you really read the preceding paragraph, you will see that I am now expanding the "incarnated Life-Seed" to being the foundation of all life, all created matter, and every moment; and not only the "root of the Christian existence".
This view is the foundation of Franciscan spirituality and I think Bonaventure expressed it sublimely: “The magnitude of things . . . clearly manifests . . . the wisdom and goodness of the triune God, who by power, presence and essence exists uncircumscribed in all things. God is within all things but not enclosed; outside all things, but not excluded; above all things, but not aloof; below all things, but not debased."
The theological differentiation between Pan-entheism, and Pantheism is very important here and Bonaventure draws a clear line between "all things are God" and "God is in all things". This is where being becomes the initial and foundational departure point for all reasoning, without playing around in the murky waters of worshipping monkeys and cows - "I am, therefore I think".
I think my mind was made up when I read this from Richard Rohr: "Bonaventure spoke of God as one “whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” Therefore the origin, magnitude, multitude, beauty, fullness, activity, and order of all created things are the very “footprints” and “fingerprints” (vestigia) of God. Now that is quite a lovely and very safe universe to live in. Welcome home!"
I came home to a very safe and lovely universe as the foundation for my own reasoning and then only extrapolated it to my thinking on original sin, the justice of God, God's omniscience, prevenient grace, the existence of hell and heaven, eternal damnation, predestination, eschatology, the "Great Tribulation", the "Rapture", the "Marriage Feast of the Lamb", the "Second Coming of Jesus" and restorative versus punitive justice.
You beautifully concluded at the time (a couple of years ago): "Presumably, contemplation is the experiential mystical experience of a person simply touching the divine. The Life-Seed flourishes best in that specific ecosystem. The ecosystem that is the love quadrangle relationship of the triune, plus one. If that one-us can touch and maintain this touch with the Tri-Divine, the Life-Seed is energised with Life."
Now, if you find any value in my ramblings, just expand that sublime statement to all things, all people, and every moment and let's see how that influences our discussion on suffering.