The Suffering of An Idealist The Stoic philosophers teach that pain in and of itself is neither good nor evil. I tend to agree with them, because pain can be a means to a good, “no pain no gain”. Suffering is not the mere feeling of pain, it is a painful realization that some good is being or has been destroyed. When I was a youth, I believed very strongly […]
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Thomas More: Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation
The Insufficiency of Humanism Tribulation generally signifies nothing else but some kind of grief, either pain of the body or heaviness of the mind. All the wit in the world cannot bring about that the body should not feel what it feels. But that the mind should not be grieved with either bodily pain or occasions of heaviness pressed unto the soul, this thing the philosophers laboured very much about. […]
Read moreSuffering and Christian Hope: I. Prelude
Background and Advance Apology I’ve been hesitant to write about suffering and Christian hope, because I have very little experience or knowledge of either, having lived a mostly sheltered life. I fear that my posts might be too superficial, even offensive, to people who are in the midst of suffering. But, I somehow backed myself into this position, by writing two blog series that converge on the subject of suffering, one […]
Read more“Philoctetes” by Sophocles
Perhaps this man is as well born as any, second to no son of an ancient house. Yet now his life lacks everything, and he makes his bed without neighbors or with spotted shaggy beasts for neighbors. His thoughts are set continually on pain and hunger. He cries out in his wretchedness; there is only a blabbering echo, that comes from the distance speeding from his bitter crying. There is […]
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