The topic of suffering has been widely discussed here in relation to lots of related topics and discussions. I’ve always found suffering a most interesting issue for consideration before I found the UB and since.
I think suffering is an issue that is shared by believers and non-believers both. Everyone wonders about the causes of suffering. Most of us either reject God or blame God, for a season or longer, due to the fact of human suffering. We sometimes wonder…if there is a God, then why does God allow or impose suffering? If God loves us the why doesn’t God prevent suffering and end the sources of suffering?
While many simplistically stop there, the real truth seekers plunge on into the actual causes of suffering, the potential and real benefits of suffering, and the solutions to suffering. We find great fields for the plowing and discovery for our philosophical considerations and metaphysical theories of why there is suffering in our lives.
This topic unites the Eastern and Western perspective and philosophies and is a key factor for all believers in all religions throughout history….and today. The Urantia Papers are replete in their presentations on the causes, meaning, value, and solution to suffering too. Suffering is originally and designedly for our primitive ancestors who would do nothing at all unless and until suffering from hunger or cold or attack. We are told our ancestors did not even think until hungry.
Suffering led to invention and activity and cooperation and specialization and collective action and many, many evolutionary advancements over thousands of generations from hunters to gatherers to agriculture to home building to villages to walled towns to skills and trades to religion to governance, etc. The solution to suffering has been the greatest of all drivers of progress in human history. Still is today in fact. Society is structured upon suffering avoidance as is religion.
We are told that we reap what we sow and what goes around comes around. This is the lesson on self inflicted pain and suffering. It also introduces the basic and foundational element of freewill choice as the very source of suffering. Foolish choices result in bad outcomes. But we all know fools and thieves and brutes and bullies who appear to thrive and profit from their foolishness. So karma either is not real or does not work effectively or fairly! Or the reciprocations of karma are unrelated to the material aspects of reaping what we sow.
The UB tells us that Newton’s law of physics where every action results in a reaction is also true of freewill choices. Our choices deliver results. Choices are causes. These causes have effects. There are some benign effects to benign or ordinary choices which have nothing to do with conscience, ethics, morality, self importance, the domination of or unrighteous domination of another being, or the spirit within but all of those types of choices reflect our spiritization and spiritual progress.
How do we react and respond to situation, circumstance, relationship, disappointment, failure, confusion, and decision that involves conscience, ethics, morality, religious experience, and the self?
Why do innocents suffer at the hands of others? Why is there cruelty? Why doesn’t God stop it? Does God cause it? Such victims did not choose to suffer thusly so freewill has nothing to do with it, right? Does suffering benefit us somehow? If so, then how? When does suffering end? How does it end? When? Is there suffering in heaven? Does anyone ever suffer forever? What is the cure for suffering?
These are some of the questions we might consider as we dive into the Papers in discovery of what they teach us on this universal issue that touches us and the ones we love. I look forward to the thoughts and experiences and text posts of all who are interested.
Let us begin with these facts and teachings: God does not cause our suffering or wish for us to suffer and offers each of us and all of us the solution to all suffering and the way to and means of happiness and joy and all the fruits of the Spirit…and does so in this life and no matter the amount or the source of our suffering. Glory Be!!
Thank you. Bradly
94:8.3 (1036.5) The original gospel of Gautama was based on the four noble truths:
94:8.4 (1036.6) 1. The noble truths of suffering.
94:8.5 (1036.7) 2. The origins of suffering.
94:8.6 (1036.8) 3. The destruction of suffering.
94:8.7 (1036.9) 4. The way to the destruction of suffering.
131:2.8 (1445.2) “Yahweh is the God of my salvation; therefore in the divine name will I put my trust. I will trust in the Lord with all my heart; I will lean not upon my own understanding. In all my ways I will acknowledge him, and he shall direct my paths. The Lord is faithful; he keeps his word with those who serve him; the just shall live by his faith. If you do not well, it is because sin lies at the door; men reap the evil they plough and the sin they sow. Fret not yourself because of evildoers. If you regard iniquity in your heart, the Lord will not hear you; if you sin against God, you also wrong your own soul. God will bring every man’s work to judgment with every secret thing, whether it be good or evil. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.
131:2.9 (1445.3) “The Lord is near all who call upon him in sincerity and in truth. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. A merry heart does good like a medicine. No good thing will God withhold from those who walk uprightly. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. Thus says the Lord who created the heavens and who formed the earth: ‘There is no God beside me, a just God and a savior. Look to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth. If you seek me, you shall find me if you search for me with all your heart.’ The meek shall inherit the earth and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace. Whoever sows iniquity shall reap calamity; they who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.
148:6.11 (1664.3) Then Jesus made this final statement: “The Father in heaven does not willingly afflict the children of men. Man suffers, first, from the accidents of time and the imperfections of the evil of an immature physical existence. Next, he suffers the inexorable consequences of sin—the transgression of the laws of life and light. And finally, man reaps the harvest of his own iniquitous persistence in rebellion against the righteous rule of heaven on earth. But man’s miseries are not a personal visitation of divine judgment. Man can, and will, do much to less But en his temporal sufferings. But once and for all be delivered from the superstition that God afflicts man at the behest of the evil one.
"Live loyally today—grow—and tomorrow will attend to itself. The quickest way for a tadpole to become a frog is to live loyally each moment as a tadpole."
