Why Suffer?

I suspect that you may be confused by this week’s title.  Have I decided to forget about this horrible thing that has happened?  Have I decided to live it up instead?  “Life’s too short” type of thing?

Hopefully you know me well enough by now, to know, that no, that’s not what I’m getting at.

I’d like to write a nice long post like I usually do once per weekend, but I’m running out of both time and energy so I’m going to post a link to a very good Jordan Peterson podcast.  I first listened to it on that walk a couple months ago when I saw the beautiful sparkling water and posted the pictures.  I listened to half of it again during yesterday’s walk and the other half on this morning’s walk.  It’s no wonder I gravitate to it in my saved videos because the title is “This Lesson from the Bible will Make You Unstoppable- Franciscan University.”

It’s PERFECT for Passion Week, and that’s when it was recorded last year.  It’s about an hour long but well worth it.  He and the President of Franciscan University discuss suffering, the purpose for it on the spiritual level, not on the cosmic level like Hugh Ross’ presentation I posted. 

This is the description Dr. Peterson posts to describe this video. “I discussed gratitude, faith, and suffering in this conversation at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. How can we be sure that pain is a solid guiding principle as we navigate the world? What is the underlying structure of pain, and what does it point at? We also touched on a myriad of topics around those central themes, such as sin and the symbol of the snake, giving advice, resurrection, the relationship between faith and suffering, evil, the effect we have on others, and sunsets.”

It is definitely annoying when the ads come up.  Suffer through for 5 seconds and click “Skip.”

Again, I apologize for skimping on you today. I started listening to him in 2016 and even though I have no idea where he stands with Jesus literally being Emmanuel, his insights strengthened my faith immensely and were part of what got me to where I needed to be December 23^rd and after.  It has been fascinating to learn all of the psychological aspects of Scripture.  I, and many Christians if I go by the comments under his videos, thank him for helping me understand God more than I ever had before.

He has suffered physically for years and almost lost the battle three years ago.  He can only eat meat - nothing else.  His daughter has to do the same thing.  It’s called the Lion Diet, and those whom it helps do it because eating only certain foods sure beats feeling like hell all the time.  He was once asked on another video I’ll post one day, how he really feels.  He answered that he always feels like he has the flu, but that beats how he used to feel.  He knows suffering.