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The concept of suffering
Essay on suffering in life
The concept of suffering
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Book of Job: Suffering
The book of Job 1:3, in The New Oxford Annonated Bible, states "Job was the greatest man among all in the East." He was a faithful servant of God, he owned thousands of animals, and had many servants and friends. Job had a very large family with seven sons and three daughters. Why was Job chosen to suffer and receive punishment at the hands of the Lord one may ask? The major themes in the book describe the ways Job deals with suffering and despair the Lord handed him. How one deals with despair and suffering is what makes a person who he or she is.
The Lord is not a stranger to suffering. Psalms 69:33-36, states “The
Lord hears the needy and does not despise his captive people. Let heaven and earth praise him. The seas and all that move in them. For God will save Zion and rebuild the cities of Judah. Then people will settle there and possess it; the children of his servants will inherit it; and those who love his name will dwell there.” God does not intentionally inflict despair and heartache on his believers for no reason at all. I think the despair we experience, and how we deal with it, is a test to show our true selves.
The Lord does not make us suffer because of what we have done. Through suffering, we become better people and grow as an individual. You find your identity through terrible experiences. I have dealt with serious heartache and do believe that I have grown from it...
On the other hand, J.B. was confronted with four friends, the first three encouraging him to turn against God but the fourth telling him to pray to God and to praise Him. In the end, God gives back Job, his original wife Sarah, and his ten kids. He is rid of the painful sores and his possessions are doubled.
...n the world. Job questions what god is really doing for him. Then god talks to job in question form about the creation of the earth. This shows that jobs is very small compared to god, so small that he cannot even being to understand some of the the things god is telling him. Chapter 38 proves to job that humans are far below the power of god then in chapter 42 job quickly shames himself for the previous things he said.
“Recovering the Scandal of the Cross,” (Green, Baker) presents an alternative means of thinking for Christians theologically. The author’s task of interpreting culture and communicating within a culture is incredibly difficult. Much of the biblical teaching of God is rooted into communicating to a specific group of people and a certain culture. Yet God has chosen the Bible as the method of communicating himself to the world. Green and Baker begin to lay the groundwork of historical influence of atonement from Anselm and Irenaeus. They later introduce ideas from Charles Hodge and penal substitution. There are four major models of explanations of the atonement: Christus Victor, penal substitution, satisfaction and moral influence. Although others are mentioned in the book, this sets the stage of the historic dilemma from which they can view atonement in their discussion of tradition.
...sterton, G. K.. "Introduction to The Book of Job." The Hebrew Bible In Literary Criticism. Ed. and Comp. Alex Preminger and Edward L. Greenstein. New York: Ungar, 1986. 449-50.
...ade to choose him for the spiritual task. Job realized he had to experience loss and suffering in the name of God to pass the test God bestowed upon him. God stated “Who is that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me... Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth” (p.667) God notified Job he was in no position to question the loss he must undertake in order to complete his mission. Job realized the meaning of his life, when he realized the magnitude God went to convince him of his calling. Job forgave himself for his sacrifices, because he realized it was instructed by God.
Despite its prevalence, suffering is always seen an intrusion, a personal attack on its victims. However, without its presence, there would never be anyway to differentiate between happiness and sadness, nor good and evil. It is encoded into the daily lives people lead, and cannot be avoided, much like the prophecies described in Antigone. Upon finding out that he’d murdered his father and married his mother,
and he uses this suffering as a means of motivation. Loneliness plagues each of the
got, would he have lived a long and happy life as the King along with his Queen, instead of dying by the shear will of
In both “Roger Malvin's Burial” and “The Minister's Black Veil,” Nathaniel Hawthorne centralizes the themes of sin, guilt, and repentance. Both are very much set in terms of what defines sin and, in turn, what would constitute action leaving an opening for forgiveness, and both leave many a question unanswered in the story being told. The main question for us becomes, then, one of applicability. Does either story hold a message, if so, what? In considering the two, it may be that they do indeed hold a message, but maybe that message is not one that Hawthorne himself could ever have intended. In this paper I will deal with the themes of guilt, sin, repentance and how Hawthorne developed them in both stories.
In "Per Repitio Nos Studiare: The Struggles of Abraham and God," Ryan Priester also explores how one learns through repeated suffering. Instead of examining human apathy or submission in the face of pain, however, his examination of the binding of Isaac introduces us to the role of human rebellion and resistance. Both The Waste Land and the relationship between Abraham and God revolve around the human response to excess and extremity.
pain and suffering. In life there is despair, confusion and grief. In just one day a man experiences
There are many scriptural references that make the point that the murderer must be punished. Nevertheless, biblical tradition is also replete with reminders that vengeance belongs to the Lord and that he enjoins the qualities of compassion and forgiveness on those believers in the biblical revelation of God. (Amo...
This section is one of the most difficult to interpret and translate in the entire New Testament, but it must be viewed and understood in the context of the book of 1 Peter and the entire Bible. We have broken verses 13-22 into two sections for the purpose of this essay, but when Peter wrote them, they were not sections, but a whole thought. He is simply continuing the thoughts of the 5 verses we just discussed. He says in verse 17 it is better to suffer for doing what is right than for doing what is wrong, and continues in verse 18 with the example Christ set by suffering unjustly for God's glorious purposes. His victory came through unjust suffering. Verse 18 is the doctrinal justification for verses 13-17, and is the finale to Peter's section on the unjust suffering of believers. This doctrinal justification is what gives the believer confidence in the face of persecution. Knowing Christ's suffering led to His victory gives assurance to believers that their suffering will a...
According to Brooks (2014), people seek happiness but indirectly obtain several tests that affects their emotions in many ways. Indeed, when people are is questioned about their past, memories coming back to her mind are often the most important positively as negatively. A positive event can be the birth of a child, success. In contrast, a negative event is often links to death, failure, a dismissal, and so on. Suffering or pain also gives us an outside perspective. Without a doubt, suffering makes us human we like it or not. For example, when a friend tells that she has failed an exam and we realize that we could get it easily, it is hard to understand exactly her emotion because we have never been in the situation. But when the same situation arises and you become the concerned, you understand the effect that this failure may have on you emotionally. In this sense, we understand that suffering makes people human because it helps them to be connected to a situation already happened before or which could happen in the future.
Injustice and justice balance out. One might even go so far as to say that the two are one and the same, that they are two sides of the same coin. But why are they so important? Why have wars been waged over instances of injustice? Why are the two usually thought of as being separate? Both Euripides' Electra and the King James Version of Matthew suggest that justice and injustice are important and distinct because one brings about salvation, while the other is itself a sort of salvation. Injustice leads to the instance of justice—of salvation. Consequently, injustice and justice may be thought of as two separate and distinct ideas. Salvation is a concern that is dependent upon instances of injustice and justice. In Electra and Matthew, these instances of injustice and justice are acts of murder.