We are now in God's End Times, with tribulation, pain & suffering for all:
- 7 years for Born Again Christians;
- 14 years for Jews seeking their true Messiah;
- Eternity for Athiests, and other workers of iniquity.
Psalm 2 & 83
Right now, we are likely experiencing Psalm 83, and Psalm 2 simultaneously.
Nations, groups, and individuals seek unlimited power. They want more than their fair share. They don't want to folĺow God's laws. They want to get their own way, all the time. They don't want to compromise, nor have compassion nor love for others.
If not you, then your family, friends, neighbours, or acquaintences will likely suffer in these End Times. Some may just suffer from having to be aware (or choosing to be aware) of the suffering experienced by others.
To help you and all others, I have written the following. It may be somewhat mis-guided, or incomplete, or too pointed. If so, please make suggestions so as to further improve it.
Pleasure, Pain, & Suffering
After the fatal mistake of Adam & Eve, this became a fallen, evil world which is full of sin, iniquity, blasphemy, disease, pain, and suffering.
If that hasn't been bad enough for the last 6,000 years or so, we have now entered End Times, to now receive Satan's worst, plus God's judgments.
Remember, this isn't our home. We are merely sojourning here, passing through this land of God, on our way to our ultimate destination: Heaven.
Fortunately, God originally created a beautiful, resource-filled world. As we sojourn in this world, we have duties and responsibilities to God, ourselves, other people, and to God's creation.
There is a God created paradox in this world. Even though this is a fallen evil world in which we are trapped, there is also true love here. There is also joy, peace, accomplishment, fulfillment, friendship, excitement, surprise, beauty, and many other treasures; all of which are often found in the most bizare and unexpected places. To that, God adds an uncountable number of His blessings. All this helps make this world exciting, bearable, and a mystery.
Hedonism
Some people seek after only pleasure, and avoid suffering and pain as much as possible. Hedonism is the prioritizing of pleasure over all other life values. Some will step over other people, lie, cheat, conspire, and do many other evils so as to gain an advantage in material wealth and hedonistic pleasure. The Bible tells us that the love of money is the root of all evil (material wealth being a fungible form of money). Hedonism is believed to be independent of well-being. Culture, pragmatism, and rationalization; all potent weapons of Satan used against us, and God's creation in general, as they depict hedonistic lifestyles as an ideal to be admired and sought after. Unfortunately hedonism is a mirage, a vacuum, an empty, unhappy place without transcending meaning and purpose; a place of selfish, unhealthy, unconcern with the well-being of others.
Therefore hedonism is not an effective alternative to suffering & pain.
Isolationism
What about being an isolated ostrich? Can we, should we stick our proverbial head in the sand, and pretend nothing is going on, ignore all of it?
I was often told that as long as the sun comes up in the morning, that "ostrich" isn't interested in the least about what is going on in the world, nor what is in the newspaper, nor the radio, nor the TV, and certainly not what was on the Internet (they were over 70 years old). They'll continue their life just as it us today. That might work so long as nobody is actively trying to kill you; then what? Also, where is their empathy, sympathy, compassion, and altruism for their neighbours?
God tells us to love our neighbours as we love ourselves. Does ostrich mentality meet that commandment? I don't think so.
Empathy, Sympathy, Compassion, Altruism
Empathy is the “natural capacity to share, understand, and respond with care to the affective states of others”.
Empathy refers more generally to our ability to take the perspective of and feel the emotions of another person, while compassion is when those feelings and thoughts include the desire to help.
Jesus taught us through His numerous examples of His compassion.
In normal circumstances with strangers, we have transactional interactions (eg. we exchange money to get a cup of coffee). With friends and family, we do things out of love, or future reciprocity (ie. "you owe me one").
With "altruism", those normal rules are suspended. We do things for others with no expectation that they will ever pay, or owe us anything, or return the favor. We often experience joy when their acute suffering comes to an end. We do the right thing because that is what we would have liked or prayed for if the circumstances were reversed.
Psychopaths & CIPA
Psychopaths and anti-social persons are generally regarded to have a reduced ability, or no ability whatsoever to truly feel empsthy, compassion, sympathy, or altruistic feelings towards others.
Obviously, neither of these is
a solution to pain and suffering.
Sickness
When somebody is sick, we pray for the sick, that they may have added strength through the Holy Spirit to continue, and find purpose in their suffering by the righteous changes their suffering causes in themselves, their family, their friends, their neighbours, and all strangers who cross their path.
Pain, suffering, grief, loss, and similar are powerful change agents. They help us learn (or remind us) what is truly valuable in this life. They are all used by God, just as a competant healing physician uses surgery, powerful diagnostic tests, pharmaceutical drugs, and rehabilitation treatments to restore quality of life in a patient.
If we hedonistically seek to escape too soon, or at any cost, from pain, suffering, grief, loss, and similar; we are sometimes fighting against God's custom designed treatment plan for us.
Are there lessons we need to learn? Values that need to be re-aligned? Priorities that must be adjusted? Dead, rotting, necrotizing, evil parts of us that need to be recognized as such, so that we willingly and eagerly choose to cut them off, burn them up, and separate them from our good, clean, functional, righteous self. Is there excess baggage and millstone tied around our neck that we must jettison?
Pain, suffering, grief, and loss tend to slow us down and create open time in our busy schedule. This freed up time is best spent with God, reading His Word, praying, and listening. These prepare us to then implement a new, better, more righteous plan for our life. Do not get stuck in the reading phase, nor the praying phase, nor the listening phase. Do not do a superficial, half-baked effort of reading the Word, praying, and listening for God. These must all work together; just like a great chef uses a blend of salt, sugar, spices, and texture; and avoids excessive amounts of any ingredient.
Pain, suffering, grief, and loss will not be with you forever. The faster you learn your lessons, the faster you make the necessary changes, the sooner God can remove these powerful change agents from your life, and reward you with blessings galore.
Job was fully healed by God after Satan tested and tormented him. Job, his wife, his 3 friends, and millions of us who read about Job in the Bible all learned valuable lessons through Job's misery and sickness. God doubled His blessing on Job, more than fully restoring him.
God turned Satan's evil against Job into good. I suggest that God will do the same for your illness, pain, and suffering.
Pain, suffering, grief, and loss sometimes arise as natural consequences from prior trauma in our lives. Apostle Paul had a thorn in his flesh, for which he repeatedly prayed to God for healing. Eventually, God said, "No, not now, not yet".
When we, the Born Again Christians, are raptured at the 2nd. Coming of Jesus Christ, we will receive an eternal, perfect body. God wants the change at that time to be obvious, and our joy therefrom, to last for all eternity. If all our aches and pains are healed now, that miraculous change won't be so miraculous. Therefore consider these bearable aches and pains as scars and medals commemorating our hard fought battles that we won and survived. Bear them with strength and honour.