WHY SUFFERING? – PHILOSOPHICAL & CHRISTIAN REFLECTIONS Version 1.0 Dated: 1^st May 2003

“Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much are the three pillars of learning” Benjamin Disraeli

SUFFERING AND HOPE Everyone suffers. No one escapes. Sooner or later, all of us will experience suffering. Dr Ronna Jevne, of The Hope Foundation of Alberta, Canada, says: “To understand suffering is a beginning to understanding hope. Suffering, like hope, is built right into life. It is in the context of adversity that we are introduced to hope. Until then we have optimism. We have the false sense of everything being possible. As the doors begin to close with the suffering that accompanies illness or poverty or fate, the mettle of our hope is tempered. Suffering is not the condition from which we suffer, but the assault on the life we live, on the person we are.” (underlined my emphasis) As De Pressense says, “This is a world of suffering….. No matter who you are, you are either threatened with suffering, or actually subject to it. You have been smitten or you know that you will be.” “Come with me and let us reason together.” (Isaiah 1:18) [Isaiah is the 23^rd Book of the Old Testament of the Bible]