Suffering (Finding God Within It)
“I am so cautious when it comes to a certain strain of Christian thought that glorifies suffering as a good in itself. Too often, I have heard people say to other grieved people that God is ‘using’ their suffering to accomplish some end, as if it were a hammer with which he intended to nail them into godly place. This is the instrumentalist view of suffering: that it’s somehow a pragmatic necessity in God’s plan, something he intends in order to accomplish his ends. If you’ve
Sickness (Illness)
“Life itself is a form of ascesis. People just don’t recognize it, and lose heart.”…The fact [life], is ascetic in nature means it...