January 27th
Not the best Bart Ehrman’s book (too many generalities and too much time spent on recollections of his private life with regard to reasons for suffering, not enough agnostic/atheist points on that subject), but he always keeps a high level of professionalism in his books. Recommended as a primer for study of biblical/religious view of suffering in life from an agnostic point of view. Also, it gave me a push to go back to reading the Bible — last year I stopped on Book of Psalms, will restart reading soon (it was the chapter on Book of Ecclesiastes that gave me the strength to do it again).
Have I ever blamed God for my suffering? I don’t think so — I blamed God on things that cause suffering of other people — all the natural disasters and accidents, terminal and/or painful illnesses, especially of children.
And why do I suffer? For most part it was easy to explain — it was me, my choices, my actions that made me suffer. On some level it was also caused by others, or things beyond my control — like my acne that made me look like a greasy, pimpled freak.
I never thought that my suffering can be in any way a good thing, I don’t believe in this “whatever won’t kill you, will make you stronger” bullshit. It was just there, and it was for me to find a way alleviate it. And I found just a thing — get addicted, so I won’t have to think about it and will cause myself brand-new reasons to suffer.
I don’t think that until a couple of months ago I would believe that I can go through to live without suffering. That is one of the biggest changes about me since I got sober — I can be happy, or indifferent and ok with it. I don’t need to suffer and look for new reasons to suffer to feed my addiction.
The fact that there are so many people out there that suffer — either from themselves or from their close ones or from their government or (as they say because of their god or maybe some other god/religion) or basically from people in power who can easily make so many people suffer — it bothers me a LOT. But I don’t see any God in this suffering, it’s either nature (that doesn’t care for us anyway), or we people make suffering so common.
Since religion was created God was an escape from suffering for many people and that, I guess, is the only proper role for God/religion. As for suffering from hands and laws and words of others… well, I got some ideas that I might even put in words here, eventually.
