One of the most difficult topics concerning Christianity is suffering. Lord Jesus Christ called us to pick up and carry our cross while not being of the world, but how much suffering is too much? Should we attempt to alleviate our suffering or embrace it? From my short two-year walk with Christ, I have noticed that experiencing any kind of suffering seems to increase my faith rather than decrease it. Therefore I must conclude that suffering is a gift from God to preserve our salvation.

The first “gotcha” question that atheists usually demand of believers is “Why does God allow suffering?” Their hearts are too hard to understand the answer: because He loves us. Without suffering, we would remain attached to the fallen world and its false idols, never turning away from the neon lights and sensual music to work on our salvation, because it’s only in pain do we start contemplating the big questions of our existence. In the Orthodox Church, one saint has taught that illnesses like cancer which kill you slowly are a gift from God. It removes a person from the world and gives them ample time to serve God in a way that they didn’t before the illness. This explanation does not satisfy the atheist, agnostic, or lukewarm Christian, because they believe the point of this temporal life is to experience pleasure and happiness. Anything that conflicts with that notion will be rejected; they will turn away from you in anger and seek the comfort and benefits that Satan promises them in the here and now, and eventually subject their bodies to all manner of medical tortures to “enjoy” their “one” life.

Even devout Christians require suffering to maintain their faith, because they can easily be tempted and deceived by the evil one upon moments of worldly luck or strength. May I be so bold to say that they need constant suffering, at least at a low level, because a prolonged period of material benefits, without health or money problems, for example, will have a corroding effect on their faith. In many Orthodox monasteries, the monks store and view skulls of dead monks to remind them of death. For us, we need to be inflicted with continual pain, or else we forget that one day, we too will die.

Since my early twenties, I have had heart palpitations. Many nights I have awoken in terror to a thumping chest. In the past few years, the problem has gotten worse, to the point where it’s a daily presence in my life. Like most others with this issue, cardiologists have said they could find nothing wrong with the workings of my heart. I have tried various natural supplements and diet changes, and while they’ve allowed me to manage the problem, causing mostly mental affliction than physical, the sensitivity of my heart and the feeling of its struggle to maintain a normal rhythm is a constant reminder that I will certainly die, well before I desire, that I am closer to death than I would like to be, and the only reason my heart continues to beat is that God allows it. I’m sure there are pharmaceutical medications that can alleviate this problem, but I will not take them, and I also have not prayed to God to remove this affliction entirely, but to allow me to endure it, and to help me only if it is His will, because I know that if my heart palpitations disappear along with all of my other minor health problems, God in his mercy will have to give me another affliction to remind me of my true calling to serve Him in this life, not merely maintain perfect health so that I could enjoy the fallen world. He knows that if I did not have any bodily afflictions that remind me of death, I would slowly backslide into being a man of this world and a child of Satan.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed in your life, as soon as you solve one major problem, it doesn’t take long for another problem to surface. God gives you a cross that is well suited for you, but I imagine He will take it away if you truly can’t bear it. He will let you rest and then give you a new cross, because He knows you need a cross. We all need a cross. He sent His only Son in the flesh to teach you about this reality, and as Christians we must bear whatever cross He gives us if we care about our salvation.

The elderly suffer from health maladies not only because their body is degrading, but because God is trying to prepare them for the next life. The pharmaceutical commercials may show geriatrics having an “active lifestyle,” of actors smiling from ear to ear while playing tennis, but instead of popping dozens of pills a day in a vain attempt to extend life or minimize pain, what they really need to do is beg God to forgive them for their sins and prepare them to serve by His right hand in Paradise. You will not “win” at this life. Instead, you will die before you believe it’s time. It’s when you fight this truth that you really suffer, not only now but in the life to come.

Read Next: The Struggle For Virtue

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Amen! Well said, Roosh! Thanks so much!

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The Lord has not forgotten about you, Roosh and often he guides our hands to point us at a solution. My wife was able to cure her heart palpitations with biomagnetism. Very easy to do at home and it's FREE (except for the magnets which you have to buy but they only cost a few bucks). Will follow up with some details via PM. I know this sounds crazy but it helped my wife after years of wasting her time with useless cardiologists - very same story as yours. IMO it's worth a shot!

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The Lord has not forgotten about you, Roosh and often he guides our hands to point us at a solution. My wife was able to cure her heart palpitations with biomagnetism. Very easy to do at home and it's FREE (except for the magnets which you have to buy but they only cost a few bucks). Will follow up with some details via PM. I know this sounds crazy but it helped my wife after years of wasting her time with useless cardiologists - very same story as yours. IMO it's worth a shot!

Interesting. I think we should be open to treatments and cures outside of the mainstream medical industry for two different reasons:

1 - Many or most of their treatments aren't intended to cure and only treat symptoms and not the underlying problem.
2 - They may deny us care because of vax refusal or general dissent reasons.

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I remembered a Youtuber I used to follow. Who was a very skilled gamer died of cancer in his 20's or 30's. Not far from my own age.

Really brings life into focus. The specter of death presented by coronavirus has done this for many people. And for the seculars who have their pleasures shut off it has been devastating to them.

Like a fog we are here one day. And a short time later we are gone from this mortal coil.

And the worst lie in the modern secular age is that even if the universe has no meaning one can manufacture one's own meanings in its place. Existentialism for example which grants false hope and is one of the many paths to destruction:

And Stardusk one of the Atheists that I still follow ever since my forays into the Manosphere. Recently did a video precisely about finding meaning in a meaningless universe by artificial manufacture:

And the short life is what gives it meaning. Therefore live life to the full because that is all that is. As one of the commentators in this video states:

At some point in the not too distant future, I will die. I will be forgotten quite quickly, like I'd never been born to begin with. Many aeons after that, the sun will blow up. Eventually there will be no more stars or planets left at all, and life will cease, leaving only silence and darkness for all eternity. Maybe I'm strange, but I don't find it difficult to stare these facts in the face without despair or dejection. It's just the way things are. Before the light goes out for good, I merely want to amuse myself a bit and have some joy mixed in with the inevitable suffering. For me that's enough.

-Divergent Integral.

It is a false hope damning many atheist souls. A horrible deception. A false assurance that allows them peace with oblivion when in reality they will be Judged by God.

And despite my attempts to talk to them. Youtube simply deletes my comments.

So please pray for them. Let them come to see the error of their false hope and to come to knowledge of the truth.

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Interesting. I think we should be open to treatments and cures outside of the mainstream medical industry for two different reasons:

1 - Many or most of their treatments aren't intended to cure and only treat symptoms and not the underlying problem.
2 - They may deny us care because of vax refusal or general dissent reasons.

Don't get me wrong. I'm the most skeptical SOB you'll ever come across. Never been one to fall for fashionable scams. So when my wife told me about 'biomagnetism' a few years back I immediately called horsepucky. But heck, she does not have constant palpitations anymore. When she's a bit stressed they sometimes come back but then she applies the proper magnet pairs for 20 minutes and they're gone again. That after having suffered from this since I met her 20 years ago!

Which confounds me to no end because if you dig deeper there's very little scientific proof to back this stuff up. I mean there is some 'research' that sort of makes sense but I have no way of verifying it. But in the end I can't argue with the results.

My wife ended up studying biomagnetism over the past few years and it helped me through a protracted immune system disease I was diagnosed with in 2019. My blood levels are all normal now.

So do I understand how it works? No I really don't. But it does seems to work where traditional treatments have failed.

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I remembered a Youtuber I used to follow. Who was a very skilled gamer died of cancer in his 20's or 30's. Not far from my own age.

We all spend way too much time outside the natural world and with everyone glued in front of their mobile phones and computers the rate of cancer and other modern diseases will only continue to grow. I wonder if he still would be alive had he lived in a more natural environment:

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We all spend way too much time outside the natural world and with everyone glued in front of their mobile phones and computers the rate of cancer and other modern diseases will only continue to grow. I wonder if he still would be alive had he lived in a more natural environment:

I am afraid he wasn't saved before he died.

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It seems that being white is now a cross that draws suffering and pain, both physically and mentally, as people, especially non-whites, continue to become more emboldened to target them with hatred and violence, regardless of their religious or political beliefs.

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When I stand to pray before Christ, I always feel like a thief.
I sense the Gollum/Smeagol dichotomy in inner voices.
"Let us ask Him to ease our lives so that we can enjoy it away from Him. Hehehehe"

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I feel so blessed that I have a cross to carry.

I know how easily I could begin to love this life, and want to save it if it weren't for this blessing from God.

Praise the Lord!

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Who suffers more then god ?

Through his omnipotentus , he feels even the smallest cruelties his little children do to each other.

who are you to suffer less ?

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It seems that being white is now a cross that draws suffering and pain, both physically and mentally, as people, especially non-whites, continue to become more emboldened to target them with hatred and violence, regardless of their religious or political beliefs.

Were you ever personally attacked for being white? Is it such a cross to bear? I love my Carpatho-Rusyn and Italian background, and nobody can tell me otherwise.

I listen to black radio a lot at work, and the police brutality/"white fragility"/whatever narrative works the same as the cood narrative works on middle-class whites: it's a tactic to make an enemy and keep them afraid of doing things. Tune out dumb media and just live your life.

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Absolutely love this article. The Orthodox viewpoint of suffering as presented here is similar to the Catholic view, and I have to say that this viewpoint helped me endure the hardest time of my life.

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One of the ways I'd become alienated from protestantism long before I encountered Orthodoxy was that they had no real theology of suffering. I didn't go to "prosperity gospel" preaching churches, but the general push, whether explicit or implicit, was always God Has An Amazing Plan For Your Life To Make You Happy. To marry the perfect beautiful person, to get a great job and house, and so on. All positive, uplifting messages. Great material for getting butts in the seats.

But what about when Real Life happens? When inevitable heartache, loss, and disappointment comes? They always struggled to give some sort of consolation, perhaps because so much of contemporary evangelicalism is a reaction to the dour Turn Or Burn fire-and-brimstone sermons that tried to scare you into Christian faith, popular for many decades (if not centuries.) Both extremes are in error. I wonder if many who have left Christianity in modern times did so because real life didn't line up with the rosy narrative they were sold. They ran face-first into suffering, and their tradition had no answer for it. Either their pastor shrugged, or maybe they were told wait until you die and sit on a fluffy cloud in Heaven where it'll all be okay.

This is what's so refreshing about Orthodoxy. Spiritual struggle is emphasized from day one. You will be attacked by demons. You will wrestle with your passions and fall flat on your face. You will grow, but only with great effort driven by thirst for God. The lives of Saints are filled with those who suffered for their faith. And of course, all of this is much more consonant with Scripture than the feel-good message of pop Christianity. You aren't told to avoid suffering, but to brace for it and prepare yourself spiritually so that you can be enriched by it rather than lash out against God and grow distant when things don't go your way.

You probably won't become rich, or successful, or popular, but you can be transformed, starting right now, in this life, into who you will be for eternity, someone whose life can reflect the same divine energy that shone through St. John the Theologian, or St. John Chrysostom, St. Photini, St. Seraphim of Sarov, Fr. Seraphim Rose, Elder Ephraim, and so on. Isn't that of infinitely more value - riches of the soul that no thief, no persecution can take away - than the bowl of cold porridge The World offers us instead?

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Most people have never suffered. Real suffering. Everyone has obstacles or even very emotional periods. Extremely unlikely you have suffered serious burns, been through several rounds of chemotherapy, been in a serious car accident where most of your bones were broken, etc.

As someone who is/has gone through a period of years of intense suffering, I'm not quite as pro-suffering. If a person were tied in a basement and tortured for a couple years, having fingers and toes cut off, burned, cut, etc, they would likely say that suffering is not what God hopes for us, but is something terrible that happened to be baked into existence.

Overall, my wish everyday is that the world has less suffering. I know the terror in real, horrifying suffering and hope that no one has to deal with that.

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Reminds me of this little Movie "Beyond Torture" (i see they removed it from YT, so i leave you with the Trailer),
about the communist "re-education" camps in Romania (read the Description of the Trailer)


Later in an interview one of the survivors was asked "what would you say to your torturer now?"
Guy answers "I would thank him. Without him i would never have found God"

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Originally posted on RooshV.com


One of the most difficult topics concerning Christianity is suffering. Lord Jesus Christ called us to pick up and carry our cross while not being of the world, but how much suffering is too much? Should we attempt to alleviate our suffering or embrace it? From my short two-year walk with Christ, I have noticed that experiencing any kind of suffering seems to increase my faith rather than decrease it. Therefore I must conclude that suffering is a gift from God to preserve our salvation.

The first “gotcha” question that atheists usually demand of believers is “Why does God allow suffering?” Their hearts are too hard to understand the answer: because He loves us. Without suffering, we would remain attached to the fallen world and its false idols, never turning away from the neon lights and sensual music to work on our salvation, because it’s only in pain do we start contemplating the big questions of our existence. In the Orthodox Church, one saint has taught that illnesses like cancer which kill you slowly are a gift from God. It removes a person from the world and gives them ample time to serve God in a way that they didn’t before the illness. This explanation does not satisfy the atheist, agnostic, or lukewarm Christian, because they believe the point of this temporal life is to experience pleasure and happiness. Anything that conflicts with that notion will be rejected; they will turn away from you in anger and seek the comfort and benefits that Satan promises them in the here and now, and eventually subject their bodies to all manner of medical tortures to “enjoy” their “one” life.

Even devout Christians require suffering to maintain their faith, because they can easily be tempted and deceived by the evil one upon moments of worldly luck or strength. May I be so bold to say that they need constant suffering, at least at a low level, because a prolonged period of material benefits, without health or money problems, for example, will have a corroding effect on their faith. In many Orthodox monasteries, the monks store and view skulls of dead monks to remind them of death. For us, we need to be inflicted with continual pain, or else we forget that one day, we too will die.

Since my early twenties, I have had heart palpitations. Many nights I have awoken in terror to a thumping chest. In the past few years, the problem has gotten worse, to the point where it’s a daily presence in my life. Like most others with this issue, cardiologists have said they could find nothing wrong with the workings of my heart. I have tried various natural supplements and diet changes, and while they’ve allowed me to manage the problem, causing mostly mental affliction than physical, the sensitivity of my heart and the feeling of its struggle to maintain a normal rhythm is a constant reminder that I will certainly die, well before I desire, that I am closer to death than I would like to be, and the only reason my heart continues to beat is that God allows it. I’m sure there are pharmaceutical medications that can alleviate this problem, but I will not take them, and I also have not prayed to God to remove this affliction entirely, but to allow me to endure it, and to help me only if it is His will, because I know that if my heart palpitations disappear along with all of my other minor health problems, God in his mercy will have to give me another affliction to remind me of my true calling to serve Him in this life, not merely maintain perfect health so that I could enjoy the fallen world. He knows that if I did not have any bodily afflictions that remind me of death, I would slowly backslide into being a man of this world and a child of Satan.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed in your life, as soon as you solve one major problem, it doesn’t take long for another problem to surface. God gives you a cross that is well suited for you, but I imagine He will take it away if you truly can’t bear it. He will let you rest and then give you a new cross, because He knows you need a cross. We all need a cross. He sent His only Son in the flesh to teach you about this reality, and as Christians we must bear whatever cross He gives us if we care about our salvation.

The elderly suffer from health maladies not only because their body is degrading, but because God is trying to prepare them for the next life. The pharmaceutical commercials may show geriatrics having an “active lifestyle,” of actors smiling from ear to ear while playing tennis, but instead of popping dozens of pills a day in a vain attempt to extend life or minimize pain, what they really need to do is beg God to forgive them for their sins and prepare them to serve by His right hand in Paradise. You will not “win” at this life. Instead, you will die before you believe it’s time. It’s when you fight this truth that you really suffer, not only now but in the life to come.

Read Next: The Struggle For Virtue
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I know we pray to suffer before we die to be purified. But what if you have the misfortune of dying a sudden death? I guess all we can do is pray extensively now and repent with the time that is given to us...Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on us sinners.

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I think when we pray the Lord's prayer, and ask God to deliver us from evil, this includes delivering us from instances of suffering. God doesn't always grant these requests, but I still pray for release from suffering, or avoidance whenever possible. I agree with ball don't lie that suffering is not something I can wish for.

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