A Brief Referencing to the Reality of Evil & Sin As they Affect Human Living

The fact is Jesus suffered, and had to suffer.

"My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" The words of the God-man Jesus crying out to God the Father during the summit of His crucifixion pain, sorrow, heartaches, and perceived moment of near death. The man Jesus truly suffered, and really knew first hand exactly what it was to suffer. Moments previously before they began to lay hand on Him, as He was aware of His destiny to suffer, Jesus also said words revealing His desire to skip the ignominious and excruciating personal and physical ordeal of pain and violent death foresight. He said,: "Father, you have the power to do all things. Take this cup (sacrifice of death at Calvary to the Father for the sins of men) away from me. But let it be as you would have it, not as I." Mark 14:36

We are saying that our Lord irrevocably underwent the extraordinary pain of the Cross... Jesus' experience of suffering was real. It was, as an aspect of His Passion and Death, a hardest human experience even for our Lord. But He embraced it because it consisted His mission of Salvation of mankind whereby He served as the Lamb Sacrifice to the Father for human sinfulness. As we already explained, His suffering was a central part of Jesus' Incarnation, death, and resurrection. And He fulfilled this earthly 'act' literally and completely. Nobody could ever merely allegorize or symbolize the Lord's going through the act of physical, emotional, and mental suffering on the Cross. He did suffer! And He cried suffering because of the total pain and sadness that came along with the complete act.

Why Jesus suffered?

From its fundamental Scriptural aspect human suffering is a revelation account about the "serpent’s"/the devil’s biting of Jesus’s heel, and consequently of each believer’s heel thus resulting in a damage inflicted by evil upon Jesus and his followers. We call this both the phenomenon and the mystery of human suffering and Christian-human sacrificing. This is the main brunt of discussion on part 1 of this chapter. In the mentioned other chapters, we put in context how it all began: both sin and the devil’s getting into the mix of human and earthly existence. We refer to it as the Fall experience and fate of Adam & Eve along with all their descendant human race. (For purposes of faith we are, however, to bear in mind throughout this chapter discussion of God’s gratuitous mercy, whereby it has been permitted by Divine destiny how the serpent/devil was to have bitten Christ and all Christians in order that with the "bite’s" death effect upon Christ and the Christians, Jesus Christ and believing Christians are able to manifest Christ’s and the Christians’ victory over that "death-experience" with Christ’s resurrection, and the Christians’ re-birth into the new life in Christ, including their promised physical resurrection during Jesus’ Second Coming.) But to place all of these in context, this serpent’s bite consisted initially in the devil’s successful tempting of Adam & Eve, and Adam & Eve’s consenting to the temptation, which led to their losing their beginning life of grace, divine life, given them in Eden upon creation, and to the consequential banishment into Earth’s sin-tainted natural/human existing, ie. the total earthly-human predicament of conflicts & suffering. By temporal order Adam & Eve’s conniving with the devil took place first; yet per eternity, the Lord’s being "bitten by the serpent", ie Christ’s being ordained to be assaulted by both the devil’s act of tempting of Adam & Eve and our parents’ act of consenting to the devil’s temptation, has been all along pre-visited, pre-ordained, and pre-destined by God’s forgiving love and mercy to have to take place. God knew in all eternity how certain bad Angels would have rebelled, and would have tempted Adam & Eve, and would have seen Adam & Eve yielding to the devil’s temptation. Thus, by God’s omniscient nature, he has known it would take his having to send a Saviour to earth to have to save Adam & Eve and their offsprings from their having disobeyed him during their initial life of blessedness in Paradise, which necesitated his Divine Wisdom and Divine Loving Mercy to have to provide for mankind a new Divine Plan for union with him via the Son of God’s Incarnation and Redemption of mankind. Hence, the story of this Saviour having to suffer, and his letting man to suffer with him both as his act of ransoming of man, and as man’s act of retribution for their own sins.

Originally, thus, it was on account of the Devil that our first parents got into the mess of the "original sin"; the Devil was directly influential at getting Adam and Eve fall away from the goodwill of God. Consequently as all descendants of Adam and Eve inherited the "original sin", continuously, thus, the Devil and all its demons are again at work messing up all human beings born from Adam and Eve. As repeatedly referred to in different chapters of our Mission Series man or human life has become flawed or made corruptible, both in the physical and psychological/spiritual sense. It was this characteristic of human nature which St. Paul often called man’s life of the flesh. The same reason why he himself confessed of his personal weakness: how no matter how he resisted against it this flawed characteristic of the human nature shamed himself for his natural inability to overcome it; (saved by the grace of God). This is thus, the same ordeal, handicap, or/and death state and predicament each man and human is encumbered with from generations to generations. Prior to baptism all men, or all descendants of Adam and Eve all over the world and throughout the entire human temporal existence were, are, and will be beset by this predicament. All of mankind from the beginning of human history until the End-Time are dead spiritually until they are born again in spirit and in water per baptism into the life of Christ. St. Paul preaches about this again and again in his many Epistles. He belabors on and on this antithetical, even contradictory relationship between living in the flesh versus the living in the Spirit, which he also calls living in the life of grace. (All our other chapters in this Mission Series are inter-related elaboration/explanation about the life of the Spirit or about the life of grace.) In this chapter, and particularly at this juncture of this chapter we are belaboring to expound on the meaning and the real experiencing of and by man of the life of the flesh.

With unbelievers and non-believers, this is exactly no other than the living in sinfulness or in sin, which is the main topic of this Chapter Two in reference to the City of the World, ie City of Sinners. Indeed, without grace, or without our being in the state of sanctifying grace, we are dead spiritually. In other words, if we are without grace, then we are WITH sin. Either we are alive in grace or are dead in sin. (It is on account of this dire reality that it is scary and horrible to die unless we are duly receiving of sanctifying grace. What a terrible moment to be at the moment of our death unprepared without grace inside of us!

(We are not yet discussing nor presenting the perspective of evil & suffering after it has been helped out by the total salvation work of Christ. That will be my later explanation, hopefully.)

Real consequence: critique, therefore, the following statements, -- initially posited in Chapter 1 --, how in all honesty could be and might be described your world and my world. "Are you impoverished, wanting in needs? Does nobody tender you now affection, nobody as to notice you're even there? Are you a presently a pushover, someone's stepping stool? Are you always the follower, never the leader; are you the bridesmaid never the bride? Do you find yourself a stranger even among your friends? Do they look down on you as a moron, and without abilities? Do you find yourself sick? Do you see yourself so incapacitated, and in despair? Does nobody understand you? Are you tired of life? Do you feel like you do not get recognition for your efforts? Do you confused and disoriented about what you truly want, or dream? Are you so scared be it day or night? Do you feel like they do not believe in you? Are you frustrated in love? Do you have a hard time at gaining some kind of strength to even move on? Is life to you so covered by darkness? Do you find your world and your surrounding like a nowhere-land, uncharted and un-mapped? Are you perplexed why in our midst inextricably are the homeless, the jobless, the lonely elderlies in care homes, the sick in the hospitals, the incapacitated in mind and in body, the drug addicts, the aids victims, the alcoholics, the sex addicts. Aren't you baffled about those who are in prison? And about not only them behind carcels, but everyone who is a victim of someone's abuse, somebody's muscling authority, the people oppressed by unlawful rules, oppressed by unjust laws? And about those who find themselves prisoners of their passion or anger? Ultimately, aren't you disgusted to realize how everyone is under the enslavement of sins, in the state of separation from our Maker, God that you can really rely on no one? Don't you loathe the stark realities of sins covering all the reasons and causes of human pain, and suffering. Doesn't all the world overwhelm you being steeped in absolute darkness, and despair?" Just picture multi-million men and women behaving any second according by their 'weak flesh' and presto there add those further countless acts of offenses against one another.

And so, we have described suffering as this "fundamental phenomenon of broken-ness" either within the person or between persons. Through those examples we could decipher the individuals’ experiencing of being cut inside them – whether physically or emotionally, of being torn apart from someone or others, again spatially or emotionally or culturally, and/or of any other similar experience of the destroying of individuals and communities or inter-relations on account of, along with other human shortcomings, natural selfish oppositions or irreconcilable differences. We say an individual suffers when certain parts of his body breaks up, eg. like bruises, and wounds, or like a broken heart as in hurt or injured feelings. Moreover, individuals suffer when between each other some separated-ness exists, or conflicts take place. Thus, we could generally denote suffering as human ‘conflicted-ness’, ie conflicts within himself or conflicts with others. Within oneself man is always burdened by fears, worries, and uncertainties that always clouden and foreshadow man’s day to day living notwithstanding any amount of caution and diligent efforts about dealing with them. Then as regards his relations with others, every individual has no guarantee he wont be betrayed by somebody no matter if he be his/her "best friend" or his/her closest blood relation. The individual selfish interest will always dictate an individual’s bottom-line behaving with respect to others. How sad it is to experience the moment when a promise is broken, or our trust betrayed!

But the reality is what Jesus underwent, each and every man is going to have to undergo. Jesus tried to refuse it so its natural we are going to want to refuse to suffer. Jesus went through it. And according to Him, if we are to be His true disciples, we have to go through our crosses, or our own types of suffering in life. And as Jesus cried as He suffered, we are going to cry going through our suffering. As humans we already know what it is to suffer. But if Jesus, the God-man had to suffer, how much more appropriate it is for us human beings that we suffer. As God, Jesus is above suffering; whereas we as mere creatures are necessarily involved with suffering. We have to suffer anyway. It is a fact of life. Whether we like it or not we have to suffer in life! We cried during the first moment we saw the light of day when we were born. We suffered as we went through the pains of growing up. E.g. mostly suffering of the fear of the unknown. Being uninitiated in the different aspects of life we struggled to face each and every stage of boyhood/girlhood, and later of manhood/womanhood. It seemed then like older guys or people always had the advantage over us the younger ones. And we complained when we were told we just had to experience and pass all kinds of initiations that seemed only okay for the already experienced. How terrified we were during our first jump over the deep water, at our first day at school left behind by our parents, at our first real propositioning of or getting propositioned by the opposite sex, at the first time we had to leave home or town and off to an unfamiliar city or environment, at our first challenge to a fistfight or girl squabble, at our first taste of accident, whether a fall or a car accident where it almost cost our life, when we were faced squarely by the consequences of our first major life mistake, when we had to measure up to many standard tests of social institutions where we thought we were no match for competition with others seemingly more suited for the tests, etc... Then there are the real life-like human sufferings, or social disparities in life. Others are born rich, others are poor; others are more physically endowed of beauty or strength or size, others are not; others are born with greater IQ, others are not; others are raised in more affluent environment of better school and peers, others are not; others are born in peaceful families or communities, others are not; others seem well connected for social advances, others seem so all alone and without any manner of assistance, etc.... Then we have those sufferings under the category of misfortunes: those raised orphans, those born handicapped in faculties, those that were victims of child abuse, even sex abuse when they were so very vulnerable, those that went through life unsettling events of society or of nature like disasters & catastrophe, or incapacitating military sojourn, changes in economy or political events or government, etc..

Directly or indirectly these examples of suffering are results and manifestations of the sinful man. And when the suffering is indeed directly the result of a sinful act like aids, gonorrhea, incarceration or any trouble with the law, most abortions, criminal convictions due to falsification of documents, stealing and robbery, assault and abuse of someone, or any other criminal act, then the suffering is more painful. Such an individual is pained by both the punishment and the guilt of the act. And indeed, oftentimes, our suffering is the result of our own doing, whether individually or collectively. At other times, they are caused directly by our fellow human beings even if without any fault of ours. And then also at other times it is caused simply by our being members of the imperfect creations: our predicament of human shortcoming. I.e. we are imperfect beings; and our world is an imperfect world. Nothing will seem to be right ever; and nothing will seem to be enough ever. We just have to suffer having to put up with our imperfections.

Let us call to mind some very concrete and relevant human suffering. You have grown cozy to your home of many years. You have made your home your kind of 'palace'; all over the house are marks of your personal touches, and all involving no insignificant money outlay. Into this home you have put precious hard earned out-of-pocket money as your sole investment. You have loved your house; and you do not imagine your family except in the unique environment of your house. Then all of sudden, because of some financial disaster, you are very very close to losing your home. You want to tell your family they are not going to lose their home. You want to tell yourself you have a way of saving your home. Yet the facts keep glaring before your eyes how seemingly insurmountable the conditions in order to hurdle through your financial disaster. It is seriously threatening your home ownership. Imagine the days and nights they preoccupied your heart and mind with only the thoughts that your home was likely gone, and that you are at the end of the rope trying hard yet to be on top of the financial fiasco you're in. Ultimately, imagine the moral effect of the problem on your thinking, spiritual and prayer life, and on your personal faith! You feared you have offended God so badly it seems He is cutting you off His Providential care. You are now forsaken by God; and sooner afterwards you will find yourself abandoned also by your friends, and even maybe by your relations. You see them looking down on your misfortune. Now deprived of your home; now "an outcast" from their "select" company and "friendship"!

Here’s another scenario. All your life you have been blessed with good jobs, and along with them good income. You always have been able to provide for your family; seemingly everything the family wanted. Nice house, nice cars, (and more than a couple of them; all in good shape, and running), all the appliances, all the latest fancy home equipments and entertainment gadgets, yearly vacation, parties with friends, etc.. Then it happened you lost your job; somehow you had become dispensable to your company. And whereas the limelight of your life has passed you now; deep-cut competition has put you out of the leverages; now you are a spent hardworker faced with the reality of being permanently out of a job. Now comes the preoccupation of losing the old fancy and happy go lucky lifestyle that you and your family had grown accustomed to. All of a sudden the goals of complete provision for the kids' college graduation are getting obscure. The forced predicament of belt tightening all the way across your buying and spending habits seemed a tough pill to swallow. Every single dollar seemed to have to be watched to make ends meet. And with the job gone, so did your company benefits of health insurance coverages, and pension entitlements. This time you are on your own having to shoulder expensive out of pocket costs of possible major sickness or hospitalization eventuality for the family.

The above two scenarios are an illustration of real life suffering. This is that human condition where we are confronted with the precariousness of human material living. Now you are in control; later you are not. This may not seem as dire as the problems of people living in the squatters; but when you have become acclimated to a lifestyle of abundance and are suddenly poor, the squatter people might be less troubled and unsettled as you are. (This is not to say that living in the squatter environment is a commendable state; and that the squatter residents do not deserve betterment in life. Some of them probably stepped up financially; and are already living under much more humane living conditions. But this is not the issue here.) Our issue is that suffering comes to any walk of life. The variety of suffering differs in different people or individuals. Another example of a painful suffering is the loss of your loved ones at their prime age. The loss of loved, cherished one at any age at any time is always painful. Especially if you have depended upon him/her emotionally or spiritually; not to include financially as this aspect of suffering has been alluded to already above. Then there is the suffering of and by the very sick people, especially by those without any means to pay for medical services they need, or to even just buy medicines to stop the pain. Then the terminally diagnosed sick patients: how could they accept the sure imminent end of their lives? Not to mention, how to cope with the usually accompanying great physical pain of their sickness?

There are, moreover, suffering which some people claim to be not completely of their own making. Some suffering are a result of people, events, and factors beyond the control of certain individuals caught as they say between the devil and the deep blue sea. These individuals loudly complained they did not have the complete free choice why they did what evil they did! Criminality committed by individuals who, throughout most of their lives lived an abused life is supposedly one example of this. They never learned what was it to be innocent, to receive attention and affection without having to 'bribe about it', to understand legitimate praise and reward for honesty and effort. What they imbibed early on was the raw deal; and how they interact with others and the society basically is influenced by this. Thus when they got their chances at a higher stakes, they not only blew their chances, the chances even got them into even bigger mess. They were just not prepared to handle themselves through their life's only opportunity break, that was either very riskfully favorable or very delicately tempting. And chances were, their break only turned south and sour. How so often did 'normal society' or 'normal people' screamed in chorus about these marginalized individuals with prior stereotyping statements like, "If I were you, I would not trust these type of people...", and later with condescending words like, "I told you so; nothing good was going to come out of these type of people... ". Up front, these individuals are demoralized from ever doing good. Then immediately after failure, they are summarily dismissed as hopelessly incapable of any good. Hence, the story of the lives of these socially marginalized individuals are a script of a series of mess ups and downfalls, including criminal entanglements down through the end of their lives. Yet the Lord said His Kingdom will be filled with whores and prostitutes, robbers and thieves, and all other dishonorable members of the society who have by the end of their lives found God; unlike those who are high-minded, and very knowledgeable, but are lacking in humble acknowledgement of themselves before the eyes of God. The key here is the fact that people who suffered much knew nothing anymore except beg the Lord for help to acknowledge their misery and helplessness.

Then, how about the suffering of the imprisoned. People in prison suffer the most. One fatal mistake and they got to be cloistered against their choices. Their future is practically finished. They are forever branded by their immediate past mistake. And their present is a life in "hell". Emotionally, mentally, and spiritually the life of the prison inmate is a life the society might consider a life in the dumps. They are dishonorable; they are to be feared; and they are 'hopeless' people. Presumably, by no means might they have any meaning for daily existence. Inwardly, thus, they are likely always troubled; and outwardly in relation to fellow inmates, each one is under the menace of the other's despondent disregard for other inmates. Since they might think they are all expendable, each one would not have second thought if he/she found it expedient to harm, even kill another fellow inmate. Very easily, their environment could succumb to the orientation of "survival of the fittest", where each one is pitted against each other if expediency become the motive yesterday, today, or tomorrow. And whereas it was a serious mistake that cost them their freedom, more likely fatal mistakes could cost them their physical lives inside. It is easy to think prisoners are already condemned to forever meaninglessness, and despair. It is sheer and absolute suffering of the highest kind. Yet we began this site with the message of freedom to everyone in bondage. And to these very unfortunate people in gravest human bondage Christ's message of freedom is most true! But at the same time it is obviously from them that God gives the call for greatest suffering. They are to suffer their loss of social freedom; yet the truth, if they believe and embrace it, shall make them free! After they made their initial serious fatal mistake they had found out they no longer have anything to prove to others. Their attempt to do it cost them their freedom. They knew better now that getting physical with other inmates to the point of violence would not mean anything anymore; and so they have no more reason whatsoever to entertain any provocation of violence. It did not do them any good then; it will not do them any good now. And if by the will of God an inmate becomes victim of violence by other inmates, it will not be their gain, and it will not be his/her loss. It will only transport him/her to the freedom hereafter. Made aware of this wisdom and prudence an inmate ,like the convalescent aged person, has only the total opportunity to prolonged 24 hour prayerfulness to God, as well as the total opportunity to proclaim and witness to his/her newly found God. In a place that looks like hell but is not hell yet converted inmates are God's best messenger of salvation to other inmates, who will be willing to a change of their heart, and ways. What we call the toughest suffering might be the highest call of mission for some blessed individuals inside prison

Ultimately, thus, evil or sin consists in judging or acting by exclusive natural standard and with the imperfect and flawed human faculties. This inescapably unravels into necessarily time and space constricted perceiving or achieving. Sans of the faith element accompanying and even actually elevating the "judging" or "acting" to their fullest dimension and capability, such restricted and faith de-capacitated human activities are bound, surely, to reckon with mere temporal and visible or tangible dealing with reality. It can only be surmised how easily and falsely human existence would have become characterized. In other words, atheistic and agnostic attitude and behaving naturally follows under such existentially restricted dealing with reality, regarding with both facts and ideas.

Sans of faith, or grace; or to be without God, it becomes an open city for evil and evil spirits to occupy that realm of human existing. Another way to look at it: evil and the Devil has been given a free hand over the lives of such unbelieving & non-believing people. And to their tragedy, they then have unraveled their lack of God in their lives by the consequential chaotic and troublesome living of their lives. The last paragraph above preceding this synthesizing outline illustrates this dire and tragic effect of a life cast into the power and dominion of the evil spirits.