The Purpose of HorribleThings
Ed, don't read this, you'll object.
I couldn't sleep all night because I am upset, and Trey is not being sympathetic or nice, and I started thinking about what is the purpose of creatures like those next door. God has a purpose for the mosquito and the serpent and the wasp and the Tasmanian devil and the electric eel and the blood sucking lawyer (hee hee) and the Dallases. He created the polio virus and the flea and poison ivy and everything else on earth, so it must have a purpose.
What, then, is the purpose of something horrible?
The purpose is to stimulate us to be better people. This is by no means an original conclusion, or a startling one, but we would be indistinguishable from animals if we were not able to fulfill a higher purpose. Consider, if you will, the brilliance of people like Louis Pasteur and Jonas Salk and how the work they did improved the human condition. Were it not for obstacles like the polio and smallpox viruses, they wouldn't have been challenged. You may argue that there are other obstacles that people can tackle, like space travel or building really tall buildings. That may be, but building very tall buildings makes us little better than those termites that build those tremendous mounds in Africa and exploring space is something of an artificial challenge. We need in some ways to be bound together as humanity through human suffering. How are we to fulfill God's plan of showing Charity if there are no poor? How are you to show Compassion, if there is no suffering? How can you show Courage if there is nothing to fear, no obstacle to overcome, no struggle in which not to give up?
Would Jesus have been able to have so many people listen to His message had there been no "sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick."? (Matthew 4:23) (you know I'm in a tight spot, I pulled out my Bible.) This is what He means when he says in the Beatitudes, in Matthew 5:13, "Ye are the salt of the earth, but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men." We can't fulfill God's mission without tribulation, without being meek, without mourning, without hungering and thirsting after righteousness. I don't think I'm going to take it quite so far as martyrdom, and loving my enemies hasn't done me any good up to this point (except, perhaps, to make me a better person in some senses.) Remember that Jesus, like Churchill, promised weeping and gnashing of teeth but He promised also overcoming. And I don't believe he only promised the overcoming in the world to come, but here on earth as well. Did He not say, "I came not to bring peace, but a sword."?
I realise that this is a somewhat blithe dismissal of the true consequences of human suffering; I've lived my entire life, by the standards of the world, as one of the super- rich. I've never had anyone in my family or immediate circle experience river blindness; no one is deformed or horribly crippled and no one has been murdered by Pol Pot or died of potato famine or even had to sleep on the street. Then on the other hand, this happy result comes from long centuries of suffering and gradually overcoming obstacles., on a collective and individual basis. If no one had overcome their own challenges and obstacles for me, I might be an outcast cripple in India or a beggar in Ethiopia or slaughtered in Bosnia. And if individuals had not overcome their own challenges, faced their own Dallases, this country wouldn't be what it is today. Consider the people who inspire us. It is because they have Overcome, not because they were men of leisure (except perhaps in France, which explains a lot.)
Therefore, what I must do is to Overcome, once again, the Evil that is near me and conquer it. It does not do to hope that things shall improve, or continue to fight this war of attrition, but to Fight, and Fight Strongly, and Defeat, however temporarily, that Evil. And now to find the way to do it.
P.S. Isn't it interesting how as one moves up the evolutionary scale, one finds fewer and fewer creatures that are pestilent? Starting with viruses and bacteria and then moving on to insects and then serpents and then mammals (I've left out, to a large extent, the fishes, and isn't it interesting that I can't name a single pestilent bird?)
I couldn't sleep all night because I am upset, and Trey is not being sympathetic or nice, and I started thinking about what is the purpose of creatures like those next door. God has a purpose for the mosquito and the serpent and the wasp and the Tasmanian devil and the electric eel and the blood sucking lawyer (hee hee) and the Dallases. He created the polio virus and the flea and poison ivy and everything else on earth, so it must have a purpose.
What, then, is the purpose of something horrible?
The purpose is to stimulate us to be better people. This is by no means an original conclusion, or a startling one, but we would be indistinguishable from animals if we were not able to fulfill a higher purpose. Consider, if you will, the brilliance of people like Louis Pasteur and Jonas Salk and how the work they did improved the human condition. Were it not for obstacles like the polio and smallpox viruses, they wouldn't have been challenged. You may argue that there are other obstacles that people can tackle, like space travel or building really tall buildings. That may be, but building very tall buildings makes us little better than those termites that build those tremendous mounds in Africa and exploring space is something of an artificial challenge. We need in some ways to be bound together as humanity through human suffering. How are we to fulfill God's plan of showing Charity if there are no poor? How are you to show Compassion, if there is no suffering? How can you show Courage if there is nothing to fear, no obstacle to overcome, no struggle in which not to give up?
Would Jesus have been able to have so many people listen to His message had there been no "sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick."? (Matthew 4:23) (you know I'm in a tight spot, I pulled out my Bible.) This is what He means when he says in the Beatitudes, in Matthew 5:13, "Ye are the salt of the earth, but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men." We can't fulfill God's mission without tribulation, without being meek, without mourning, without hungering and thirsting after righteousness. I don't think I'm going to take it quite so far as martyrdom, and loving my enemies hasn't done me any good up to this point (except, perhaps, to make me a better person in some senses.) Remember that Jesus, like Churchill, promised weeping and gnashing of teeth but He promised also overcoming. And I don't believe he only promised the overcoming in the world to come, but here on earth as well. Did He not say, "I came not to bring peace, but a sword."?
I realise that this is a somewhat blithe dismissal of the true consequences of human suffering; I've lived my entire life, by the standards of the world, as one of the super- rich. I've never had anyone in my family or immediate circle experience river blindness; no one is deformed or horribly crippled and no one has been murdered by Pol Pot or died of potato famine or even had to sleep on the street. Then on the other hand, this happy result comes from long centuries of suffering and gradually overcoming obstacles., on a collective and individual basis. If no one had overcome their own challenges and obstacles for me, I might be an outcast cripple in India or a beggar in Ethiopia or slaughtered in Bosnia. And if individuals had not overcome their own challenges, faced their own Dallases, this country wouldn't be what it is today. Consider the people who inspire us. It is because they have Overcome, not because they were men of leisure (except perhaps in France, which explains a lot.)
Therefore, what I must do is to Overcome, once again, the Evil that is near me and conquer it. It does not do to hope that things shall improve, or continue to fight this war of attrition, but to Fight, and Fight Strongly, and Defeat, however temporarily, that Evil. And now to find the way to do it.
P.S. Isn't it interesting how as one moves up the evolutionary scale, one finds fewer and fewer creatures that are pestilent? Starting with viruses and bacteria and then moving on to insects and then serpents and then mammals (I've left out, to a large extent, the fishes, and isn't it interesting that I can't name a single pestilent bird?)
posted by SavageATL at 5:20 AM
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