The senseless death acquires a meaning only with the resurrection of Jesus to new life with God, as known by faith. Only in the light of this new life from God does it become clear that the death was not in vain. That God who seems to have left him without support in the public gaze, did in fact sustain him through death. That God had not forsaken him who felt God's abandonment as no one had ever felt it before. That human suffering and death thus acquires a meaning that man as he suffers and dies simply cannot produce himself, which can only be given to him by someone who is wholly other, by God himself.
Cannot the already completed suffering and death of this One also reveal a hidden meaning in the otherwise meaningless suffering and death of the many? Man's suffering remains suffering, death remains death, past suffering is not made not to have happened, present suffering is not rendered innocuous nor future suffering made impossible. Suffering and death remain as an attack on man's life. Suffering is not to be reinterpreted belittled or glorified. Nor is it to be accepted stoically, apathetically, unemotionally. And certainly, it should not be sought masochistically, making asceticism a source of pleasure. It is to be fought by every human means - as must be made clearer later - in both the individual and the social sphere, in both persons and structures.
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Breaking in more directly as a political blogger.
Behind this last paragraph is a catalog of the pathological ways in which people become obsessed with and controlled by suffering and death, pain and, in much of the living out of that pathology, evil. If a lot of that pathology is attributable to religion - some, though not nearly as much of that attribution, fair - as much of it and more can be attributed to atheism. The malignant content of popular culture, such things as the gladiatorial games of the Roman Empire (abolished during the Christian period) bull fighting, bear and badger baiting, fox hunting, big game hunting, sexual sadism, the promotion of sado-masochism (one of the most disgusting and bizarre things held up as a libertarian "value" in modernism, Camus could see where that led even as the "feminist" girlfriend of Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir made him a symbol of "freedom" of the twisted form that takes in so much of modernism.
In 1886 Richard von Krafft-Ebing introduced "sadism" as a pathological term, and De Sade -- both the man and his writings -- became a subject for psychiatrists. The avant-garde poet Guillaume Apollinaire dubbed him "the Divine Marquis" and "the freest spirit that ever lived," and later he became a hero to the Surrealist movement. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Albert Camus condemned De Sade as a spiritual forerunner of the Fascists and the Stalinists, but Michel Foucault credited him with giving the Western world "the possibility of transcending its reason in violence." De Sade's works are now published in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, an honor reserved for acknowledged classics, and their prestige in academic and critical circles has never been higher.
And Camus is more than matched by today's ringing endorsement of any and all expressions of cruelty as "freedom," to be listed as a protected "right" as in the Supreme Court decision protecting sadistic pornography, even that in which prostitutes in high heals stomp small animals to death. In the atheist establishment of the late 20th century such sexual sadism as is guaranteed in the adult sexual use of children was considered to be such a value that the porn and pedophilia "rights" advocating editor of the Dutch magazine (pedophile ring) "Paidika" Vern Bullough was not only the "human sexuality editor" at the Regnery of American atheism, Prometheus, he was named a "Humanist of the Year" by the "Humanists". He was hardly the only figure in organized and cultural atheism who was an advocate of even that advocacy for the most exploitative and damaging use of innocent people.
And that doesn't even make a dent in the entirely secular, often opposed by religion, often not only defended by participated in promotion and protection of an obsession with and glorification of pain and evil. There is certainly the cult of death of the type of which Nazism was only one species, much of that deriving from Darwinism, especially as articulated by his foremost European champion, Ernst Haeckel. Marxism with its adoration of violence and killing, even when that is named by the euphemism "struggle" glories in pain and evil. Anarchism is guaranteed to result in little else as gangsters vie for control - do I need to remind you that the anarchist goddess Emma Goldman adored Nietzsche for his inversion of morals? And there are the more cold-blooded expressions of the same thing in the French, English, Scottish, American etc. enlightenments. I would say that the romantic obsession of gothic literature is also an expression of the same thing.*
When you remove morality that can't be articulated in science or mathematics from the discourse of freedom and rights, that is a guaranteed result. And that doesn't get to other pain, disease and death that is routinely involved in the pathological uses of sex, all of that intimately connected with the evils of inequality and the exercise of power by those who have power and strength through natural or entirely man-made means.
All of that could not possibly be more relevant to the question of evil, the question of pain and suffering, much of which the very same ideological atheists who use the question of pain and evil as a polemical weapon come down heavily on the side of the freedom of those who can use others to be free to use them. That is always, in my reading of history, going to be the main effect of the 18th century, enlightenment ideology, a few minor examples aside. The articulation of freedom in the anti-Christian ideology of that cultural movement and even in the nominal Christianity that sought to modify Christianity to be compatible with it on the terms of materialist scientism - see Jefferson, as an example - will come to support pain and evil for some and the guaranteed callousness of even those who suffer less as they enjoy their unequally endowed freedom and "rights".
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In the light of the suffering and death of this One who senselessly suffers and dies only one thing can be said, but this is decisive; even manifestly senseless suffering and death can have a meaning, can acquire a meaning. A hidden meaning. Man cannot himself attach this meaning to suffering, but he can accept it in light of the perfect suffering and the dying of this One. A meaning is not given automatically no wishful thinking is to be satisfied, no glorification of suffering proclaimed, no tranquilizers provided and no cheap consolation offered. But a meaning is offered which can be freely accepted. Man has to decide. He can reject this -hidden - meaning; in spite, cynicism or despair. He can also accept it; in believing trust in him who endowed the senseless suffering and death of Jesus with meaning. Protest, rebellion or frustration then become superfluous. Despair is at an end.
The Christian, looking to the raising up of the One sufferer to life, has himself the resurrection not behind him, but before him. Suffering remains an evil. But with trust in God it is not absolute evil which - as in Buddhism - would have to be dissolved in a nirvana by denying the will to live. Only separation from God is absolute evil and apart from God evil has no meaning. Suffering belongs to man. It belongs in fact to the fullness of man's life in this world' even love is linked with suffering. Man is meant to reach life through suffering. Reason can never show why this is so, why this is good and appropriate for man, why things would not be better without suffering. But, with trust in God, in the certain ope of a revelation of its meaning at the consummation, it can be accepted as meaningful even at the present time in the light of the suffering, death and new life of Jesus.
As I have been pointing out this week, those who most often raise the "question of evil, pain, suffering" do so, not looking for an answer but to use against one very set definition of God as all powerful and all good at the same time. Of course they are asking that of people and, unsurpisingly, the people asked have never been able to come up with an answer that will satisfy those asking it - or themselves, by the way. It is no surprise to religious people that this is a hard question, the question of evil, in that articulation of it, is a mystery to those who hold the only possible framing in which the distinction between good and evil can be given a solid foundation, in the will of God, it's not as if people who accept that belief haven't been trying to find an answer to that from before the time the story of Job was invented. The book of Job is such a developed and sophisticated treatment of the problem that it, itself, must be the product of a long cultural history which must, as well as belief, contain both doubts and the unhelpful religiosity of Job's comforters.
But as I have pointed out, the atheist-materialist devotees of scientism, the anti-Christian-anti-Jewish-anti-Islamic hecklers have got nothing better. They've got nothing, that they promise nothing doesn't change that at all. The Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of all of us into God, that consummation of the Creation in the end, have a plausible promise of understanding, an end to the suffering we know in this life. I would still mark that as a point for belief.
* I would not, though, say that the paintings of the great Boston painter, Hyman Bloom, of decaying corpses is the same thing though I don't think he realized how easily they could be taken as part of that same adoration of pain and death. His intention was mystical, showing through color the freeing of the soul, or so those who knew him said. It's a lesson in how dangerous it is to use the most extreme of symbols that could easily be mistaken in their intent. Those who copied him, especially later photographers had a malignant and sensational intent using similar imagery.
One of those I've critisized in the past, Andreas Serrano, shows that the visual artist who spends most of their time creating sensations by the use of content free visual content fraught with potent associations is liable to not be understood. His recent exhibition that uses Trump junk bought on E-bay has apparently not achieved what he intended it to. Though, if the description of his intent given in that article is accurate, he understands more of it than many others. Trump, like Serrano, is a creation of the mass media. The article points out,
Among the many objects with his visage, signature, or name (or his family’s and fellow con men and con women) are items spouting porn-y headlines, branded resort souvenirs, sponsorship logos, mementos of his failed businesses and golf courses, foreclosure notices he took out on others and that were taken out on him, and evidence of the never-ending coverage by his most important 30-year enabler: the press. See the numerous New York Post covers featuring racy stories about Trump’s divorces and bad business deals. See the Post’s “Best Sex I Ever Had”—supposedly a quote from his soon-to-be second wife, Marla Maples, that turned out to have been phoned in and spoken by Trump himself masquerading as a Trump Organization spokesperson named “John Barron.” (The reporter recorded it. Trump denied it was him. This is one sick fuck.) See his face on the covers of Time, Newsweek, Spy, TV Guide, People, GQ, Fortune, Palm Springs Life, The National Enquirer, this magazine, and many others, not to mention the endless promotion by television networks. Having taken it all in, I find it hard to feel that the collection merely tells the story of one man, no matter how flamboyantly fame-crazy, tasteless, ruthless, and full of entitlement and rage. It is a portrait of us, America.
When I saw the phrase "30-year enabler," I realized that for most of that 30 years the free press had given Hillary Clinton the exact opposite treatment, including the elite New York City press that was the most to blame for creating Trump. That is the entirely successful answer to the question of who created the evil that is Trump, the pain and suffering he has gloried in creating.
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