A life without suffering...
...the live event with Rod Dreher, and Covid and the subjectivity of numbers
I re-read Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option and Live not by Lies in preparation for our live event (about which more below). One of the most challenging things I found in both the rereading and in what Rod said on the day was on suffering. And there is a passage in Live not by Lies that chimes with one of the main themes I return to on this blog. Speaking of a Hungarian in her early thirties who finds it hard to speak to her friends about the struggles of being a wife and mother of young children, Rod writes:
Her difficulties are completely ordinary for a young woman learning about how to be a mom and a wife - yet the prevailing attitude among her generation is that life’s difficulties are a threat to one’s well-being, and should be refused. Do she and her husband argue at times? Then she should leave him. Are her children annoying her? Then she should send them to day care. She worries that her friends don’t grasp that suffering is a normal part of life - even part of a good life, in that suffering teaches us to be patient, kind and loving.
Rod Dreher, Live not by Lies, p. 183
Elsewhere he talks about the way that the woke progressive world and the emerging soft totalitarian pink police state that facilitates it promise us a life without suffering, a life that is protected from all offence and difficulty and personal sacrifice, a life in which one is simply free to pursue pure self-expression liberated from any and all inconvenient obligations, especially those that are unchosen.
But that is not the life we are called to us followers of Christ. Rather, we are called to a life of sacrifice and suffering that makes us holy…gradually.
And that was my personal thought about the above passage. It made me think of my own challenges as parent. I’ve written quite a lot about my desire to grow in patience and gentleness with my children. What I observe about myself is very little change. My inclinations, my instincts, all seem to stay the same. The only real difference is perhaps that I am slightly more aware of it, slightly more aware of my failures and deficiencies.
I suppose the reassuring thing about all of this is that it is quite normal. It is the way that the Lord has made things to be. There are wonderful things about being a parent and having a family, many joyful times. But there are also daily calls to sacrifice and self-giving. If embraced, these calls perhaps train us for times to come that may require deeper and more profound sacrifices. Or they may simply purify our souls from the selfishness which is so inherent within them.
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