Slaying Evil through living sacrifice

Is there 'value' in suffering and sacrifice?

Is evil vanquished? Or an inner healing gained?

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The 'value' of suffering?

How else but through a broken heart
May Lord Christ enter in?
(Oscar Wilde, Ballad of Reading Gaol)
Psychologist Carl Jung said "all neurosis is a substitute for legitimate suffering." As a culture, America lacks a deep understanding of the value of suffering. Contrary to popular opinion, there are times when allowing ourselves to suffer is the only way to get through pain.
American popular culture is a cult of pleasure, which is an inappropriate response to deep unhappiness. The happiest life in an authentic life, which is not necessarily one of constant delight. Our obsessive pursuit of entertainment and cheap pleasure is both a response to and a masking of deep unhappiness. When, after fifteen minutes, the pain comes back -- no matter how much fun we had and how many games we bought -- we should do more than just seek to numb it.
It's important that our bones hurt when we break them. Otherwise how would we know that they are broken..... you don't just take pain killers, you have to reset the bone.
Marianne Williamson: The Healing Of America. p237[ NY: Simon & Schuster, 1977. ]

When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

ALSO:

How do we explain, in history, the triumph we see (on occasion) of victims, martyrs who have done no wrong, and the inexplicable expiation and truly the healing that somehow occurs? Can we answer that? I'd like to know. (Bob Shepherd)

Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck writes:

The healing of evil -- scientifically or otherwise -- can be accomplished only by the love of individuals. A willing sacrifice is required. The individual healer must allow his or her own soul to become the battleground. He or she must sacrificially absorb the evil.
Then what prevents the destruction of that soul? If one takes the evil itself into one's heart, like a spear, how can one's goodness still survive? Even if the evil is vanquished thereby, will not the good be also? What will have been achieved beyond some meaningless trade-off?
I cannot answer this in language other than mystical. I can say only that there is a mysterious alchemy whereby the victim becomes the victor. As C.S. Lewis wrote: 'When a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.'
I do not know how this occurs. But I know that it does. I know that good people can deliberately allow themselves to be pierced by the evil of others -- to be broken thereby yet still somehow survive and not succumb. Whenever this happens there is a slight shift in the balance of power in the world.

From People of the Lie, by M. Scott Peck (p 269)
CS Lewis passage from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Collier/Macmillan 1970) p 160

Batter my heart - Sonnet by John Donne

George Eliot - in Adam Bede - "Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state."

YET . . . .
Emerson declared, "Under the whip of the driver, the slave shall feel his equality with saints and heroes."

And Havelock Ellis wrote:
Pain and death are part of life. To reject them is to reject life itself.

Havelock Ellis further declared:
The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a Wilderness.

Alexis Carrel wrote:
Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor.

John Gay has written:
He best can pity who has felt the woe.

Nadine Gordimer said:
There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.

Heart Warrior Chosa, as follows:
In the darkest hour the soul is replenished and given the strength to continue and endure.
Quoted in -- Answers in the Heart: Daily Meditations For Men And Women Recovering From Sex Addiction (Hazelden Meditation Series) 1989.

Pema Chodron wrote:
When we touch the center of sorrow, when we sit with discomfort without trying to fix it, when we stay present to the pain of disapproval or let it soften us, these are the times we connect with [our compassionate selves.] Tapping into that shaky and tender place has a transformative effect.
Quoted by Vicki Vantoch (Thunder's Mouth Press) 2007.

It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life.
Joseph Campbell

Eingedi: where one finds TRUE diversity in unity (cf Ezekiel 47: 9-10)

Pain will teach you what Pride won't let you learn

From Cry the Beloved Country: Kumalo speaks of suffering and hope

Quotes on Suffering : Christian Sources

In the Book of Enoch, as in other apocalyptic writings and in rabbinical sources, one concept plays a very important role -- that of "the birth pangs of the messiah."

The beginning of liberation lies in man's capacity to suffer ... If a man has lost his capacity to suffer, he has also lost the capacity to change.

Erich Fromm

A man does not show his greatness by being at one
extremity, but rather by touching both at once.

(Pascal)

It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.

Joseph Campbell (link)

V
To Archbishop Stepinac
Courage is a fabric
So woven of the soul
It shrinks with fear, stretches
When straining toward a goal.
But when in eyes it glows,
Awaiting tyrants' rod,
It is of mystic birth,
Holding a tryst with God.

Lamartine: Hymne à la douleur
Tu me traites sans doute en favori des cieux,
Car tu n'épargnes pas les larmes à mes yeux.
Eh bien ! je les reçois comme tu les envoies :
Tes maux seront mes biens, et tes soupirs mes joies.
Je sens qu'il est en toi, sans avoir combattu,
Une vertu divine au lieu de ma vertu,
Que tu n'es pas la mort de l'âme, mais sa vie,
Que ton bras, en frappant, guérit et vivifie !

Christian Masochism From Way Back When

Self-Mortification
Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, lust, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is the service of idols. For which things the wrath of God cometh upon the children of unbelief, In which you also walked some time, when you lived in them. But now put you also all away: anger, indignation, malice, blasphemy, filthy speech out of your mouth. Lie not one to another: stripping yourselves of the old man with his deeds, And putting on the new, him who is renewed unto knowledge, according to the image of him that created him. Where there is neither Gentile nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free. But Christ is all, and in all.
Put ye on therefore, as the elect of God, holy, and beloved, the bowels of mercy, benignity, humility, modesty, patience: Bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if any have a complaint against another: even as the Lord hath forgiven you, so do you also. But above all these things have charity, which is the bond of perfection: And let the peace of Christ rejoice in your hearts, wherein also you are called in one body: and be ye thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you abundantly, in all wisdom: teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual canticles, singing in grace in your hearts to God. All whatsoever you do in word or in work, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.

A Jewish Commentary

Franz Rosenzweig

To His people, God the Lord is simultaneously the God of retribution and the God of love. In the same breath, they call on Him as "our God" and as "King of the universe," or -- to indicate the same contrast on a more intimate sphere -- as "our Father" and "our King." He wants to be served with trembling and yet rejoices when His children overcome their fear at His wondrous signs. Whenever the Scriptures mention His majesty, the next verses are sure to speak of His meekness. He demands the visible signs of offering and prayer brought to His name, and of the "affliction of our soul" in His sight. And almost in the same breath He scorns both and wants to be honored only with the secret fervor of the heart, in the love of one's neighbor, and in anonymous works of justice which no one may recognize as having been done for the sake of His name. He has elected His people, but elected it to visit upon them all their iniquities. He wants every knee to bend to Him yet He is enthroned above Israel's songs of praise. [Ps 22:4] Israel intercedes with Him in behalf of sinning peoples of the world and he afflicts Israel with disease so that those other people may be healed [Isa. 53]. Both stand before God: Israel His servant, and the kings of the peoples; and the strands of suffering and guilt, of love and judgment, of sin and atonement, are so inextricably twined that human hands cannot untangle them.

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