Whatever your religious persuasion, if you believe that that the universe is governed by benign forces, at some point you have to explain why there is so much suffering, misfortune and misery in the world.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.
Today we no longer regard the universe as the cause of our own undeserved troubles but perhaps, on the contrary, as the last refuge from the mismanagement of our earthly affairs.
One of the most important decisions you'll ever make is choosing the kind of universe you exist in: is it helpful and supportive or hostile and unsupportive? Your answer to this question will make all the difference in terms of how you live your life and what kind of Divine assistance you attract.
Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, And shares the nature of infinity.
We all suffer. It's part of life. The blessing is - while evil exists, Divinity does, too, and it is stronger.
When we imagine our Universe to be just one out of a multitude of possible worlds we devalue this world, the one we see, the one we should be trying to explain.
We create our own unhappiness. The purpose of suffering is to help us understand we are the ones who cause it.
When suffering happens, it forces us to confront life in a different way than we normally do.
Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.
The whole world appears to me like a huge vacuum, a vast empty space, whence nothing desirable, or at least satisfactory, can possibly be derived; and I long daily to die more and more to it; even though I obtain not that comfort from spiritual things which I earnestly desire.