She gets it

Charmaine at Reasoned Audacity addresses the question of suffering. It is the most intractable problem that faces us as human beings, and as such defies a single 'answer.' But I know she gets it when I read this:

We don't know the full answer to the question of suffering. But we do know that our humanity rests in our response to it.

Suffering is never about the pain endured. Believing that it is about the pain means that God is arbitrary and doesn't care--a spiritual version of the boy who burns ants alive with his magnifying glass for fun.

My own experience testifies to the fact that God is not that little boy who acts capriciously. My own experience testifies that God cares more about me--the real me: who I am in relation to who He wants to make me--than that. And who therefore whittles away at the things that do nothing to help make me who He wants. That process hurts, but it is just that; a process, not an end result.