{"id":5973,"date":"2011-06-09T15:45:39","date_gmt":"2011-06-09T15:45:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=5973"},"modified":"2011-06-09T15:45:39","modified_gmt":"2011-06-09T15:45:39","slug":"the-infinite-blessings-of-suffering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/the-infinite-blessings-of-suffering\/","title":{"rendered":"The &#8220;Infinite Blessings&#8221; of Suffering"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com\/2011\/06\/suffering-before-death.html\">Andrew Sullivan quotes<\/a> from a (paywalled) article by <em>New Yorker <\/em>writer Aleksander Hemon, whose daughter was diagnosed with cancer at 9 months old. He quotes the terribly bereaved father as saying this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>One of the most despicable religious fallacies is that suffering is ennobling\u2014that it is a step on the path to some kind of enlightenment or salvation. Isabel\u2019s suffering and death did nothing for her, or us, or the world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Quite.<\/p>\n<p>Now let&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/2011\/06\/05\/kevorkian-and-all-that\/\">flash back <\/a>to <em>Crisis<\/em> Magazine&#8217;s Barbara Nicolisi and her <a href=\"http:\/\/www.crisismagazine.com\/2011\/exposing-euthanasia-through-the-arts\">reference<\/a> &#8220;to the infinite blessings that come through suffering&#8230;By removing suffering and the meaning of suffering from our culture, we make the final step in denying and defying our creature-hood.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Andrew Sullivan quotes from a (paywalled) article by New Yorker writer Aleksander Hemon, whose daughter was diagnosed with cancer at 9 months old. He quotes the terribly bereaved father as saying this: One of the most despicable religious fallacies is &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/the-infinite-blessings-of-suffering\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[711],"tags":[797],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5973"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5973"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6020,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5973\/revisions\/6020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}