Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Does pain and suffering and injustice…

Admiral Jim Stockdale was a POW for 8 years during the Vietnam War. He was a Vice Admiral in the Navy and he was the highest ranking United States military officer to be imprisoned in the Hanoi Hilton. He was tortured many times and he still refused to participate in the North Vietnamese propaganda machine. He even cut up his own face with a razor so they wouldn’t put him on camera.

Many years later he was interviewed by Jim Collins when he was writing his book ‘Good to Great’ and in the interview he was asked how he survived 8 years in a POW camp. He replied, “I never lost faith in the end of the story.” That’s a pretty powerful statement. He went on to say that he never doubted that not only would he get out, but that he would also prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of his life.

And then he said that the lesson to take away from all of this is: “Retain trust and confidence that you will prevail in the end...regardless of the difficulties...and at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” That statement is known as the Stockdale Paradox. Bristoe posted it on this forum many years ago.

His point was to never give up hope but at the same time never deceive yourself about your current reality either. You never give up hope but at the same time you don't refuse to face the things that you don't wanna face, the things that would cause you to possibly lose hope. You hold both of em.’ You never give up hope and you never deceive yourself about your current reality either.

All this love is killing me .

Yeah, the tale is a casserole of nonsense.

Jesus was a cult leader and failed apocalyptic, and was put to death for blasphemy - play stupid games, win stupid prises.

Pedophile dundee trying to hide in the jeezus forums again.

You’ll have to excuse him. He was a little side tracked for a while.
🤣🤣🤣

Nah, they sound more like the whining snot nosed fat kid who just dropped his oatmeal cream pie in a mud puddle.

I think that there is a similar paradox with Christianity: followers of Jesus also have a future hope and it is also tethered to a brutal fact. The problem is that many people get so focused on the future hope that they maybe try to pray away, and/or reason away, and/or faith away, and/or obey away, and/or just deny the brutal fact that is also part of the package.

There is a brutal fact of Christianity. And it’s easy to lose sight of, especially when things are going good. But if we lose sight of it when things are going good, it creates doubt and/or confusion, and/or despair, and/or faithlessness, and/or disbelief when things turn upside down. Here's the brutal fact of Christianity:

There is a cause and effect relationship between sin and pain and suffering and injustice in the world. And we all know this on a personal level because all of us have done things that were bad and we suffered because of it. We have all experienced the negative consequences that are associated with bad behaviors. We have all experienced the personal consequences of our personal sin. But the brutal fact of Christianity that I’m talking about…the one that is so difficult for many people to get their hearts and minds around…is this ~ the cause-and-effect relationship between sin and pain and suffering and injustice in the world goes way beyond personal behavior. It is a global reality.

The brutal fact of Christianity is that there is a global relationship between sin and pain and suffering and injustice in the world. This is the part that so many people resist. And the reason it’s resisted is because it's not fair and it takes everything out of our control. But the fact is, that when sin entered the world, it held the door open for pain and suffering and injustice, along with sorrow and illness and death and despair, etc.. They all snuck in right behind sin. When sin entered the world, all of the bad came in right along with it.

Great post!

antlers,

A couple of good posts. Thanks for your insight.

When you read the New Testament, Jesus acknowledged this worldview ~ Jesus acknowledged this brutal fact. The message of Jesus was clearly a message of hope that never lost sight of the brutal fact that sin was making its way through the world and would impact every single person. This was built-in to the perspective that He lived with and that He embraced and that He left us with in the Gospels.

As I consider the reality of our condition I find comfort that Christ is described as the “Lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world”.

There is more in that declaration than we can comprehend.