Pain and Suffering - why ?

An interesting read: Why Does God Allow Pain and Suffering? by Jen Hatmaker on September 17th, "Suffering transcends all class, race, ethnicity, culture, privilege.... There is no corner untouched by grief, no demographic, no alliance. If you haven’t suffered, just live longer. To this end, the church has a history of formulizing suffering, giving it tidy origins and endings and whitewashing the horrid, debilitating middle. We’ve assessed the complicated nuances of universal sorrow and assigned it categories, roots, principles. Or in the face of uncertain causes, we recite some of the coldest, inhumane theology: "God is sovereign. Deal with it." In an attempt to understand the ordinary grief of human life, I fear we’ve reduced a complicated reality to an unmanageable burden; we’ve put a yoke of despair on people who mourn, assigning accolades to those who “suffer well” and, in ways overt and subtle, urging our brokenhearted to buck up. Then adding insult to injury, we fall into the trap of explaining suffering, as if any one of us could possibly understand its eternal scope.,,,,"