Is suffering necessary?

I have been attending a support group for grieving people (which I discussed in an earlier blog post) following the loss of my mother, grandmother, uncle and grandfather all in the last 18 months. This support group meets at a Baptist church and the content of the support offered is Christian-based. I am not personally a Christian but I have no biases against Christians as individuals and trying to just muscle through my sadness, anger and grief on my own was bringing me no progress, only pain, so I elected to try something new. My second meeting was yesterday.

These meetings all go the same way. We get together, eat mediocre snacks, and briefly discuss our week before opening the provided guided "Workbook" and watching a short video on this week's theme. The videos are produced by a Christian married couple and much of the content is related to "surrendering your grief and sadness to God so that he may lift this burden from your heart" and various re-phrasings of this same concept. Anytime I hear this sentiment in the support group, I remove it and sort of plug-in "surrender grief to any higher power" or something along those lines. I do this because I am not a Christian, but I understand the value of complete surrender. Surrender affords us acceptance. We cannot accept what has happened to us or our loved ones until we first surrender to it. It is an important step, and so I understand why it is such a big part of what is taught at these support groups. But yesterday something was said that kind of twisted up my brains and I want to try and "talk it out" here to make up my mind about how I feel about it. The phrase that was said was "suffering is necessary". What was expressed is that suffering is a prerequisite for being not only a complete and mature person, but also for being a good Christian, and therefore, we must all be grateful when the lord makes us suffer. Now, I can accept that the concept of gratitude works wonders for a wide variety of emotional issues and problems of perspective, for instance, I am not grateful that my mother died a slow and agonizing death and that I lost her so young, but I AM grateful for having such a wonderful mother to begin with and for the every single second that we shared together. But I am most certainly NOT feeling "grateful to my creator" for the misery and pain I am currently feeling at her loss. But this was exactly what I was being advised to do. To express and truly feel gratitude for my suffering because suffering is somehow necessary to being a good Christian.

I take issue with the idea that suffering is required in order to prove your love to your god. That seems extreme and dismal, and the god that demands such things from us sounds cruel and kind of sick. I like the idea of believing in a god that comforts and assures us as we experience the pain of living. I think having that kind of faith to turn to sounds really nice. But the idea that your god deliberately makes us suffer to test our faith and that your life is really nothing more than enduring one cruel loss after another with the best possible attitude in order to prove your love and devotion to that god is unthinkable to me. I already have issues with Christianity because of the sheer volume of horrible verses in the bible which Christians claim to be the literal word of god, but if we add into that the idea that the same god who desires to subjugate, silence and demean women as evidenced by numerous statements in "his word" also designs our suffering that we may "grow in our faith in god" and I just get lost. Why is this religion so popular? Why is it such a dominant feature of our political landscape? How can you not just look at all of these things and easily determine through critical thinking that this is an outdated and barbaric cult which demands obedience and servitude in return for very little and decide not to subscribe to this belief system? 

I realize that there are millions of people world wide who might be offended by what I have written here today, and that is OK. We don;t have to agree. But if you have any insight into the things that are confusing me, I would love for you to comment on this post, no matter what side of these ideas you are on. If you have new ideas to share, all the better. I have no plans to subscribe to Christianity, but I am doing my best to keep an open mind while I participate in this support group for grieving people. I imagine I will be writing out more of my own frustrations with the church as I continue with this journey.