The Fruits Of Suffering

While Professor Leeper may have attempted to shake my psyche to the core, I find that showing us the significance of human depravity has only confirmed my personal beliefs.  For the sake of argument I will now call upon my favorite cartoon strip of all time.  Calvin and Hobbes.

While what the father is saying may sound absurd, it still rings true on a nearly primal level. It would seem that doing things you hate builds character. Or maybe having something done to you can build character. An extreme example (but true nevertheless) comes to us from Viktor E. Frankl. A holocaust survivor and a psychotherapist who developed a revolutionary therapy technique (Called Logotherapy) through his observations in Auschwitz.
For you see...

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” Dr. Viktor E. Frankl

Suffering in it's essence has the ability to teach us how to be human. When the veil of happiness and wealth are ripped away from us we are forced to see ourselves in the harsh light of our own suffering and either succumb to it or rise above it.
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Dr. Viktor E. Frankl
In order to truly understand the human condition we find ourselves in it's almost necessary that suffering must ensue. The films "Little Hands," "World Of Glory," or "Fridge" are but a mere glimpse into the suffering world around us. What the creators of such films understand is that images of that nature reveal truths about humanity that are not easy to look at or accept. Suffering has a really nasty habit of stripping you down to the skin and showing you just how helpless you really are. Then comes the question. What do you do with this new found knowledge?
I've been of the opinion, for at least the last 5 years, that christian artists don't create good art. Not because they're not skilled in their art form but rather because they refuse to show the dark side of human nature. They seem to casually gloss over the hard truths in favor of some theologically hollow pipe dream they've fabricated from some "Christian" class that teaches them about their "Best Life Now."

What we're dealing with is a fallen sinful world that is both hostile and deadly and we must show it for what it really is.