Lau-Tzu's 'Archetypes Of Wisdom'

Why do innocent people suffer? It is a question that all human being have asked either once in their life time or at multiple times. Innocent people suffer while the sinners succeed. We mention this question when it seems that innocent people suffer from a death or when they lose all that they have worked for. While people that do not seem to care with what happens, get what they do not deserve. “Who knows why heaven dislikes what is dislikes? Even the sage considers it a difficult question.” Lau-Tzu (Archetypes of Wisdom, p. 45). As Lau-Tzu clearly states not even the high sage knows why heaven dislikes what it dislikes. This is a question that no one can answer, except for God. We have thought that if we do good it will please Him
and I doing so will provide us with good surroundings. Knowing this makes us happy and when something bad happens we are already screaming at the heavens, “Why me!?” We do not and most likely will not know why this happens to us. Buddha was a great philosopher that his basic teachings were based on The Four Noble Truths:
1. No one can deny that suffering is the condition of all existence.
2. Suffering and general dissatisfaction come to human beings because they are possessive, greedy, and above all, self-centered.
3. Egocentrism, possessiveness, and greed can, however, be understood, overcome, rooted out.
4. This rooting out, this vanquishing, can be brought about by following a simple, reasonable Eightfold Path of behavior in thought, word and deed. Change of the viewpoint will manifest itself in a new outlook and new patterns of behavior.
To put it into a nutshell, he taught that we suffer because of ourselves. An example is if I saw my sister getting more attention from our parents and all I could think about was wanting that same attention for myself. In that example I am putting myself through suffering since I was wishing the attention is on me and not her.
“By one’s self evil is done, by one’s self one is purified. The pure and the impure stand and fall be themselves. No one can purify another… Work with diligence. Be lamps onto ourselves. Betake yourselves to no external refuge. Look not for refuge to anyone beside yourself. Hold fast to the Truth as to a lamp.” Buddha (Archetypes of Wisdom, p. 50)
Only you can change who you are and what you will be, no one else can. Same with the suffering, only you can stop your personal suffering. “Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well.” Epictetus (Archetypes of Wisdom, p.
200) I think what Epictetus was trying to say is to not seek or wish to have events happen to you as you would want them to happen. For if you did you would be always be in a rut, always seeking what you want out of like instead of taking what your life has to offer. Each life has something else to offer each individual person. For what might happen to one might not happen for you and it might not happen when you want it too. When people win the big money with the lottery, there is always someone wishing they had that money or luck. They think of things to say of why that person does not even need that money and how you could use it for better and/ or wiser things. Who is to say that you won’t win the lottery tomorrow, the next year or 15 years from now? So there is no reason to wish or be concerned of what you have and do not
have. “People are too passive.” is what David Cordova stated to me. I did not understand his meaning so I asked him to elaborate. He said, “People generally think nothing bad is going to happen to them or their surroundings, but it does at the strangest times possible. The people that do good things and the people that are considered bad. We as humans do not think we are doing bad things when really we are. Doing bad can be as far as not helping someone to committing murder. People that kill others, at times think they are doing a good think, whether it is for their country or for their family. Same with helping others, when someone is in need of care we usually are in a rush or just do not care enough to see it.” I guess I could see it from that point of view, I know not everyone will be able to see what he means. The best way I could put it in simple terms, is that everyone thinks that nothing bad will happen to them and in reality it does and it happens at the least expected moment. I was searching for some type of biblical understanding of why innocent people suffer .I stumbled across a website that seemed like it gave me what I was looking for. The website is ChristianCourier.com, I never heard of it, but I looked at what the search engine gave me just as I did with the previous ones. The article was called, ‘Penetrating Questions from the book of Job,’ I personally never read the book of job. One of the points is “Why Do the Righteous Suffer?” and the very beginning stated as follows:
When Satan’s initial blows hit Job (loss of prosperity and the deaths of ten children) in brutal, rapid-fire succession, the patriarch exhibited a remarkable fortitude. “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (1:21).
It is hard, as a mother, to imagine ten of my own children passing away let alone a disease to my spouse and loss of prosperity and he still finds a way at this time to praise the Lord.
The ideology was this: A man’s suffering is always the result of his personal sin. Further, the more one has sinned, the greater he will suffer. Based upon these premises, the application was perfectly clear: Job was suffering tremendously; obviously, therefore, he was guilty of grievous sins — sins he had concealed, refusing to confess his wrongs to God.
That Job’s ideas are skewed likewise is evidenced by the fact that he commences to argue a flawed case against the Lord. Suffering is sent by God as the result of personal sin. But Job was certain that he had committed no sins that deserved this degree of punishment. The fault must lie, therefore, with Jehovah. He is not administering justice fairly in this world. The tents of robbers seem to prosper, and the innocent are subjected to calamities. And God turns his back on these inequities! If these injustices are not of the Lord’s fault, who else is responsible
(9:24)?

In conclusion I have learned that it isn’t just the innocent that suffer, but the people that are sinners and do not confess what they do or did. No one is purely innocent either. I also learned that it is us that can change what happens and also are the ones that put ourselves through suffering. I do agree with all the points that have been made. I agree that we suffer from ourselves and they only people to change it is ourselves.

http://www.christiancourier.com/articles/726-penetrating-questions-from-the-book-of-job

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