In my life, I have attended services at three different sects wherein each included a communal prayer for God to bring on hardship to the gathered congregants, so that they might become more spiritually pure. Asceticism has always been an aspect of religious expression, just as much as communal feasting or singing. However, people should be able to decide individually to exercise constructive modes of asceticism, choosing sensibly moderated forms, degrees and durations, in the form of self-denial of certain worldly pleasures and comforts. However, asceticism should be distinguished from masochism, the latter being (in my humble opinion) a destructive form of religious practice.
Literal flagellation, starvation, self-induced pain and suffering: these are behaviors that enact or reinforce self-loathing born of a religiosity that convinces people they fundamentally consist of "filth", and therefore cannot obtain salvation short of God's abundant mercy (which the faithful are constantly reminded they do not really deserve under any circumstances). I have to ask: would God create "filth"? Should we, who are by our very eternal souls God's children, by any stretch of the imagination think of ourselves as "filth"?
When a religion is constructed to emphasize the imperfections of human beings, rather than empowering people of faith with ways to create moral and spiritual wholeness, it is typically indicative of a sect whose clergy has a vested interest in controlling and subduing their congregations. When people are denied methodologies to elevate themselves spiritually through meditation and contemplation, and even through dance and music, people are left to seek other outlets, and these are usually self-abnegating, and psychologically and physiologically unhealthy.
So we now have people who stop short of purposefully and actively creating artificial suffering through religious masochism, but they are asking God in their stead to inflict suffering upon them, for God to be the agent of "spiritualizing" hardship. The prayers for these things more than anything else have brought me up short of committing myself to any organized religious sect. I have been contemplating the implications of these prayers for suffering for many years now, and have only recently come up with a plausible theory for what former fellow congregants and ministering clerics failed to clearly explain to me, as though it were just another matter for a "leap of faith", like supporting the idea of Christ's Holy Resurrection.
In fact, it is far more plausible to me that a wholly spiritualized being or apotheosized human being could resurrect him or herself from physical death, than that God would want us to understand Him/Her primarily through suffering, and that the highest gift He/She can bestow upon us is suffering. I think the highest gift God can give us is healing, and being so healed we can spread that healing to others through our shared light in God. I have argued before in this blog that suffering can potentially be a teacher that makes us more compassionate toward others. In fact, those who have suffered very little sometimes lack a depth of capacity for sympathy and patience for the suffering of others, including those with inward woes. But some degrees of suffering can also be mentally and physically debilitating, and thus socially disempowering and psychologically crushing. Suffering of one kind or another is indeed inevitable in this world -- so why on earth pray for it?! Such an act is redundant!
What we should pray for is grace of temperament and spiritual support in the face of suffering, for healing and a keener appreciation for the gift of health, for a greater spiritual wholeness to meet with resilience the rigors of this world, and in the aftermath, a greater sympathy or even empathy for others who are currently dominated by inner or physical suffering. This would be a far more constructive mode of prayer, and more in line with worshiping a God who embodies Love.
So why are clergy more comfortable with and unquestioning of prayers issued for worship services by religious authorities in their sects, that ask their congregations to pray for suffering in order to get closer to God? Why would these same clerics not support modes of being that cultivate a mystical receptivity to God?
One answer might be that it would accord a freedom and power to the individual person of faith that is threatening to the institutional will toward subtle domination of its worshipers. Mysticism has the same goal as orthodox forms of asceticism: achieving a greater closeness to God. But mystics have an open secret: communion with God is often discovered in spiritual joy.
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