Reading Through a Crisis of Faith discussion

...and it may not fit with some people's theology that things "happen for a reason", but I don't believe in redemptive suffering anymore as a way to make 'sense' of why bad things happen to good people or even bad people. I am beginning to believe that "sh** just happens" and that FAITH HAPPENS, TOO, in that moment when the rock tumbles down the hill, AGAIN...and out of rebellion, OR FAITH you just get up and start pushing it again...because what else are you going to do? What seems closer to true faith to me, some people might call "no faith"; but I don't think I can believe in a God whose prime tool is to hurt his creation to improve it and save it.

"The absurd man says yes and his efforts will henceforth be unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least there is, but one which he concludes is inevitable and despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of his days. At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which become his fate, created by him, combined under his memory's eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.

...But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."

While I won't say that all suffering is redemptive, I don't think making man (whether he be Sysyphus, or someone else) the master of his own destiny will work out in the end.