B. U. G. S.

I was talking to a Trappist monk a few years back, and he was talking about how things used to be. Trappists were known as the masters of self-torture.

They never spoke. They slept about five hours a night, interrrupted constatntly to get up for canonical hours. Their beds were rock. Some wore hair shirts. They ate no meat, poultry, eggs, fruits, beans, and a list of anything else that might not be bland enough.

They did heavy labor every waking hour.

They were famous.

The idea was that God and Satan thrived on human agony.

For centuries in Spain the saying was, “Life is not good or we would not need so many philosophers.”

So apparently, after hundreds of years of being famous for the agony God loved so much, the Trappists woke up one morning, said, “This is insane,” and STOPPED it.

Now you have to explain to the young what the Trappists were in the 1960s.

And here is the revolution that no one notices that really matters.

You can either provide for people’s needs and WANTS or you can explain why they must Suffer.

Any moron can torture you. Practically no one on earth can think of a way to make you happy. By exactly the same token, any guy who learns to read can sit on his backside, spout out impressive words preferably in Greek or Hebrew or Latin, and explain the Purpose of Suffering.

This guy’s theme song is that of the group which calls itself The Greatest Generation:

“You think you had it rough? Let me tell you what Rough is….”

So you feed him and bow down to him.

And one day, in some Trappist monastery, somebody dragged himself out of his stone-hard bed of pain and said, “Why the Hell? God LIKES this?”

Jesus stopped going over the undercurrents and interpretations of the Ten Commandments and said be good to others.

It is much easier to go nuts over the Sabbath than it is to find one single thing you can do to HELP your neighbor.

No, Virginia, Suffering is not good. It is cheap.

Good is good. Bad is bad.