What are the teachings of Christianity and Buddhism on the topic of suffering?
Christianity takes the view that, basically, you suffer because you deserve it. The old joke goes that if a light bulb burns out, an atheist frets about getting a new bulb, while a Christian wonders what she did to deserve to sit in the dark. This is because one of the main points of Christian belief is something called “original sin.” Essentially, the first man ate from the Tree of Knowledge, so mankind is forever cursed to suffer as a result. It’s a pretty lame story, but it’s believed by a lot of people. The religion dances around the issue of why the Christian god created people he knew would eat from the tree, and what the purpose of putting the tree there in the first place was, and why it will be possible to create a suffering-free paradise in heaven but not on earth, but this is largely because suffering is an observed fact, whereas gods are all just speculation (at best). Monotheists have never been able to adequately meet the problem of suffering, but they definitely try (and
