I wonder how much it could be said that boredom is the supreme ill to be avoided.
God tells us that "In the beginning, God created". Why did he? He tells us that for his pleasure all things are and were created (Re 4). He desired and sought this pleasure, knowing that he would suffer for it, and sorrow for it: he mourned because he had made man, and it grieved him at his heart (Ge 6). He endured the greatest pain felt by any being, for the sake of that pleasure: "who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame" (Heb 12).

In this sense Buddhism is one of the most fundamental disagreements with God. It originated with a sheltered man raised in luxury who then went out and saw suffering. He concluded that it is better to desire nothing, and, ultimately, best of all to not exist. He disagreed with God, saying instead that if desire causes suffering, it is better to not desire. Indeed, it is a philosophy founded on the most all encompassing hopelessness, pessimism, and absolute cynicism: that there is nothing worth enduring anything for: there is no joy set before them.

It is utterly un-human and unnatural and perverse: we are made in the image of God, and are to act in the image of God: we are designed to desire joy, and to endure suffering to gain it.

#sabbathposts 2024/02/03