According to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence,” his final essay in Strength to Love, “I have lived these last few years with the conviction that unearned suffering is redemptive.”
However, according to Alice Miller, psychologist, philosopher, and psychoanalyst, all behavior stems from childhood experience, at least in SOME way. She wrote, “It has been proved that many adults have had the good fortune to break the cycle of abuse. Yet I can certainly aver that I have never come across persecutors who weren’t themselves victims in their childhood, though most of them don’t know it because their feelings are repressed.”
Therefore, ALL suffering is redemptive. And earned. Through itself.
Observations from the Brink 
3 thoughts on “On “Suffering””