Secular conscience cannot make positive sense of suffering as Christianity once did

Evidence

The modern conscience is also a secular conscience, a category that subsumes moralized religion. (For Kant, “pure religion” is nothing more than conscience-based morality, and it stands apart from the dogmas of historical religion.) Christianity, which was traditionally rooted in the doctrine of Christ’s passion, consequently finds it difficult to make good sense of suffering today. Modern theologians have begun to concede that pain is essentially and entirely negative. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 514

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Asad is diagnosing how a shift in the moral valence of pain transforms religious meaning — a dense, paradigm-shifting observation about the secular remaking of theodicy.
• XREF: connects to: Atheism may leave no possibility of expiating suffering — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 185