the christian veneration of the lamb has always been terrifying to me in ways i can’t explain
here’s this figure that is vulnerable and easily abused and what’s admirable about it is that it doesn’t fight back and it doesn’t try to defend itself and it’s suffering is noble because it just sits there and takes it. pain is beautiful when you surrender to pain, suffering is godly when you don’t question or try to protect yourself and survival is ugly… like it is just me or is anybody else’s fucking skin crawling rn!!
There's two parts to it. One says it's so noble for someone else to suffer. Mother Theresa's order was all about this, suffering was like a prayer and keeping people alive to suffer was keeping the prayer going. So they offered food and lodging to (often terminally) ill people but not necessarily to get them better and back on their feet. Offering painkillers was against their vision. The lamb suffers and should be left to do so because it suffers in our stead.
The other part is that your own suffering is noble because you will be rewarded for it, according to how much you suffered. Sometimes in the afterlife but if at all possible here too if you just hang on. From a Catholic standpoint (where the lamb was first popularised) it was definitely the afterlife. There was always something to attone for, maybe even something you were born with. From a protestant Calvinistic standpoint, people who suffered had it coming because of something they themselves did and needed their suffering to attone. The lamb was noble because it took that suffering upon itself bit it wasn't something we should do. "Don't try this at home, the lamb is a trained professional" kind of deal.
Both can be... quite harmful ways to look at suffering and our own role in lessening the suffering of others. It absolves us from helping and that feels most wrong to me. There's different narratives but they mostly lead to "just look away, it's the noble thing to do". It doesn't sit well with me. Metaphors acquire power in the world when we keep using them and this one is a difficult one to redeem after all it's been used to explain away.
