Persistent Afflictions

Last Wednesday, I learned that Hector, the Human Cleric/Paladin of Lathander, is still a werewolf.
As you may recall, Hector has gone through several phases (no pun intended) of "being" and "not being" a werewolf. As soon as he was bitten, I knew there was a chance, so I prepared for the possibility of him being a werewolf. The next week, Hector rolled the dice to see whether or not he was a werewolf, and the DM informed me that he didn't feel particularly wolfy, so I assumed that Hector was not a werewolf.

Shortly thereafter, we received proof that he was one. He transformed, multiple times, in front of witnesses, proving that he was, in fact, a werewolf. After Hector failed to tame the beast within, broke free of his chains, and nearly mauled Lily, the party's Wizard, she "cured" his lycanthropy with a "Remove Curse" spell, which instantly reverted him back to human form. That was a week before last Wednesday.

Last Wednesday, while exploring an ancient crypt, Hector found a silvered spearhead and picked it up. The silver of the spearhead burned Hector's skin on contact, and, as we all know, silver is the main weakness of werewolves.

Apparently, lycanthropy is not easy to cure. At least, it's not as easy as casting a 3rd level spell on the afflicted person. No real-world affliction is.

In life, we all have trials, and though we know that all our trials are temporary, that doesn't mean that they'll all go away overnight after praying about them once or twice. Miracles can happen, but usually, God lets us suffer through our afflictions long enough to learn several lessons from them, whether that means a few days, several months, many years, or whole lifetimes. Some afflictions persist with us, no matter what we do about them or how hard we pray about them.

God made life that way for a reason. Earth is the only place we've ever lived in that isn't heaven. If that is to remain true, we need to gain the knowledge and wisdom that can only be gained by experiencing afflictions. And Earth is uniquely capable of providing us with afflictions. If all our problems were solved immediately, we wouldn't have much time to learn from them or benefit from them. In the eternal perspective, we still don't. In life, we have to have persistent afflictions because we wouldn't learn as much without them.

Now, it's possible that Hector is still not really a werewolf any more. Given the number of times I've been wrong on that topic, I can't rule out that possibility. The spearhead could have been unholy, and maybe it burned his skin because he's a Paladin and evil stuff hates Paladins, but that wouldn't have made for as interesting of a blog post, and it doesn't seem very likely to me. After the discovery that the silver burned Hector, the DM informed me that curses in this campaign setting are hard to shake off.

The same is true here. Many afflictions are terribly persistent. There are lifelong illnesses and disabilities. There are addictions and bad habits that are very hard to break. There are many problems that can stick with us for what feels like forever, and that's not because God hates us and wants us to suffer. That's the other guy. God doesn't want our afflictions to last any longer than they have to, which means that there are good reasons why afflictions last so long in life. That's why there aren't many simple solutions to life's problems and why we can't just cast some magic spell and be cured of our afflictions, in most cases. That would defeat the purpose of the affliction and would, in a large way, defeat the purpose of life. We have to have afflictions so we can learn from them, and those afflictions need to be persistent because we have a lot to learn.