Suffering’s fallout hits men hard.  It’s easier for women to have romantic views of suffering than it is for men.  This is because, while suffering is horrible for either gender, the fallout of suffering hits men particularly bad.  This is because suffering often makes a man a less vocationally successful member of society and there is a lot more stigma for being an unsuccessful man than there is for being an unsuccessful woman.  Men are also expected to be strong and suffering saps strength and often engenders behaviors that in women would be rewarded but in men are seen as weak.  Not that suffering doesn’t hit women hard, it does but in ways that I wouldn’t understand because I’m not a woman.

Suffering hits Christianity at its weakest line of defense.  The problem of evil might not be the biggest problem religious people have to grapple with but it is one of the most existential and a problem everyone has grappled with.  People running the faith made a calculation and decided the best defense is a good offense.  So they turned the tables and called pain good.  This works because generally the people who experience the least pain hold the most power.  And those people drive the narrative.

See: Romanticizing Suffering