Suffering = the deserved effects of karma
Suffering = the undeserved means of spiritually evolving
Suffering = an unfortunate inevitable consequence, that spirits alleviate
See, this is what happens when Victorian ne'er-do-wells try to smoosh together a poorly understood abstraction of the dhamric Eastern religions with vestiges of Protestant Christianity and make something that appeals to those disaffected from the latter but not entirely willing to plunge into the former. The Victorians were never able to resolve the inherent conflicts either. Specifically there was never a plausible reconciliation of the one-time-through process of incarnation and the multiple-trips-through-the-salad-bar process of reincarnation. Borrowing a little from each clearly doesn't fix the problem.