Another unecessary illustration

Ah, here it is, a parable story I would love to use to fight against my argumentative former acquaintance. It requires making the sarcastic appearance of adding insult to the pain of a good friend who gets very bad headaches. So here is the parable, well it is an illustration after all.
So my good friend frequently suffers from extremely bad headaches. In fact, they are genuine migraines. My friend is a female but I will pretend my friend is a guy so I won't be talking a bunch of insult about her.
Anyway, my friend is crippled by enormous amounts of pain. One time I was on my way somewhere and saying goodbye to this friend while making the arbitrary health inquiries that you make when you don't know what to say or when someone appears to be in a lot of pain. The inquiry was answered with reporting on the intense pain of the migraine.
I left, but I felt proud of myself for being understanding rather than judgemental about the pain. It would have been really easy to do a lot of things, to think things about my friend that would not have been fair. It would have been something like, "What? who cares. It can't be that bad. Get up and work anyway," or, "Dang it, why don't you take better care of yourself and you won't be in so much pain." or "Wow, I'm so much better because I never get these things. I must be a whole lot healthier and mature."
The comments could then go on to what the author of a really good book calls "Spiritual one-up-manship." This would take the form of, "Well why don't you pray for relief from pain. That's what real beleivers do," "If you were really spiritual, you wouldn't feel any suffering." or "You just feel sorry for yourself and won't give your pain over to God like superior people of faith do."
And I was glad I didn't have any of this spiritual self-righteousness for the exclusive reason that it allowed me to feel morally superior to those that have made similar statements to me. Essentially, I have had a couple of friends who viewed me with enormous contempt and condescension because of ailments from which I suffered but he didn't. The boy seemed to consider himself a person of greater spiritual maturity in comparison to me because he hasn't been regularly slapped with depression. But his lack of depression is no more a sign of maturity than my lack of headaches.
Certainly, reacting to pain that is emotional or physical is what is important, but having it or not having it should not be viewed as a deficiency in character, but rather as an obstacle that demonstrates a stronger character in those who overcome in than in those who never had to.