The Problem of Pain, by C. S. Lewis, is a discussion of the existence of Pain in God's Universe.#

Introductory#

In what context the problem of pain is a problem and how it can be understood:

Christianity is not the conclusion of a philosophical debate on the origins of the universe: it is a catastrophic historical event following on the long spiritual preparation of humanity which I have described. It is not a system into which we have to fit the awkward fact of pain: it is itself one of the awkward facts which have to be fitted into any system we make. In a sense, it creates, rather than solves, the problem of pain, for pain would be no problem unless, side by side with our daily experience of this painful world, we had received what we think a good assurance that ultimate reality is righteous and loving. [p. 12]

Divine Omnipotence#

Most people, I imagine, have heard someone suggest that if God can do anything, then he could just make pain go away. Lewis has this to say in response:

If you choose to say "God can give a creature free-will and at the same time withhold free-will from it," you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words "God can." [p. 16]

Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself. [p. 22]

Furthermore, even if it were possible for God to make pain go away, sinners define themselves by their opposition to God's aid.

Divine Goodness#

Lewis talks about how we can understand God's goodness seeing as he is omniscient and we are unwise. And, if we cannot understand God's goodness, how can we agree that it is even good?

The Divine "goodness" differs from ours, but it is not sheerly different: it differs from ours not as white from black but as a perfect circle from a child's first attempt to draw a wheel. But when the child has learned to draw, it will know that the circle it then makes is what it was trying to make from the very beginning. [p. 27]

Related to Divine Goodness is Divine Love, which Lewis reminds is not like the currently in-vogue 'kindness':

Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering. As Scripture points out, it is bastards who are spoiled: the legitimate sons, who are to carry on the family tradition, are punished. [p. 29]

Lewis uses a combination of the following analogies to relate what God's Love for Man is like:

[God is] the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist's love for his work and despotic as a man's love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father's love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes. [p. 35]

Human Wickedness#

Lewis reminds that in the time of the Gospels it was taken for granted that people believe Man to be Fallen in some important way, and given that assumption Christianity has a particular answer.

The Christian answer--that we have used our free will to become very bad--is so well known that it hardly needs to be restated. [...] But [this assumption] has changed. Christianity now has to preach the diagnosis--in itself very bad news--before it can win a hearing for the cure. [p. 43]

Some quotes on the tenor of this chapter:

[We] find in ourselves even now a theoretical approval of this behaviour [honor, morality, etc.] which no one practises. Even inside the pocket we do not say that justice, mercy, fortitude, and temperance are of no value, but only that the local custom is as just, brave, temperate and merciful as can reasonably be expected. [p. 51]

Williams Law's question: "if you will here stop and ask yourselves why you are not as pious as the primitive Christian were, your own heart will tell you, that it is neither through ignorance nor inability, but purely because you have never thoroughly intended it." [p. 54]

I have been trying to make the reader believe that we actually are, at present, creatures whose character must be, in some respects, a horror to God, as it is, when we really see it, a horror to ourselves. [p. 55]

The Fall of Man#

The thesis of this chapter is simply that man, as a species, spoiled himself, and that good, to us in our present state, must therefore mean primarily remedial or corrective good. What part pain actually plays in such remedy or correction, is now to be considered. [p. 76]

Human Pain#

We are not merely imperfect creatures who must be improved: we are, as Newman said, rebels who must lay down our arms. [p. 79]

 

In a foreshadowing of the treatment of Hell, Lewis writes:

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world. A bad man, happy, is a man without the least inkling that his actions do not "answer," that they are not in accord with the laws of the universe. [p. 81]

Evil men are deaf to God's Will because they are disconnected from him; and if they do not repent, then they will be disconnected in eternity in a state known as Hell.

 

Lewis writes an interesting thought about the likelihood of further Fall in different types of men:

If God were a Kantian, who would not have us till we came to Him from the purest and best motives, who could be saved? And this illusion of self-sufficiceny may be at its strongest in some very honest, kindly, and temperate people, and on such people, therefore, misfortune must fall.

[...] Prostitutes are in no danger of finding their present life so satisfactory that they cannot turn to God: the proud, the avaricious, the self-righteous, are in that danger. [p. 86]

Human Pain, continued#

In the fallen and partially redeemed universe we may distinguish (1) The simple good descending from God, (2) The simple evil produced by rebellious creatures, and (3) the exploitation of that evil by God for His redemptive purpose, which produces (4) the complex good to which accepted suffering and repented sin contributes. Now the fact that God can make complex good out of simple evil does not excuse--though by mercy it may save--those who do the simple evil. [p. 98-99]

I thought this was very thought-provoking in the relation between Heaven and Earth:

The Christian doctrine of suffering explains, I believe, a very curious fact about the world we live in. The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home. [p. 103]

Hell#

In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: "What are you asking God to do?" To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does. [p. 116]

Animal Pain#

Heaven#