Brooke Miller
Pastoral Care of Children
3/7/15
The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis is, by his own description, not a theological work but a personal conviction of pain in relation to the goodness of God and the Christian faith. Lewis covers a variety of topics and questions that usually arrive in this conversation, the first being God’s omnipotence. It is not uncommon for a person of atheistic belief or someone struggling to understand pain to ask why there is pain in the world if God is all powerful. If God can do anything why does He not allow us to live in pure happiness? Theologians and laymen go around and around with this question but Lewis nails down a metaphor which supplies a simple concept as an answer. Lewis’ metaphor involves a chess match, a game of strategy, in which you must allow the opponent to take some of your pieces in order to gain the desired result. Sometimes you have to give up a small portion of the game in order to win the whole thing. The next question we come to is of divine goodness. Lewis discusses what good really is and compares God’s judgement of good to our own but the most helpful point was that of human desires. God’s goodness is questioned because people are not happy but no one questions what would truly make us happy. In reality, what God wants is what will make us happy. If our desires do not match up with the will of God we can assume that our desires will not truly make us happy. God’s will for us is to be in communion with Him and it will ultimately be what makes us happy and proves God’s goodness in our lives. The mere fact that God has chosen us, to “need us”, simply because we needed for Him to need us is the one sufficient display of divine goodness. Pain is what molds us and shapes us into a creation more available to love. Lewis talks about the love God has for us as His beloved creation. As an artist would take time to go over and over his creation to buff the scratches and make sure it is as good as it can be, God uses different methods to make us as good as we can be so that we can be loved and appreciated to the fullest extent of God’s heart. The next section Lewis covers is about the fall of man and the wickedness that human nature has become because of it. Essentially, man spoiled himself and must now receive a corrective good as a result of indulging in sinful acts, the fall of man. The question then remains why pain or correction must be involved in the “good”. The first response to this is that man has decided to take the will for himself and it must be taken back which is a painful process. It is a painful process to have something which we have long since recognized as our own be pried away from us. We have taken on a self-will which never truly belonged to us and made it a part of who we are. In the same way we must “die daily” as we kill the self-will inside. Killing a part of oneself is