The Problem of Pain

Love can forbear, and Love can forgive...but Love can never be reconciled to an unlovely object...He can never therefore be reconciled to your sin, because sin itself is incapable of being altered; but He may be reconciled to your person, because that may be restored."

~Traherne

C.S. Lewis' problem of pain is kicking my butt. I have known pain too well in multiple forms. Unfortunately for me, as tonight yet again demonstrated, i am quick to mask my pain through anger, frustration and withdrawl. This is the perfect book to follow up the Shack b/c it complements the limitations of that story, by building a logical argument for the necesity of pain and its role in freedom and love, among other attributes of God. In the simplest form, according to Lewis, the problem of pain follows: "If God were good, He would wish to make His creatures perfectly happy, and if God were almighty, He would be able to do what He wished. But the creatures are not happy. Therefore God lacks either goodness, or power, or both." He begins by suggesting that our definitions of terms such as happy, good and almighty must be equivocal or else the preceding argument is unanswerable. After reading The Shack, there was still a part of me that felt like it was bogus and that Mack didn't need to go through all that and that Misty was robbed and that you can spin a pretty story, but the bottom line is still the bottom line. Reflecting on Lewis' writings on pain really points out to me how much I judge God, just as Mack did.

I have returned the favor of God creating me in His image, and I have made Him in mine. Lewis proposes that pain is the necessary byproduct of choice which is imperative to freedom. Eliminating choice would eliminate pain, but it would also eliminate our capacity to love. One of the things that sets us apart as Christians is the fact that, "we learn from the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity that something analogous to "society" exists within the Divine Being from all eternity- that God is Love, not merely in the sense of being the Platonic form of Love, but because, within Him, the concrete reciprocities of love exist before all worlds and are thence derived to the creatures." It's amazing to realize that God is both further from us and nearer to us than any other being.

Kindness is primarily concerned with preventing its object from escaping suffering rather than desiring that it be good or bad. God, being love, is more than this.

He really wants readers to recognize that pain is a beautiful dimension of His love for us, that "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains." We were created for His pleasure and created to love Him, but above all we were created that God may love us. Because of His character, "His love must, in the nature of things, be impeded and rebelled by certain stains in our present character, and because he already loves us He must labour to make us lovable. We cannot even wish, in our better moments, that He could reconcile Himself to our present impurities." Pain tends to be the necessary byproduct of this removal process of our stains and infirmities. He goes on to say that, "Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal. Love is more sensitive than hatred itself to every blemish in the beloved...Of all powers he forgives most, but he condones least, he is pleased with little, but demands all."

I know little of love, but lots on pain...sigh

i'm learning