C.S. Lewis’s The Problem of Pain [A Summary]

The Problem of Pain: How Human Suffering Raises Intellectual Problems.

This classical book on suffering is one of the best I have ever read on the issue. C.S. Lewis begins with the problem:

“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. This is the problem of pain in its simplest form.” (Chapter 2)

The Problem of Pain is a book on the philosophical problem of evil by C.S. Lewis in written in 1940.

Lewis here tackles the strongest objection to God there is: evil. And does a masterful job of it. He states in the first chapter that if this was a world without good and evil, then how did we arrive at this “problem of pain?” in the first place? There, in fact, would be no problem at all. But there is a problem! We all innately, and tearfully know it, from the PhD’s to the small child in Bosnia. That is his first clue (Which he rightly titled his book).

So. Answer 1 is the fact that we know this is a problem, and that is evidence we are greater than this problem, or pain we suffer — and we know it is not the way things ought to be. If I may add a point made by Professor Douglas Geivett of Talbot School of Theology. He said,

“Evil is a deviation from the way things ought to be. But there can’t be a deviation from the way things ought to be unless there IS a way things ought to be. There can’t be a way things ought to be unless there is a design plan that says, ‘Here’s how things ought to be.’ And there can’t be a design plan that says, ‘Here’s how things ought to be’ unless there is a Designer who put forth that design plan.”

In Answer 2 Lewis uses “the famous free will” defense to give us a clue as to why there is evil is in the world. Its called “choice.” If we had to do what is good, then we would be like the rock that must roll down that hill, or water that freezes at 32 degrees. Where there is no love, there must be a choice. And God chooses to give us a choice. God took that chance with us. Even though some of us reject him freely.

But some will object, “Couldn’t God make a world where we do “good” all the time and still have “choice?” Lewis says that is impossible. To talk this way is meaningless, we are talking about something that is not. If a man has no choice but to choose A (good and right acts) then is that man really free to choose A? Lewis says no. He has no choice then. It’s a delusion. Besides if it could happen, don’t you think God would have done it?

In Answer 3 Lewis argues that pain is necessary to refine us. “And that is why tribulations cannot cease until God either sees us remade or sees that our remaking is now hopeless.”

In Answer 4, he raises the paradox of suffering/glory. The cross of Christ is both the worst, as well as the best, thing to ever happen. God uses the most horrendous acts like that to make good bleed. And from these wounds of love, salvation flows to all who accept this gift.

Answer 5 is about animal pain. Lewis here is saying that animals were corrupted with pain by satanic influences just like us. But he states that they do not have the “problem of pain.” We know we will suffer and will die, they don’t have that agonizing knowledge.

Answer 6 is about Hell. He quotes Milton in that “Hell’s doors are locked on the inside.” Lewis states that if he could yank out of Christianity one thing, it would be Hell. Hell he makes out to be a place not where a man goes, but where “what is left of man” goes. Hell is man’s choice, not God’s. If we choose me, me, me… we will end up with what we really want…me…alone… forever .i.e. Hell. He sums it up:

“In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell is itself a question” …to forgive? [but] they will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what he does.”

Answer 7 Lewis then throws in Heaven, and with the skill of a master, gives hope for sufferers. Lewis puts into words what many centuries of people only dreamed about. He states about heaven, “you have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it-tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest- you would know it!” All the pain and evil some people have been victims of, will one day be made right. And heaven is the hearts fulfilled longing. But not for the place. No. Its in who, not what, is there

There was a time in Lewis’s life, many years later when he met, loved and married the love of his life, the American Joy Davidman, after two years of overseas correspondence. Lewis writes before she died of cancer, that “She said not to me but to the chaplain, “I am at peace with God.” She smiled, but not at me.

But one thing Lewis does not discuss at great length is the pain of the non-choice: the child born with cancer of the liver or brain deformations or even genocide or rape or brutal acts of evil, natural disasters.

The bottom line for Lewis is that suffering and evil are answered on the Cross of Jesus and those of us who trust Him will have the grace to endure our own crosses and sufferings because God is with us, and will not leave us or forskake us.

I recommend what should have been called “The Problem of Pain part two”– done by Boston College’s Peter Kreeft called “Making Sense Out of Suffering.” Powerfully and artistically done.

Want a free PDF of the The Problem of Pain? Here is a link to a public domain copy.

Below are some of my favourite life-changing quotes from this book.

❖“A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.”
❖”Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken.”

❖“For you will certainly carry out God’s purpose, however, you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John.”

❖“You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw — but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of — something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat’s side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it — tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest — if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself — you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say “Here at last is the thing I was made for”. We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.”
❖“We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. 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.”