“The Problem of Pain”

Some of you might recognize the title of this post as the title of a short book by C.S. Lewis. The first book my pastor told me to read when I became a Christian years ago was ‘Mere Christianity’ by Lewis. I read about 3 chapters and put the book down. For me, his writing was too opaque.

So, it was a leap of faith for me to order this book ‘The Problem of Pain’ when my friend David recommended it. Wow! What a book. Get a copy. Read it. Underline the words. Think about it. Study it. Pray over it. You will be blessed (and yes, in places good luck figuring out what Lewis is saying, but only a few places. In my opinion, of course). I am not going to write a ‘book report’ here. Suffice it to say that most pain is ‘man made’, not from God. Lewis says the greatest risk God took when He created us was to give us freedom to choose. Most of the pain in the world comes out of the rebellious heart of man — evil we do to ourselves and evil we do to others when we choose wickedness over love.

All of us make choices every day about how to respond to a person, a situation, or our station in life. These choices will always boil down to this: have we surrendered our rebellious selves to God. Or, in the words of Oswald Chambers — have we “given up the right to ourselves”. Or, for that matter, Jesus — have we “denied ourselves and picked up our crosses”. This is the first, and highest, principle for Kingdom living. Note, it is something that you and I have to do. It will not be done for us, although it will be done with us (Oops, I thought I was done with ‘Kingdom writing’ for a while. Just goes to show — God is unpredictable).

Here is a quote from ‘The Problem of Pain’:

“Now the proper good of a creature is to surrender itself to its Creator — to enact intellectually, volitionally, and emotionally, that relationship which is given in the mere fact of its being a creature. When it does so, it is good and happy. Lest we should think this is a hardship, this kind of good begins on a level far above the creatures, for God Himself, as Son, from all eternity renders back to God as Father by filial obedience the being which the Father by paternal love eternally generates in the Son. This is the pattern which man was made to imitate — which Paradisal man (by this he means ‘in the Garden of Eden’) did imitate — and wherever the will conferred by the Creator is thus perfectly offered back in delighted and delighting obedience (which, I would say, is rooted in wonder and awe) by the creature, there, most undoubtedly, is Heaven, and there the Holy Ghost proceeds”. (I would say “there undoubtedly, is the Kingdom of God).

“In the world as we now know it, the problem is how to recover this self-surrender. We are not merely imperfect creatures who must be improved: we are . . . rebels who must lay down our arms. The first answer, then, to the question why our cure should be painful, is that to render back the will which we have so long claimed for our own, is in itself, wherever and however it is done, a grievous pain. . . But to surrender a self-will inflamed and swollen with years of usurpation is a kind of death”.

“We all remember this self-will as it was in childhood: the bitter, prolonged rage at every thwarting, the burst of passionate tears, the black, Satanic wish to kill or die rather than to give in. . . And if, now that we are grown up, we do not howl and stamp quite so much, that is partly because our elders began the process of breaking or killing our self-will in the nursery, and partly because the same passions now take more subtle forms and have grown clever at avoiding death by various ‘compensations’. Hence the necessity to die daily; however often we think we have broken the rebellious self we shall still find it alive. That this process cannot be without pain is sufficiently witnessed by the very history of the word ‘Mortification'”. (pgs 88, 89. The text was one long paragraph — I broke it into 3).

In this quote Lewis describes the cause of most evil and pain in the world — our selfishness — and the other cause of pain in our lives — dying to self. As I read this paragraph I saw in it the cause of most of the dysfunction in my country  — different groups ‘demanding the right to themselves’ (coupled with the lamentable fact that I doubt today “the process of breaking or killing the self-will in the nursery” happens very often) which is almost always coupled with unforgiveness, a victim spirit, and the inability to see themselves as God sees them — His beloved children.

I commend this book to you. It is powerful, passionate, and prophetic.

On this journey of surrender with you,

John