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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 231.8
EAN num: 9780060652968
ISBN number: 0060652969
Label: HarperOne
Manufacturer: HarperOne
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 176
Printing Date: 2001-02
Publishing house: HarperOne
Release Date: February 06, 2001
Sale Popularity Level: 5200
Studio: HarperOne
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Product Description:
Why must humanity suffer? In this elegant and thoughtful work, C. S. Lewis questions the pain and suffering that occur everyday and how this contrasts with the notion of a God that is both omnipotent and good. An answer to this critical theological problem is found within these pages.
Amazon.com:
The Problem of Pain answers the universal question, 'Why would an all-loving, all-knowing God allow people to experience pain and suffering?' Master Christian apologist C.S. Lewis asserts that pain is a problem because our finite, human minds selfishly believe that pain-free lives would prove that God loves us. In truth, by asking for this, we want God to love us less, not more than he does. 'Love, in its own nature, demands the perfecting of the beloved; that the mere 'kindness' which tolerates anything except suffering in its object is, in that respect at the opposite pole from Love.' In addressing 'Divine Omnipotence,' 'Human Wickedness,' 'Human Pain,' and 'Heaven,' Lewis succeeds in lifting the reader from his frame of reference by artfully capitulating these topics into a conversational tone, which makes his assertions easy to swallow and even easier to digest. Lewis is straightforward in aim as well as honest about his impediments, saying, 'I am not arguing that pain is not painful. Pain hurts. I am only trying to show that the old Christian doctrine that being made perfect through suffering is not incredible. To prove it palatable is beyond my design.' The mind is expanded, God is magnified, and the reader is reminded that he is not the center of the universe as Lewis carefully rolls through the dissertation that suffering is God's will in preparing the believer for heaven and for the full weight of glory that awaits him there. While many of us naively wish that God had designed a 'less glorious and less arduous destiny' for his children, the fortune lies in Lewis's inclination to set us straight with his charming wit and pious mind. --Jill Heatherly
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Rated by buyers 
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The question or 'problem' that C.S. Lewis sets out to answer in "The Problem of Pain" is one that has confounded believers and non-believers alike: if God is good and loves his creation, why does he allow such pain and suffering to exist? How can that be good and exist within his creation? While Lewis' ponderings may not seem like straightforward answers to those questions, he paints a picture of a God revealed through his creation where even pain and evil can exist.
C.S. Lewis is perhaps the best person to examine this topic: a former atheist, he commences the book by speaking of what his former answer to that question would've been. It is only through his eventual conversion to a belief in Christ that he is able to see the order behind the seeming chaos. Lewis examines an array of issues, covering commonalities between religions but what sets Christianity apart, the Fall of Man, and why Heaven and Hell must exist. Moreover, he examines the distinct individuality that plays a role in our relation to our Creator.
Lewis' prose has the contradiction of being both dense and enlightening. His examinations are not necessarily for the ordinary reader, nor are they too lofty either, but they require a great deal of thoght and reflection. Therefore, "The Problem of Pain" is best read perhaps a chapter at a time, allowing the reader to meditate on what has been presented. The ultimate irony of human suffering might be that as believers, we have had every opportunity to not experience suffering, since Christ has already suffered supreme - but because of how God created us, we have the will to choose, no matter what that choice might be.
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Punctuated with a thin veil of lyricism and argued from a Christian perspective, C. S. Lewis does not only explore the psychological ramifications of experiencing pain (suffering) but also provides an intellectual discusion geared at reconciling theological tenets about the relationship between God as the essence of love and individuals stricken by sorrow. His views are very theoretical since the book was written many years before his beloved wife died. However, the book raises interesting questions relevant to the role of pain in our lives and misconceptions of what happiness and love are. During his compelling analysis of the Christian dilemma, Lewis journeys from atheism to Christianity with masterful clarity and empathizing inquiry into the Christian doctrine of a loving God in a world plagued by suffering.
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Lewis believed we should try to enter into the meaning, the intent of the authors we read, instead of bringing our own biases and immediately subjecting them to our own categories of thought. We cannot help but enrich our minds if "in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself." Therefore, if you've stumbled upon this book for whatever reason and feel inclined to read it then I'd urge -- pay no attention to the humbug critics, at least until after you've read what could be a life enriching book, as this was for me.
Ten years ago I began reading Lewis; the Problem of Pain was one of the very first of his works, after Mere Christianity, I picked up. It wasn't long after I read PoP that I was watching Schindler's List. Scene by scene, the dilemma of evil in the face of a good God assaulted me till I was overcome with intense and sickening violence. I ended up falling to the ground, in anguish, crying "how"? I received no blinding insight, I'm sorry to say, into the mystery of evil; but Lewis' logic had infected me, and suddenly an argument took hold of my mind, checked my despair, and gave me something to hold onto (incidentally, those critics who, in reading Lewis have immediately subjected him to their atheist framework have a-priori cut themselves off from understanding the ultimate logic of their own position - or they just don't care, which is far worse).
The argument, in so many words, ran something like this: the proposition that God doesn't exist amounts, at the same time, to the proposition that all this anguish at the injustice unfolding before me on my TV screen is not rooted in reality, that it's all a purely subjective illusion, which reflects no eternal value, goodness or justice, and, logically, could just as well be delight and approval. In other words, the extent I thought evil truly evil and wrong - that was the extent to which I had to believe in a good God; to deny Him would be, at the same time, a denial of the reality of evil, which was driving me to deny Him in the very first place. I simply refused to concede that the Nazis, slaughtering Jews, were no more morally culpable than if they were involuntarily swatting mosquitoes.
Many people are keen to respond something along these lines, "well, I personally feel this or that is wrong," and seriously think they've resolved the matter. However, this "line" has a shocking corollary, which runs thusly: "...but it is not really wrong". In it's blunt, down to earth form, and applied to my experience above, it looks like this: "I feel the Nazi's were wrong, but I cannot speak for them and say they were wrong, because they were not REALLY wrong." When the mind reflects objective reality it has truth; if my mind isn't reflecting the eternal reality of value, goodness, and justice, then my gut reactions and intense emotions are a response to nothing in reality, to no quality innate to human beings, which categorically warrants such a reaction - they're a fictional response, a response to a pretended reality. We all know, deep down inside, that this cannot be true, and that evil really exists because there's an eternal standard of goodness (God) by which to identify evil as evil...
Read this book - make your own judgments...
Rated by buyers -
Lewis deals with a timeless issue in this book: why is there suffering and pain? In the UK, this issue has come centre stage in moral debates. Should a being being permitted to exist if its life is destined to be one of "useless" suffering.
There was an article in the paper about a year ago about a couple who had a child with cystic fibrosis and wanted through IVF to conceive a child free of this nasty disease. Through the "miracle" of science, they were enabled to screen out any embryos with the disease so that they could have a "perfect" child. The logic for this was, so they said: "why would anyone want anyone to suffer" (aside: what would their existing child with CF be now thinking: it would have been better that I had not existed?) as if all who suffer, would wish not to be rather than to be. This kind of thinking is becoming indemic. It is a rejection of the truth which shines forth luminously from every human being, a truth which causes the beholder to say: "It is indeed wonderful that you exist"
And, this is where Lewis comes in with an endeavor at answering the question of: "why is there suffering"?:
"The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word "love", and look on things as if man were the centre of them. Man is not the centre, God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake".
Thus, love has become associated with a soft type of sentimentality in our culture; but it is much greater than that: it actively seeks for the good of the person loved - love may thus permit suffering to enable the person loved to become a person, who is himself capable of self emptying love. Lewis notes: "We are not merely imperfect creatures who must be improved; we are, as Newman said, rebels who must lay down our arms".
Lewis does not shrink from giving suffering its due: "No doubt pain as God's megaphone is a terrible instrument; it may lead to final and unrepented rebellion. But it gives the only opportunity the bad man can have for amendment. It removes the view; it plants the flag of truh within the fortress of a rebel soul"
In a word, suffering destroys our self delusion that we are in control, that we are demi-gods: when we suffer, we know where we are and its not at the centre of the universe.
Thus, whilst suffering (be it physical, natural or emotional), is an effect of evil, being a privation of the good, it can lead us to a recognition of our creaturely place in the universe and hence to find out true "orientation".
On hell, Lewis states; "I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside"
Lewis is very good indeed in this book; he synthesises brillianty key christian doctrines coherently and intelligibly.
Brilliant!
Rated by buyers -
This book is a theological and logical argument why God can be all loving and yet there can be such awful pain in the world. The initial argument that "If God is loving and there is evil in the world implies that something is wrong with God", is methodically and logically taken apart. There are arguments for the Christian about how they should live given this logical argument, but the non believer or searcher can take the arguments and come to a very balanced view of God Almighty.
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