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Summary: Grief books I like
Review: Hello,
I am searching for answers for my grief. I bought The Problem of Pain and a grief workbook, Write from Your Heart, A Healing Grief Journal,that is helping work my way through this difficult time. In the journal I have the opportunity create a memory book while at the same time I am working through my grief using the daily prompts, Bible verses, and quotes.
It is helping.
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Summary: Nice try, but...
Review: Though Lewis's exposition of the problem of suffering is heartfelt, and he obviously gave it a good deal of thought, I find his account ultimately unconvincing. If we assume that suffering is deliberately designed to develop godly character leading to salvation, we are immediately faced with a vast number of devastating counterexamples. I want to mention just one that should cause even the most unfeeling and dogmatic to shudder. Consider the hymn-writer Thomas Cowper(Lewis mentions him in passing in "The Great Divorce"). Chances are at least a few of his hymns are in your hymnbook. This poor man wanted nothing more than to follow and love God, but he suffered from a manic-depressive psychosis. When he was manic, he wrote great hymns. When he was depressed, he believed (with a horrible fixitude incomprehensible to modern man) that he was damned for all eternity. Once, he had a dream during a time of deep depression that he had been saved and was in heaven, but when he awoke, he realized it was just a dream and he was damned after all. He called this one of God's cruelest arrows. How hard would it have been for God to reach out and heal this poor man's mind? How can anybody claim to have received "peace of mind" from a loving God and not mourn for poor Cowper? We moderns have so many man-made conveniences that spare us from the suffering our anscestors had to endure. We take anaesthetics and good dental care for granted. We know much more about the mind and can heal mental diseases. Did God love the people whose teeth rotted away in their heads more than he loves us now? He sent them so much more suffering... After years of mulling over the problem of evil, I think I have found an incomparably better answer in the writings of Benedict de Spinoza. Spinoza thinks all forms of suffering are just plain bad. The happier we are, the more we live out the powers that lie within us, the greater we approach the divine nature. Why then do we suffer? Because the world was not made for our benefit. We are simply tiny creatures who live in an incomparably vast (indeed, infinite) universe. The universe is wonderful and an expression of divinity because it can support an amazing variety of life, but it is not "perfect" in the sense of beineg perfectly-adjusted for our happiness. God bears us no ill-will; the world is simply as it is, and our comfort is not its goal. To the extent Lewis adopts at least in part a similar view, that is the strongest reasoning in his book.
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Summary: A spiritual and intellectual understanding
Review: Lewis effectively and poignantly analyzes the age-old "Problem of Pain." The logos of his reasoning never falters, but goes hand-in-hand with the pathos of his telling. More still, he effectively establishes his ethos by being uniquely qualified to disect the problem, having suffered much on his own, popularly known to have lost his wife to cancer. This book, an enlightening pleasure, helps the reader understand pain, why it occurs, and why it is necessary.
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Summary: Theological musings from a non theologian
Review: Is pain God's megaphone? Lewis ably examines the thorny subjects of pain and suffering in this book. The brief work is at once philosophical, logical, and semi-theological, even though Clive points out in his preface that he is no theologian (We can thank God for that!). Lewis seeks to answer questions such as "If God is good and all-powerful, why does he allow his creatures to suffer pain?" No stranger to pain himself, Lewis sheds some valuable light on the subject and on human nature. The book is both a comfort and a discomfort. One wonders how differently Lewis might have approached the subject after the death of his wife, for example. I found the later chapters, particularly those on Hell, Animal Pain, and Heaven particularly enlightening. "Pain," writes Lewis in the end, "offers an opportunity for heroism." His words ring true. Those who have suffered, to any degree, will find the book intriguing. A fine work, I would not recommend that the Lewis neophyte begin with this work, but perhaps "Mere Christianity."
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Summary: I never fail to learn something new from Lewis
Review: The wonderful thing about C.S. Lewis was that he put an amazing amount of thought into his faith. He understood better than most that becoming a Christian meant constantly trying to understand more, to examine both one's self and one's relationship to God. His penetrating intellegence towards Christianity is something that is often lacking in religion, and every time I read Lewis I learn something new, both about myself and my faith. Lewis is a true master. Another author who I'd highly recomend to anyone who enjoys Lewis, one who explores the Christian faith as brilliantly as Lewis, is Brian Caldwell. His novel, We All Fall Down is breathtaking. I'd put him on a par with Lewis, both for writing ability and theological brilliance. His novel is one of the few Christian masterpieces. Both Lewis and Caldwell should be read by those who have discovered God and want to explore that faith as deeply as possible, and perhaps more importantly, by those who have not.
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Summary: Problem of The Problem of Pain
Review: The Problem of Pain was good in some areas and not so good in others. C.S. Lewis makes quite a few assumptions without any Biblical basis. Some of the things he mentions make completely no sense. Here's a quote; "Our Lord while stressing terror of hell with unsparing severity, usually emphasises the idea, not the duration but of finality. Consignment to the destroying fire is usually treated as the end of the story - not the beginning of a new story. That the lost soul is eternally fixed in its diabolical attitude we cannnot doubt: but whether this eternal fixity implies endless duration-or duration at all we cannot say." What exactlly is he suggesting? That those in hell will not suffer eternally? Revelations 14:11 says "The smoke of their torment rises forever and ever, and they will have no relief day or night for they have worshipped the beast..." Aside from this there are many other things he says which make no sense. Yes, he does make some good points, but not many. I guess this is to be expected considering his apologetics are about 60 years old. I highly respect C.S. Lewis and he was definitely one of the geniuses of his time. Sadly since there is such a lack in good Christian apologetics these days with a few exceptions; we are left with only the long and gone apologetics of C.S. Lewis and Francis Schaffer. More recent apologetics would be Hugh Ross, William Dembski, and Michael Behe, who are very underappreciated for there hard work. C.S. Lewis wrote very good fiction which can still be highly appreciated by today's society. I'm not saying his apologetics are terrible; not at all. Merely that they are old and a lot of the theory's can be easily debunked. If you love to read, then I'm sure his work is well worth your time. If your merely looking for answers to certain problems; I would suggest something a bit more recent, or maybe searching for the answer yourself.
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Summary: A Pilgrimage of the Mind's Eye
Review: Jack wrote this toward the beginning of WWII, and it was sort of the beginning of quite a bit of attention focused on the problem of suffering. This problem was particularly something that he had to deal with before his conversion to Christianity, so you find a tincture of his theodicy in many of his fictional works. What is particularly fascinating about this work is the way he used myth to handle the unknowns of Christianity (Eden, Heaven, Hell). When you read this book and all of his books regarding theology, keep in mind that he is not a theologian, as he admits himself. What he writes about suffering is not even how he actually believed it was, it was what could have been. I suggest reading this work along the side of the Space Trilogy or The Great Divorce. He incorperates much of his own theology presented here with these pieces. I've focused a bit of study on Lewis' handling of suffering, though I'm not a scholar by any stretch. If you would like to read a little I've written on the subject, let me know. All in all, what Jack wanted to do with this book was to take the reader's mind's eye on a pilgrimage to the gateway of possibilities that lie within God's own imagination. Although we may certainly never be able to totally conceive the mind of the Lord, Lewis does the best he can to take us to the edge of knowing Him as we are known.
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Summary: This Book Eased My Pain
Review: Lewis has great talent for explaining difficult concepts. I read this book to help myself understand the pains in my life and found it extremely useful. I also found it helpful in explaining pain to others, especially those who are not Christians. Lewis helped me to see "why do bad things happen to good people" and sparked an interest in me to study Christianity all the more.
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Summary: Why we have pain
Review: Lewis analyzes the fundamental question, or problem, of pain: how can God be omnipotent and yet allow pain (war, injury, cruelty, etc.)? Lewis's answer has many levels. Foremost, is that nature had to be created with certain unchangeable properties. For example, the same hardness which allows wood to serve as a beam in my house allows it to serve as an instrument of potential injury, as when that beam collapses and hits my head. The world also had to be created neutral so that humans could interact equally with one another, i.e., those same, unchanging properties of wood allow it to be manipulated similarly by anyone. But, obviously a neutral world contains the potential for good or evil. Wood can be used to build a home, which is good, or to create a weapon, which is evil. But, this is what makes us human. We have free will. If I choose evil, God could not intervene. For to intervene some times but not others would be unjust and illogical (this is why miracles, if you believe in them, are extraordinarily rare). And to intervene once is to intervene always. Imagine if God intervened each time one person was going to cause another, or himself, pain. If he did, we all would be puppets, not humans. Another interesting idea in this book is that of Original Sin. According to Lewis, we have not inherited Adam's sin, as is commonly believed, but instead everyday face Adam's identical choice, perhaps thousands of times a day. For Adam's sin was not disobedience in eating the apple, but in choosing himself over God. Adam had the opportunity to see himself either as a creation or an individual self existing apart from God. Thus, according to Lewis, a final reason for pain, is that it is God's wake-up call that we have, in constantly choosing ourselves, chosen the wrong thing. This is a profound and provocative book.
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Summary: Not a Painful Read
Review: This book is a good honest look at issues involving the issue of God, suffering and evil. Lewis maintains the theist position in this difficult subject. His honesty in this book is exposed by him willing to address issues most theologians side-step, such as the suffering of animals. As a philosopher, I was expecting a more philosophical approach, but his practical approach was a pleasant surprise.
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