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Summary: If you like C.S. Lewis . . .
Review: . . . like I do, I strongly suggest We All Fall Down, by Brian Caldwell. Like Lewis, Caldwell takes an intellectual aproach to the concept of Christianity. His novel is very much in the vein of The Screwtape Letters and The Great divorce. I highly recomend it for discriminating Christian readers.
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Summary: Brilliant Christian Exposition - Proceed with Caution
Review: A quick warning to those who have been pointed to this book but are not Christian: you are not the audience Lewis is speaking to. This book cannot be fully grasped in its original context without some degree of belief or acceptance of Christian doctrine. It is apologetics at its best, but cannot be considered in the "self-help" category like many contemporary titles are.That said, this must be the finest treatise on the apparent contradiction between the existence of pain and the existence of a supposedly loving God that has been written. Succint, well-organized, thorough, yet "The Problem of Pain" still reads like it was written by a human being rather than a scholar. Some chapters bring conviction. The chapter on Hell brings fear and dread, and respect for Him who can "destroy both body and soul in Hell". The chapter on Heaven, which Lewis admits is his own philosophical foray, no one else's -- brings hope and reassurance that Heaven is your true calling, your one True Home. This is not light reading, at least not at first. This may not be a book to recommend to someone at the height of a crisis; Lewis taxes your attention and does not take any short cuts. A "Cliff Notes" version of this book would miss the point. Pain is one of the toughest theological problems a Christian can face, either in their lives or the life of another person they know -- and Lewis does not want you going in armed with half an argument or some "Precious Moments" sentiment. From a non-Christian POV, I would be surprised if this book made much sense -- so many of the pillars are set on Christian theology, philosophy, and tradition. If you cannot (or will not) accept the possibility of the existence of Heaven, Hell, or God, this book will be just so much incomprehensible babble. But, as I said, it is not written for that segment of the market. This book is best read by the thinking Christian who has reservations about aspects of Christianity that seem to gloss over, avoid, or ignore the issue of human suffering.
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Summary: A great read, but a bit heavy
Review: C.S. Lewis does an awesome job in this book of explaining the problem of pain, which many cite as a reason for denying the existince of God. In this book Lewis takes small things that don't seem to mean much, but then he builds this small concepts up into something much larger, and he creates strong powerful arguments like this, and many of them are things that I wouldn't ever think of.
All in all this book can be farily heavy reading, so read it slowly, even though it is pretty small, and keep in mind there are going to be many times where you will have to read parts of this book multiple times, until you have a firm grasp on the concept that Lewis is laying out.
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Summary: How does God use the pain we bear?
Review: I think it is Lewis' point that this life on planet earth involves a series of good events intersperced with very painfult ones. We start this life with few of its bumps and terrors. [Even embryos can absorb painful events if they survive at all.] God seeks to create man as one with whom He can have companionship so He does not want to control the creation. Man struggles through random events of pain and sorrow but also of beauty and joy. Man develops his own character during the course of his life. In this way God creates man with character by letting man develop it himself but using pain, sorrow, beauty and joy supplied by God's creation. One of the mysteries of the universe is how we can take with us through death the character God wants for his companionship.
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Summary: Insights Presented for and to and about Christians
Review: I would recommend this book--The Problem of Pain--very strongly to the Christian reader. Certainly, the thrust of this book is NOT to convince agnostics and atheists of the validity of the Christian platform, and anyone choosing to live in the Fool's Paradise that is agnosticism will come away from a reading of this book just as incredulous and empirically-minded as before. As any well-versed Christian knows, a testimony of God and of Christ comes not through study and reason alone. Any agnostic or atheist wishing to investigate the fundamental claims of Christianity would be better off studying C.S. Lewis' "God in the Dock," or "The Grand Miracle"(an abridged version of "God in the Dock").
Chiefly, I think that this book is meant to help Christians--or those with Judeo-Christian leanings--to reconcile the existence of pain with the realities of God's mercy, benevolence, and grace. Christians--and people of many other religions--believe life in the universe to be the result of a deliberate and calculated act of creation (nothing random or irrational, as the agnostics postulate). In light of this fact, a great number of Christians wonder why God would knowingly and intentionally create a world in which pain and sin had the possibility of being introduced.
Lewis very accutely observes, in this book, that free will--while certainly POSSIBLE without the option to commit evil--would be utterly WORTHLESS without the option to commit evil. As I have prayerfully contemplated this doctrine, I have come to know if its truth. For instance, when my father or mother told me--and still tell me--that they love me, it was and is deeply meaningful because I know that they CHOOSE to love me. If all my parents could possibly have done was love me, with no active decision on their part to do so, their love would have no meaning. They COULD have chosen to abandon or abuse me, but they did not. And that gives meaning, indeed, to all of their love and nurturing. We do not congratulate fish for breathing under water, after all (it's the only way they possibly can breathe!).
Lewis also observes, with emphasis, the fact that Jesus Christ could only have been one of two things: A lunatic or a God. The combined multitude of witnesses that knew Him--according to both Scriptural and Non-Scriptural documentation--affirm that if there was one thing Jesus constantly declared it was His own Godhood, and His Sonship to God the Father. When all of the evidence is taken into account, the representation universally set forth is that Jesus of Nazareth claimed to be God. Some denied it, some believed it, but all knew that this was, at least, His claim.
And, of course, all things taken into consideration, only a madman would have even the slightest inclination to make such claims unless the claims were true. Jim Jones and David Koresh are two primary examples of men who falsely claimed to be God, and who were, as is undoubtedly known, both certifiably insane.
Lewis makes the point, also, that with pain comes humility, and with humility comes receptiveness to God. If we were never to experience pains or disappointments in life, we would always take our blessings and gifts for granted. Either that, or we would worship the gifts (blessings) instead of the Gift-giver (God).
The point is also made--and it agrees perfectly with Emerson's essay on the Law of Compensation--that every "loss" in life is, in reality, a sacrifice offered to the acquisition of something else: If a man loses his left arm, he develops an impressivley strong right arm; If a woman loses a husband to death, she is relieved of her duties as wife, and thus is free to go about doing other things.
Finally, the Tester and the tested are both positively identified. Unfortunately, many--including some professed Christians--assume to be testing God. If, for example, they read in the newspapers of an elderly man shot down and robbed by thugs, they will say, "God failed him." But, the fact is, through all of the tribulations and turmoils of life, WE are the ones being tested, NOT God. God is already the paragon of absolute perfection. We, on the other hand, must prove ourselves in the test that is life (and, in the case of thugs robbing elderly men, such thugs fail the test quite horribly).
To love and adore God in a perfect world--a world without pain or opposition--would be no major accomplishment. But, to love and adore Him in spite of all temptation and adversity is a most supreme accomplishment.
This is a most praiseworthy book!
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Summary: The theoLOGICAL reason we suffer.
Review: If God loves us, why do we suffer? Why is there pain? Why? Christian Apologist extraordinaire C.S. Lewis studies the possible answer to these questions. The answers are intellectually stimulating and thought provoking, to say the least, for those interested in the direction (Christian, primarily orthodox) Lewis's argument takes. What is more fascinating about the text is the rigid emotional distance Lewis has to the subject, his own personal experience with Pain (told in A Grief Observed) still many years away. Those wanting a more easy to relate to study should read Grief. Those wanting a strictly intellectual and emotionally distant look at the concepts and Christian answers could do a lot worse than The Problem With Pain. Highly recommended.
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Summary: Lewis in Essay Form
Review: In the Problem of Pain Lewis tackles a question that has morally plagued society for centuries, "Why does bad things happen to good people?"
Lewis using his logic to answer this question rewrites alot of things modern man thinks he already knows!
He does a fine job of answering this question, and explaining why a loving God would allow people to suffer, though the first few chapters come accross wordy, and the obviousness that Lewis wasn't up for the battle of this book is prevelant in the first chapter.
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Summary: The Problem of Pain.
Review: Lewis points out that this volume is a defense of the idea of an omnibenevolent God against the 'argument from the existence of pain' and is not conceived as a theodicy. That is, Lewis makes no attempt to separate God from the problem of pain, in fact, apart from certain classic theological ideas, the suffering of 'conscious' beings (humans) cannot be coherently understood as being a "problem" at all. In an atheistically meaningless universe, the concept of suffering is meaningless, thus the awareness of a pain "problem" can only be addressed theologically. Although he modestly suggests that others might offer better theological arguments, it seems that Lewis argues plausibly, rationally and soundly. The following sentences present, generally and briefly, one of Lewis' more famous arguments:
". . . anyone who has watched gluttons shoveling down the most exquisite foods as if they did not know what they were eating, will admit that we can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists on being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world." (p 91) "While what we call 'our own life' remains agreeable we will not surrender it to him. What then can God do in our interests but to make 'our own life' less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible source of false happiness?" (p 94) "How can I say with sufficient tenderness what here needs to be said? It does not matter that I know I must become, in the eyes of every hostile reader, as it were, personally responsible for all the sufferings I try to explain . . . (p 95) " . . . [God] is not proud, He stoops to conquer, He will have us even though we have shown that we . . . come to Him because there is 'nothing better' now to be had." (p 96) "Those who would like the God of Scripture to be more purely ethical, do not know what they ask. If God were a Kantian, who would not have us till we came to him from the purest and best motives, who could be saved? And this illusion of self-sufficiency may be at its strongest in some very honest, kindly, and temperate people, and on such people, therefore, misfortune must fall." (p 96) " . . . but from our present point of view it ought to be clear that the real problem is not why some . . . people suffer, but why some do not. Our Lord Himself, it will be remembered, explained the salvation of those who are fortunate in this world only by referring to the unsearchable omnipotence of God." (p104)
Other problems and arguments are treated, but the approach is not exhaustive. Lewis doesn't intend it to be; he merely wants to address certain obvious questions (and he does this quite ably). As I read this I concurrently read J. C. Polkinghorne's "Quarks, Chaos & Christianity" which addresses the problem of pain as well as the problem of "natural evil" -- as each relate to the concept of freedom. Some say that Polkinghorne thinks as Lewis would have if he had been a quantum physicist; so if you find yourself agreeing with Lewis or at least intrigued by his arguments, I'll suggest you read Polkinghorne as well.
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Summary: Suffer, little children
Review: Lewis spends much time discussing the redemptive role of pain; problems of goodness, free will, and evil; and hell. He even includes a chapter on the suffering of animals. There is, however, no chapter on the suffering of children. Typical of Christian apologists, Lewis focuses on why God would create rational creatures capable of evil and allow them, and others affected by them, to suffer from the consequences of their evil choices. The problem he ignores is why his God, supposedly without whom nothing could exist, underwrites, for example, the very being of the cancer cells that ravage the body of a child. Such an omission renders the book useless.
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Summary: Read with "A grief observed"
Review: Lewis wrote this book in 1940, twenty years before his wife Joy died of cancer. After this experience he wrote "A Grief Observed". "The Problem of Pain" begins "Not many years ago when I was an atheist ... ". Thus, with first hand experience of the view that pain and an Almighty God cannot co-exist, Lewis plainly sets out the "problem": "If God were good, He would make His creatures perfectly happy, and if He 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."
From here he takes the reader on a journey that does not merely attempt to tackle the co-existence of God and pain, but scrutinses the very concepts of God, pain, love and happiness. Later, in "A Grief Observed", what was (relatively) impersonal writing on a theological dilemma in "The Problem of Pain" becomes a personal testimony.
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