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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: Profoud Ideas
Review: In this book, C. S. Lewis makes an attempt to explain the causes and purposes of pain. He explains its necessity in the universe in which we live and how God makes use of it. Out of the nature of both God and the universe, Lewis tells of how we have helped to usher pain into our existence. In doing so, he touches on the very essence of creation and the relationship between God and man. There are some very poignant notions in this book. The reader will develop a greater understanding of how we relate to God. The Problem of Pain will probably not comfort someone who is in the midst of dealing with his or her own suffering or heartbreak. It appears that it was intended for more of an intellectual approach to the subject. There are, however, some cumbersome and awkward moments in the book. Lewis makes what seem to be some largely unsubstantiated claims that are outside his realm of expertise, such as man's ability to control all his own biochemical processes before the fall and how animals come to God through man. These ideas seem to come at best from Lewis's imagination. He is humble in his consciousness of his own imperfection. In the preface, Lewis states, "If any real theologian reads these pages he will very easily see that they are the work of a layman and an amateur." His writing style is like free flowing thought which can be difficult to read at times. Nonetheless, the work is in no way incomprehensible. Overall, the profound ideas Lewis has on the nature of pain have deepened my own spiritual understanding, and I considered it a privilege to have read his work.
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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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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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