By Fr Dwight Longenecker
C.S.Lewis’ The Problem of Pain approaches the thorny question of how a God who is all powerful and all good can allow human suffering. If he is all good he would not wish for suffering to happen. If he were all powerful he could stop the suffering. Therefore one of his attributes must be sacrificed. He is either not all good or not all powerful.
Lewis ponders the problem in the usual way, stating that God’s perspective on the conundrum must be different from ours and positing the reality of free will and the demands of love. God would be in a relationship with us and that means we must love God. Love, however, cannot be forced or it is not love. Therefore God grants us free will to love or not to love. Not to love God will cause us suffering, but that is God’s great gamble. It is the price he is willing to pay.
It is in The Problem of Pain that we find one of Lewis’ most eloquent and memorable lines, “We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world….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 veil; it plants the…