C.S. Lewis and Answers to the Problem of Pain

The problem of evil is one of the most difficult challenges for Christian theists to answer. In fact, it is the problem that Christians must face.

Christian philosopher Dr. William Lane Craig has said that “the problem of suffering is, I think, the most powerful objection to the existence of God. … The suffering in the world certainly seems to be evidence against God’s existence.”

Part of the reason for this is that the problem of pain, suffering and evil is one we all must face at some point. No one gets off this green earth without facing their fair bit of pain.

Then too, we must acknowledge that we all contribute our own evil to this world – causing pain to others.

Here at the Daily Citizen, the problem of evil is embedded into many of the articles we write concerning abortion, euthanasia, transgenderism, suicide, educational indoctrination, drug use, pornography, divorce, and more.

C.S. Lewis was one of the foremost Christian apologists of the 20th century. Not coincidentally, he had much to say about the problem of evil. He wrote two books specifically about the subject, The Problem of Pain and A Grief Observed.

In The Problem of Pain, he summarized the problem this way:

“If God were good, He would wish to make His creatures perfectly happy, and if God 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.” This is the problem of pain, in its simplest form.

According to Lewis, the reality of evil does not disprove Christianity for three reasons.

First, Lewis argues that only the existence of God can provide a sufficient foundation for objective moral values and duties. Second, he argues that God cannot create genuinely free creatures without the possibility of evil. Third, he contends that God can bring good out of evil by using it to shape our love for Him. Let’s look at these each in turn.

God and Morality

To address the philosophical problem of evil, one of Lewis’ principal tacks is reframing the issue.

While a non-Christian may claim that the existence of evil precludes a belief in an omnipotent, omnibenevolent Creator, Lewis sees the issue differently. Lewis argues that without God, evil – in a real, objective sense – cannot exist.

In Mere Christianity, Lewis proposes,

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? … Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too – for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies.

In this way, Lewis turns the problem of evil on its head. Those who want to argue that God and evil are incompatible must provide a standard of morality they are holding God to. To do that, they must appeal to a standard outside themselves, otherwise their moral standard is just a preference, as Lewis points out.

This moral standard, Lewis contends, is located in God. As Dr. Jerry Root summarizes in C.S. Lewis and a Problem of Evil, “Lewis … came to believe that not only can God and evil both exist in the world, but belief in God is the primary way someone can make the most sense of the very phenomenon of evil.”

Without God, objective moral evil does not and cannot exist. Without God, there is no problem of evil at all.

Free Will and The Possibility of Evil

A second reason Lewis proposes for why God may permit evil relates to creaturely freedom and our capacity for love.

To begin, Lewis proposes that God cannot do all things, in the sense that He cannot do even contradictory things. No, there are indeed things God cannot be or do. As Dr. Jerry Root asserts, “If He is just, He cannot be unfair; if He is love, He cannot be less than charitable; if He is holy, He cannot be impious; if He is righteous, He cannot do wrong; if He is immutable, He cannot be capricious. According to Lewis, omnipotence means that God has the power to do all that is intrinsically possible.”

In this way, God can do all things that are “intrinsically possible” and in accord with His nature. Lewis then takes the next step in his argument: God desired to create genuinely free creatures – humankind – with the capacity for love (Genesis 1:26-27). Lewis posits that it is not possible for God to create free creatures without also creating them with the possibility they will choose evil.

Lewis writes in The Problem of Pain, “Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.”

Dr. Root summarizes Lewis’ argument: “If relationship is necessary in God, then creatures made to bear His image must also exhibit the capacity to live in society with God and with others. The ability to choose, and the relative independence of will to make choices, makes it possible for man to love, but it also makes evil possible.”

In other words, the problem of evil is largely a problem in us – not in God – since we are the source of evil. We have all chosen to misuse our free will – that’s what we call sin.

Evil’s Redemption and Human Love

Lewis also gives a positive reason for why God permits evil and suffering, namely, as a corrective for humanity’s misuse of free will and to bring good out of them.

He provides four analogies in The Problem of Pain “where the objects of love must experience some kind of correction and discomfort in order that they might become more pleasing to the one who loves them,” Dr. Root explains.

As Lewis writes in The Problem of Pain, “Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal. Love is more sensitive than hatred itself to every blemish in the beloved.”

So, God may use our pain and suffering to purify our love for Him.

The idea that God can redeem suffering even finds its way into Lewis’ works of fiction. In Lewis’ The Horse and His Boy, the boy Shasta explains to the lion (Aslan, representing Christ) that it was “bad luck” to meet “so many lions” along his journey, which chased him and wounded his companion, Aravis.

“There was only one lion … I was the lion,” Aslan replies, adding,

I was the lion who forced you to join Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.

With this quote, we realize that it’s not until the end of the story that Aslan is able to explain he was helping – not hurting – Shasta during each of their encounters. Some pain was required for Shasta to reach his goal.

Likewise, perhaps some pain is required for us to reach and love the true object of our desire – God Himself.

For now, we are like Shasta, who proceeds to ask Aslan why he wounded Aravis.

“Child,” Aslan replies, “I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.” For now, we don’t have all the answers.

But someday, we will: “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12, ESV).

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Related articles and resource:

Walking With God Through Trials

Evidence for the Existence of God (Part 1 of 2)

Seeing God’s Grace in a Broken World (Part 1 of 2)

How Do Your Forgive Evil?

Finding God’s Goodness Even in Suffering (Part 1 of 2)

Learning to be Honest With God

Why Does God Allow Evil?

Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering