I was inspired to write this after I read The Problem of Pain by C. S. Lewis in August of 2003:
God is good. God is love. He loves me enough to challenge me and throw me into the fire. He wants me to be as loveable as possible and provides opportunities to refine me. Refinement is not absent of pain. It is, in fact, painful by nature. So often it clouds the memory of the beauty that will come. I do not believe it is my purpose to be happy, nor any mans. It is my purpose to respond, as the creature, to my Creator’s love for me. Though it is by living the purpose He created for me that I will be happy. Man is to know joy, and to know joy is to know pain and sorrow. Our free will comes with the price of how we choose to use it; how we choose to manipulate non-sentient, inanimate objects and nature. What can be used to build up, can also be used to destroy. One complains about peddling uphill while the other enjoys the ride down. Is the hill evil? Is it the intention of the hill to cause pain, or even joy? This is the problem of pain. What is useful and pleasurable for one man, is the demise of another. God cannot make separate rules for the same object. While He is omnipotent, he is not insane. His laws are constant and reliable. While, yes, He creates miracles, they are just that… miracles. A miracle wouldn’t be a miracle if it was the norm. Is God “good” when a man uses a plank of wood to build a fire and warm his family and “bad” when that same plank of wood was used to hit someone over the head? He loves us enough to demand perfection out of us. The more trials in our lives – the more He loves us. Our complaints, it turns out, are not that He doesn’t love us enough, but that He loves us too much.
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February 9, 2009 at 12:57 AM
[...] We get to be accountable for how we choose to respond to life. I am not a big supporter of ‘victims’. While we can’t control all of our circumstances, we can choose how we’ll respond – and that is the test. Will we use our trials as stepping stones to become better people, or we will allow our trials to crush us? For those circumstances we can control, will we take an honest look and ask ourselves ‘how did I create this?’ and turn that knowledge into wisdom? (See also my blog entry entitled ‘The Problem of Pain’) [...]