C.S. Lewis: Divine Goodness

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Preface

Lewis was an important and key Anglican exemplar for my Wales, MPhil thesis:

2003 The Problem of Evil: Anglican and Baptist Perspectives: MPhil thesis, Bangor University

The link features my work on Lewis, some of which has been edited and presented on this blog previously.

MPhil 2003

I am not a Lewis scholar, but realize that many pastors and Church leaders view him as a major and primary theological source.

In contrast, I acknowledge him as a useful historical Christian apologist.

I present for a second straight time a Lewis post, realizing that he is very popular and that I could edit more of his work for smaller articles.

4. Divine Goodness

Within this chapter, Lewis portrayed God as demanding both discipline and compassion from people and demonstrating both himself in his character. He was a God who punished sin, yet sent his Son to die for that same sin. Lewis stated: You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the ‘lord of terrible aspect’, is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, not the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guest, but the consuming fire himself. Lewis (1940)(1996: 39).

Lewis indicated that God used his love in discipline for the betterment of his creatures, and that this could lead to the temporary suffering of people. Lewis compared a man disciplining a dog to God disciplining human beings. The creature is made better for the purposes of the master through this type of discipline which is often physically and emotionally painful. Kilby stated concerning this view of Lewis: "If we keep Him at center, it is possible to suppose that pain is His method of training us for better things than we understand." Kilby (1965: 67). Lewis noted: "Those Divine demands which sound to our natural ears most like those of a despot and least like those of a lover, in fact marshal us where we should want to go if we knew what we wanted." Lewis (1940)(1996: 46).

This seems plausible that God uses some of his toughest commands to bring about the greatest growth in his creatures. However, I would say perhaps it is more likely that God marshals us where we should go if we wanted what we should. I think that Lewis was correct that God used pain in love to strengthen his creations, but I like Kilby’s observation on the concept that some of the things we need we cannot understand, and often, I would think, do not want to understand. In human beings there often seems to be a certain tendency to believe and act on what is comfortable and brings pleasure at the expense of the truth and right living, which may not be nearly so comfortable. I think there is discipline in love which takes people to places of mental anguish and frustration that are not in the least desirable, even if they knew that things were working for the ultimate good. Nonetheless, God puts people through tough times and they will learn their lessons for the greater good; some will grow closer to God and some will harden in position against God. People, as sinners, generally want to live lives in which their sinful nature can flourish. Even Christians still, at times, need painful discipline in order to take them from wrong attitudes and actions to right attitude and actions. Since God has our best interests at heart, it is my view that no amount of suffering which God gives an individual diminishes at all the total goodness of God. I think it a mistake for the critic of God, to begin to doubt God’s goodness, omnipotence, or very existence, when this individual believes that his/her particular acceptable level of frustration and pain and been surpassed. How is any human to know why or how he/she must suffer?

How is any human being to know God’s reasoning behind it? Lewis raised this problem as Uncle Screwtape in The Screwtape Letters. He noted that it was important for demonic beings to attempt to move a human being struggling with problems from considering philosophical debate to concentrating on the everyday sense experience. Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favour, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences.

Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it "real life" and don’t let him ask what he means by "real". Lewis (1941)(1990: 12). It can become normal for a human being to become so self-absorbed in his/her suffering that serious difficult thinking about God and his reasons for willing suffering for the greater good, are overlooked. Instead, anger and bitterness against God grows and temporal sensory suffering can lead to a philosophy which can seriously doubt God’s ultimate power and goodness. Once one individual holds to what I think is the most plausible explanation, that both reason and revelation demonstrate that there exists an all-powerful, loving God, then this God is entitled to the benefit of the doubt. For if this God does exist, he alone knows completely why a person must suffer and has infinite knowledge in which to draw from. Every human being on the other hand, has finite knowledge on which to build his case against the evil that exists in God’s creation that God does not eliminate.

KILBY, Clyde S. (1965) The Christian World of C.S. Lewis, Appleford, Abingdon, Berks, U.K., Marcham Manor Press.

LEWIS, C.S. (1961)(1983) A Grief Observed, London, Faber and Faber.

LEWIS, C.S. (1941)(1990) The Screwtape Letters, Uhrichsville, Ohio, Barbour and Company. 

LEWIS, C.S. (1940)(1996) The Problem of Pain, San Francisco, Harper-Collins.