9 out of 12 C.S. Lewis books completed for 2026! 📚

Even though our brains hurt a little bit, and there is a lot we do not understand, we are committed to finishing what we started! I am an avid reader, did well in school, and love to learn new things, but my comprehension is being stretched!! And that is a good thing!

In true Clive Staples fashion, this book did not really go in the direction I expected. It does talk about pain, but first, he goes into how to define pain. Even more, what do we consider pain, and is it a bad thing? In the introductory chapter, he also calls out the fact that people blame God for the pain that exists in the world.

Page 3 states, “If the universe is so bad, or even half so bad, how on earth did human beings ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise and good Creator?”

He goes on to explain how religion and moral law shape what we consider to be painful.

“In a sense, it creates, rather than solves, the problem of pain, for pain would be no problem unless, side by side with our daily experience of this painful world, we had received what we think a good assurance that ultimate reality is righteous and loving” (page 14).

The chapter on Divine Goodness delved deep into the relationship between God and man.

“We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven—a senile benevolence who, as they say, ‘liked to see young people enjoying themselves…’” (page 31).

We picture ourselves as almost equal to God in position and understanding, but we are not. We need God, but He doesn’t need us.

“None of those conditions is present in the relation of God to man. God has no needs…He can give good, but cannot need or get it” (page 43).

Also, in our flesh, we want our own way. We want God to see things our way and bend His will to ours.

“When we want to be something other than the thing God wants us to be, we must be wanting what, in fact, will not make us happy” (page 46).

Isn’t that convicting? When we pray and ask for things, we can become disappointed when we don’t get what we want, even though we don’t ultimately trust that He truly knows what is best for us.

I highlighted so much in the chapter on Human Wickedness. Not because I was surprised by what he said, but because he puts it in such a way that makes so much sense.

“Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment” (page 49).

He also talks about the concept of corporate guilt.

“We feel ourselves to be involved in an iniquitous social system and to share a corporate guilt. For corporate guilt perhaps cannot be, and certainly is not, felt with the same force as personal guilt” (page 54).

What he shares in the chapters on Human Pain (covered in two chapters) is deep, yet simple. Humans have some tolerance for a low level of pain at all times, but there are thresholds of pain that disrupt our lives and demand attention.

“But pain insists upon 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” (page 91).

“But if suffering is good, ought it not to be pursued rather than avoided?” (page 110).

We have noticed a pattern now that we have read nine of his books this year. He tends to spend the first two-thirds of the book setting the stage and educating us on all the directions our thoughts can go, until he gets to the point where all the information from the previous chapters culminates.

The final chapters are on Hell, Animal Pain, and Heaven, which seems to be a somewhat odd sequence.

“To enter heaven is to become more human than you ever succeeded in being on earth; to enter hell is to be banished from humanity” (page 128).

“We know much more about heaven than hell, for heaven is the home of humanity and therefore contains all that is implied in a glorified human life: but hell was not made for men” (page 129).

“Man is to be understood only in his relation to God. The beasts are to be understood only in their relation to man and, through man, to God” (page 142).

The final chapter is on Heaven, which is fitting in so many ways.

“Scripture and tradition habitually put the joys of heaven into the scale against the sufferings of earth, and no solution of the problem of pain which does not do so can be called a Christian one” (page 148).

“Heaven offers nothing that a mercenary soul can desire. It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to” (page 149).

“If all experienced God in the same way and returned Him an identical worship, the song of the Church triumphant would have no symphony, it would be like an orchestra in which all the instruments played the same note” (page 155).

I have realized that the more I try to share what I have learned in these books, the more at a loss for words I am. There is something that prompts me to think while I am reading, but not to the point where I can just rattle it off in a meaningless way.

This is a book that requires multiple reads over many years, and even then, we would not quite grasp it. But the subject of pain, grief, and suffering is somewhat beyond our grasp as a whole!