C.S. Lewis on love & pain

There is all kinds of pain.

Physical, emotional, phantom, acute, mental. Pangs of the hearts, ailments of the body, anguish of the mind, imagined pain, aggravated pain, pains in the butt. Pain is a fact of life. It can involve physical suffering, psychological hurt, social rejection or material deprivation. Loneliness, criticism, unemployment, breakdown, failure, divorce, persecution and bereavement, physical illness all tend to bring pain in their wake.

People say there can be false pain, but I am still not sure about that. For sure, there are hypochondriacs who imagine or create pain where it does not really exist, but it really is just wounding coming out in a different direction. Still pain to me.

Whether we describe what we are feeling as an irritant, discomfort, distress, anguish, anxiety, travail, loss, suffering, bother, vexation, weariness...it all really boils down to pain and it is common to man. We ALL feel pain of various sorts. We ALL have things in our lives we wish would change, we could be relieved of or wish we could have a "do-over" on.

Physically, pain can be a gift when it triggers us to know that something in our body needs attention. (The absence of pain is one of the problems associated with leprosy). At the same time, sometimes a good gift can turn bad with illness and disease.

Pain, for many, is the main obstacle in believing in God as so many grapple with the place and cause of suffering around them. As sin abounds much, suffering grows and one real look at local and world news can be enough to deflate the hope of even the greatest optimist if that hope is not grounded in the Lord. A part of the reason for the narcissism of this "me" generation is an attempt to escape pain and sin.

C.S Lewis had some things to say about pain and Robert Banks in a 2006 talk at a Moore College theological conference summed some of Lewis' words as follows:

According to Lewis, the problem of pain in its simplest form is as follows: “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 the goodness, or power, or both”. To answer this, he says, we need to look more closely at erroneous assumptions built into the words “all-powerful” and “good” when ascribed to God.

The “all-powerfulness” of God is often taken to mean that God can do anything. But, says Lewis, he cannot do what is against his nature or choice. For example, even God cannot make 2+2 anything other than 4. Having made the world to work in certain consistent ways, like the force of gravity, he does not arbitrarily change these whenever potential harm rears its head. Though this does not rule out what we call miracles, if God kept changing the way things normally operate in the world, it would be impossible for us to rise to genuine challenges or act with real responsibly within it.

Unfortunately, fashioning such a reliable world opens up the possibility of people hurting each other in various ways. We might be able to conceive of a world in which God would correct every overstepping of a risk or abuse of the free will through constantly intervening in our affairs. However, such short-circuiting of all harmful actions and evil intentions would involve the destruction of human responsibility and freedom. http://www.cslewistoday.com/blog/the-problem-of-pain

Here are my less eloquent thoughts:

1. When we choose love in the midst of pain, we choose God. Love at every level (affection, friendship, erotic love, and the love of God.) will cause pain if we really invest ourselves in it. As Christians there is a redemption we get in being covered by the blood of a man / lamb who paid for our sins, but that redemption is something we wear on earth as humans who have free will. And in this broken place; we hurt and we hurt people.

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable." C.S. Lewis

"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. --The Problem of Pain

2. Love realizes that for every sin done against self, self has sinned against another. Love does not excuse sin, but covers over it. Will I love when the feeling of love has been wounded? Will I choose the "greatest of these" emotions? Love carries a multitude of sins, covers a multitude. Love forgives wide and Love forgives deep.

"At this very moment you and I are either committing [selfishness], or about to commit it, or repenting it." --The Problem of Pain

"Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained” --Answers to Questions on Christianity

“We are all fallen creatures and all very hard to live with”-- C.s. Lewis

3. Saying yes to God's kind of love meant we no longer get to choose when we give it out.

“I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare.” --C. S. Lewis.

"God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain" --C. S. Lewis.

4. Perfect love casts out fear and love is the only antidote to grief and fear.

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” C.S. Lewis

"The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it."--The Abolition of Man

5. Love and faith and belief are a choice. It is a part of daily picking up our cross. I once read that Biblical verse as likened to a boat pushing off of the dock and going out to sea. In order to move out and on, we have to untie from what kept us. It is called casting off and a part of choosing is casting off.

"Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done..." --from a letter "To Mrs. L."

6. It is in the "not so great moments" that the best or worst of who we are arises...

"Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment."--The Problem of Pain

7. Love as we experience it, is but a mere shadow of the real thing. Most of the time we are hard-pressed to put our best moments of love and our worst moments of pain into words because it limits the experience and mere words do not do justice to the feelings. The only one who can truly experience the fullness of what we feel is Jesus. He was a man ACQUAINTED WITH, thus - he is the only one wholly able to carry me, intercede for me and identify with me.

"Pure, spiritual, intellectual love shot fromm their faces like barbed lightning. It was so unlike the love we experience that its expression could easily be mistaken for ferocity." --Perelandra

8. IN the END.....The word “pain” or some form of it appears over 70 times in Scripture. Jesus felt pain for our sake (Isaiah 53: 3-5) and somehow - when we stand with Jesus - we can rejoice in pain and consider our trials with joy because of what it will work in us. (James 1:2-3, Romans 5). And for all my words their is THE word and it declares that in the end:

"...God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful." Revelation 22:4-5

Help us do what we need to do....

HOLY MOSES!!!

Today is 1-1-11 and I cannot believe how quickly the year has passed. My mama was right all those years ago when she cautioned me to live full because time moves quickly as you get older.

I woke up this morning with a sense of hope in my heart and it was such a welcome sensation! 2010 was a tough year on many fronts for our family. It felt like we put our nose to the grindstone and plowed; trusting (barely at times) that our fields would look different down the road. Seems that the spiritual opposition toward us making ANY stride forward has been fierce. I can mark MANY times in the last year where Scott and I have pulled up our bootstraps to rally in prayer "yet again" and within hours something crazy is happening...kids screaming in their sleep, sickness coming on suddenly, irrational craziness, impending sense of darkness and hopelessness, fighting when you are not sure what you are fighting for, business failure and betrayal we were not ready for, etc.

Sometimes I have been able to remind myself..."well, we must be doing something right if there is this much warfare", but truthfully as the year grew, I also grew...more frustrated, more hopeless, weaker, more tired.

If I were to describe it in a picture it would be something like this....

There is a seawall in Depoe Bay, Oregon right next to Highway 101; which winds down the coast. (the highway, not the seawall) It is a stunning drive full of hairpin turns, incredible vistas, quaint seaside towns and whole lot of memories. One of those "memory" spots is the Depoe Bay seawall which divides the ocean from what some say is the world's smallest navigable harbor. It also divides the town from the ocean. Depoe Bay does not have a stoplight and if you sneezed you might miss the seawall, but because I grew up on that coastline I am very familiar with the highway. Oftentimes, my family would stop on our way to somewhere or back from somewhere to take a gander at the seawall...it was a great place to see the resident pod of whales that stay in the area much of the year. Sea mist hangs around and spray from the waves hiting the wall. There are also these things called spouting horns that shoot geysers of sea water up through blow holes located at the base of the sea wall during storms and heavy surf. Sometimes the geysers shoot up over the seawall and across the highway.

Mist is a tricky thing....at first it feels refreshing, but if you stay out in it too long you get wet and then cold and fairly soon you can get chilled right down to the bone. When the wind is whipping down the Oregon coastline the last thing you want to do is be wet and stay outside in it. A body just can't sustain the cold for long without effect.

That's how 2010 felt for me...wet and cold and having to stay out in it....


BUT -

the time's are changing...and I am looking forward to a new year!!!

I asked Scott to read a Psalm over us this morning first thing and then we took communion as a family. We each prayed...Gabriel was just really enjoying dipping his Matzo cracker into his Blackberry Juice (hey - ya work with what ya got). Phineas said Jesus and mumbled something that seemed very profound for a 2 year old. Riley kept praying that "we would do what we need to do and go in the right direction" She also kept talking about Jesus in our hearts and all I can say to that is "Amen Sister, Amen!!!"

Really, this morning - us gathered together - was a big fat win! We spat into the wind and the mist and said you might have been blowing and spouting gale force on us, but we are turning our face into the wind and looking up - for our redeemer is coming and we will not quit. AND another thing.....we put on hope again!!!!!

January 1, 2001.
1.1.11

Did you know that the number 11 denotes transition? Look at John 11.11 where Jesus said:

"Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I go, so that I may awaken him out of sleep."

Transition from sleep into wake-fullness, dreams into reality, hoping into living.....

I like it!!!

now Jesus - help us to do what we need to do and go in the right direction. AMEN!